Gainesville in April: GRU on the ballot, fire stations, and saving The Ox!
We'll be deciding the ballot language for the GRU referendum, prioritizing funding for infrastructure, and making EV charging easier for apartments.
I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. March ended up being a pretty eventful month, with April a little slower outside of one big ticket item. We’ll be taking some decisive action on investing in our aging fire stations, an issue that has been growing more and more over the years, on electric vehicle charging, and GRU.
First Some Good News
The City of Gainesville received a clean audit for our annual independent ACFR audit. For five years prior there has been at least one finding in this in-depth audit, so receiving a perfect, clean audit is very welcomed news.
Gainesville Fire Rescue was reaccredited internationally. The City received a $189,820 grant for energy efficiency upgrades in low-income homes from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant.
Free Fridays is starting back in April with a great lineup you can check out on the City’s website.
District 4’s own Florida Museum of Natural History opened their “Water Shapes Florida” exhibit. It’s got a bunch of cool new exhibits along with the classic cave and Florida hammock exhibits.
The Commission approved a business facade grant for Akira Wood (Heartwood Soundstage area) to improve the frontage of this nationally registered historic building along our Main Street. It’s going to look pretty nice!
My proposal to reduce lot dimension requirements for new single-family homes passed the plan board unanimously last Thursday, meaning it will come back to the City Commission soon.
Pavlov Media announced that they’ll be expanding fiber internet service in Gainesville. That means Gainesville will have not one, but two new competitors to Cox Communications in the next year with IQ Fiber already building out across the City.
Repeal of the GRU Authority
At our March 21st meeting the City Commission voted to move forward with putting the GRU Authority on the ballot for a full repeal this year. This came after a packed room of community members from the League of Women Voters, NAACP, the AFL-CIO, Labor Coalition and the Sierra Club came to the meeting asking for the voters to decide.
It was just about a year to the day that myself, the mayor, and a large number of community groups went to Tallahassee to ask the Alachua County Legislative Delegation to put their takeover of GRU to a referendum vote, instead of just forcing it through in a special act. To let the voters decide the future of their utility, not Tallahassee politicians. Clemons, Perry, and the rest refused to do that, so it was a good feeling to make the motion to finally give the voters a voice.
This is just the start of the process though. In April six-of-the-seven commissioners will need to vote in favor to get it on the ballot. We will need to agree on final ballot language, and decide which election this will be on, either August or November.
I’ve heard some confusion about the legality of this since the bill was passed by the Legislature and traditionally state law takes precedence over local ordinances. That’s true, but HB 1645 was a local bill, not a state law. That bill did one thing and one thing only: it amended the charter of the City of Gainesville. The legislature has the right to alter the charter of any city as per the Florida Constitution. But the city voters also have the ability to alter our charter under Florida Statutes 166.031.
166.031 Charter amendments.
(1) The governing body of a municipality may, by ordinance, or the electors of a municipality may, by petition signed by 10 percent of the registered electors as of the last preceding municipal general election, submit to the electors of said municipality a proposed amendment to its charter, which amendment may be to any part or to all of said charter except that part describing the boundaries of such municipality. The governing body of the municipality shall place the proposed amendment contained in the ordinance or petition to a vote of the electors at the next general election held within the municipality or at a special election called for such purpose.
Some have argued that portions of HB 1645 barring the Commission from “directing” the Authority means we can’t take this action as the Commission, but that isn’t the case. This isn’t a direction by the Commission, it’s a question to the voters. But even if we were barred by our Charter, Florida Statutes specifically say we can make this change regardless of what’s in our charter:
166.031 (3) A municipality may amend its charter pursuant to this section notwithstanding1 any charter provisions to the contrary.
The City Charter is a living document, just like the laws of Florida are, and can be amended multiple ways including by a referendum to the residents. Nothing put into the charter by Chuck Clemons can overrule the ability of our city to do that.
So that means that at the bottom of your ballot, either August or November, you will see the official question of removal of the GRU Authority from our city government, putting oversight of the utilities back in the hands of the local elected officials of the City.
Building New Fire Stations
For years the city has been trying to fund improvements for our aging fire stations. It’s long been a bone of contention for our fire department, who have pointed out that our fire stations are old, outdated, and torn up, and advocated for improvements.
Like a lot of our city, our fire stations were built during a government construction boom in the mid-to-late 1960’s. City hall, the old library, Albert Ray Massey Recreation Center, the County administration building, and the Alachua County Courthouse were all built in the 1960’s, along with a rash of fire stations. The problem with massive building booms is those buildings eventually go bust at about the same time. That time is now.
In 2021 an outside consultant looked at our fire stations/offices and found that out of 16 buildings, 8 are in “poor condition” and 3 are in “fair” condition. The cost to fix that has ballooned as the buildings have deteriorated, most recently coming in at an estimated $120 million.
That’s a lot of money. To put that into context: the full purchase, remediation, and building of Depot Park cost $60 million. We don’t have that kind of money just sitting around.
Thankfully the voters gave us a solution. In 2022 the voters of Alachua County approved a renewal of Wild Spaces and Public Places with an expansion: a half-cent for parks and green space and another half-cent for infrastructure improvements. The City is calling this second pot of money “Streets, Stations and Strong Foundations.”
On April 25th City staff is coming back to us with a plan to “prioritize public safety facilities” with these funds so we can finally get our hands around the city’s biggest capital liability. Here’s what that looks like:
Fire Station #9
If there’s a poster child for needs in city fire station buildings it’s Fire Station #9 by Butler Plaza. Fire Station #9 is a temporary modular building (mobile home) that is servicing the densest, fastest-growing area of our city. A mobile home is no place for a fire station.
This new Wild Spaces Public Places money means this will be torn down and a new, much nicer facility built. We’re calling it the “Southwest Public Safety Center” and will include a police annex, a proper modern fire station, and a small public works outpost, as well as a community room. All of this will be housed in the new HCA Emergency and Hospital being built on Archer Road.
Fire Station #3
Fire station 3 is our second most used station, and it’s in poor shape. Built in 1960 by Citizens Field. There aren’t enough beds, it’s too small, and the 60-year-old building seems to have something new failing regularly. This will be torn down as we renovate Eigth and Waldo and a new fire station built on our new EHEDI project surrounding GTEC.
GFR Administration Building
The administration building is also located at Eighth and Waldo and was built in the mid-1970’s. It’s in very bad shape, with two of the buildings, including the main administration building, completely abandoned due to mold issues and the roof being on the verge of caving in. Fire Rescue administration has been housed temporarily at GTEC ever since it was abandoned.
Sitting empty is the city-owned Catalyst Building in the Power District, the former home of Prioria Robotics. We’re using these half-cent funds to refurbish that building for the needs of the Fire Department and making it the full time administration building for our Fire Rescue.
This is all a bit of inside baseball, but Fire Rescue is the second biggest expense in our city, meaning it is one of the main investments you receive with your tax money. Making them more efficient and reducing this large liability of deteriorating buildings is a major step in the right direction.
Electric Vehicle Charging
EDIT: As I was pressing “send” on this post staff was pulling this off the agenda due to the legislature preempting us on electric vehicle charging in HB 1084. Cities in the State of Florida can no longer regulate “electric vehicle charging stations” once signed by the Governor (which it almost certainly will be). Another sad example of Tallahassee overreach that benefits donors over local communities. Anyway, here’s what would have been:
Electric vehicles are set to take off over the next five years, with an estimated 26.4 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2030 according to forecasts by the Edison Electric Institute. To do this Gainesville is going to need 27,259 charging ports by 20302, ten times the amount we have today. Making this transition as smooth as possible is critical for our climate change goals.
On April 4th the Gainesville City Commission will be considering an amendment to our Land Development Code that would require 10% of all parking spaces in new multifamily apartments be “EV capable”, meaning the wiring is there to support a 40-amp, 208/240-volt electric charger.
Multi-family charging stations are a real hurdle for electric vehicle adoption. While a single-family homeowner can install high-power charging in their home to service their car, renters in apartments rely on their landlords to retrofit these chargers in existing parking lots. That’s expensive to do, but it’s not expensive to install these during the initial construction. Putting frontend requirements into our code for making those charging ports possible ensures EV adoption doesn’t bypass our renters, who make up the majority of the residents of our city.
Local Business of the Month
The Ox Store is my favorite new business in Gainesville. It’s an all-ages punk venue in Grove Street started by a group of guys in 2023 looking to create an old-school punk venue like Gainesville was once famous for. In a short time it’s become the go-to underground music venue in Gainesville, hosting punk/hardcore shows, community groups, and musical festivals. With Samurai Skate Shop on one side and them on the other, connected by a doorway, Friday and Saturday nights there are a very cool scene with multiple bands playing with skateboarders on the halfpipe.
Like a lot of cool, upstart punk rock ideas the punk rock ethos crashed into the reality of permitting and fire code regulations, and they hit a snag. When they pulled permits in early March they found that multiple tenants haven’t pulled permits in years and the building isn’t up to code for a music venue. So a week ago they got shut down and had to cancel all upcoming shows until they make the needed renovations.
So they need your help! The Ox has a GoFundMe up to help raise money for the needed renovations. If you can please donate some money to help get Gainesville’s newest, coolest music venue back up and rocking.
Local Band of the Month
Let’s keep the punk theme going with my favorite new punk band: Boat Stuff. Their music is wild, hard-driving punk, but with a lot of technical instrumentation that is pretty rare for a punk band. Even more impressive is they’re not even out of high school yet, they’re all students at PK Yonge.
You may have seen their high-energy show at the City of Gainesville/MusicGNV’s “Live & Local” showcase on March 22nd. These “Live & Local” shows throughout March are a great way to see some of the up-and-coming local acts in Gainesville. This concert series is over now to make room for “Free Fridays” in April, but make sure to check it out next year at Bo Diddley.
Notwithstanding is a confusing word that, in spoken English it generally means “subject to” but in legal jargon it means “in spite of”. It essentially means this provision is upheld in spite of anything to the contrary, in this case charter provisions to the contrary.
According to the US Department of Energy, listed on our backup for the April 4th meeting: https://pub-cityofgainesville.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=87340
Go get'em, tiger.