Gainesville in December: Inclusionary zoning, Holiday shopping tips, and potential budget cuts
Twas the month before Christmas and all through the city, We had were discussing housing and the utilities authority The agendas were set for 7th and 14th With a Christmas parade down University Stree
Twas the month before Christmas and all through the city,
We had were discussing housing and the utilities authority
The agendas were set for 7th and 14th
With a Christmas parade down University Street
It’s the holiday season and we have some votes coming up in the Gainesville City Commission as well as some updates on GRU. Instead of slowing down for the holidays it seems like everything has been stuffed into this last month, so it’s a pretty big month. Here’s what we have coming up:
First, Some Good News
The City Commission approved a 24/72 plan with our firefighters. Essentially, it’s a new benefit for our firefighters that gives them an extra day off, to ensure they have a specific day they can use for themselves. It’s a great new benefit for our firefighters that will hopefully help with recruitment, which they need.
This Saturday is our big Holiday Parade, taking off at 12 pm starting at 6th Street on University Avenue, followed by a dance party at Bo Diddley at 3 pm and a tree lighting at the Thomas Center at 5:30. This is gonna be a great holiday parade and a festive day going into the Holiday Season.
In other news, we found a way to use the expertise of our Utility Advisory Board moving forward, advising the Commission on sustainability issues. The Downtown Arts Festival was a success, with thousands of people coming to downtown to see artists. And Sweetwater Wetlands Park has been selected as a “Great Florida Birding Trail” spot.
City Auditor Selection
One of the biggest decisions we make as a Commission is who we hire for our charter officers. In a council-manager form of government the actual doing of our government is handled by these appointed positions, so picking good, competent leaders is incredibly important.
The City Auditor serves as a watchdog and an operations/financial consultant to the various departments of the City. They review the standards and protocols of various departments to ensure there is transparency and efficiency, with a focus on trying to catch and reduce the risk of fraud.
Our previous city auditor resigned in 2022, and we have had interim city auditor Brecka Anderson serving in the role ever since. She has done a phenomenal job, but chose not to reapply to preserve her work/life balance. Last week the City Commission interviewed three applicants for the job, the City held a public event at the Thomas Center for the community to meet them, and we’ll be deciding on a permanent City Auditor on the December 7th meeting.
GRU Authority Cuts to General Fund
On December 6th at 4:30 at GRU in downtown, the GRU Authority will be discussing (again) the transfer of money to the general fund. The Commission last year voted to bring the $34.3 million transfer down to $15.3 million this year, by far the lowest funds transfer in the state of Florida as a percentage of utility revenue, and significantly less than they would be paying in taxes as a private entity.
I was really uncomfortable with how drastic the cuts were and said so frequently during the discussions about the fund transfer. I felt GRU just paying its total taxes of $26 million, as determined by a neutral outside consultant in 2021, would be fairer and they had ample ability to pay that and pay down debt, according to that same consulting report. But the general consensus was that we needed to follow the legislature’s demands and make “bold cuts” to the funds transfer. We unanimously agreed to do this in good faith, no matter how painful it was. In the end the State Auditor General accepted the new equation and felt satisfied that it left plenty for GRU to pay down its debt. That’s no surprise, it’s an unprecedented amount of money for a city to leave to its utility, which is why no other major city in Florida has anywhere near this low of a transfer.
Now the GRU Authority is considering throwing this out entirely, pulling back their funding and becoming the only major utility in the country that pays neither taxes nor a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes to the government they exist within. If that happens it’s going to be another round of painful cuts, this time much worse than last year’s. In the previous budget cycle we eliminated 125.5 positions, about half were filled, and we raised our taxes just under 1 mill, from a below-average 5.5 to just below the state average for larger cities in the state of Florida, 6.4297 mills. It was a painful, hard, and complicated process, but we managed it.
This year would be completely different. Last year we were able to cut “fat” and programs that weren’t fully implemented yet before getting into serious service cuts. We did cut a lot of services, and a lot of good people lost their jobs, but we didn’t cut core services like public safety. We even gave a raise to police and firefighters based on their labor contracts, which should help with our large understaffing issues there. These cuts were all painful, but this $15.3 million cut would be felt much more, particularly to public safety workers who make up over half of the city’s budget.
Alternatively, it could mean another large tax increase, the second one in a single year. Raising taxes is always painful, but raising taxes drastically in a short time is even worse. It’s harder for businesses and landlords to absorb sudden price increases, which in turn raises rents, hurt small businesses, and increases cost of living in our city.
That’s the reality of cutting the GRU funds transfer: utilities are always the biggest taxpayers in every county. If GRU doesn’t pay its taxes, or a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes, we the residents will all have to pay for it, either in the form of higher taxes or in severe service cuts. I will be watching the December 6th meeting with interest, and I would encourage you to do the same.
Inclusionary Zoning Moving Forward
After years of discussion, the City Commission will be deciding on whether to move forward with “inclusionary zoning” on December 14th. Inclusionary zoning is a mandate on new apartments to set aside a certain amount of their units as “affordable”. It is not the same thing as the now-infamous “exclusionary zoning”, this is a totally different policy with a confusingly similar name. This 2-minute video explains it pretty well.
Essentially, for every new apartment building in the City of Gainesville, 10% of the units will now be required to be rented to people/families earning 80% of the area median income or less. It ensures that at least some affordable housing is created as new apartments are built. This would be mandatory for all new apartments above 10 units, but can be paid out of by a fee of $120k-160k for each unit. That payout would then be used to create affordable housing in the city. These numbers were recommended to us by HR&A who studied other cities’ “inclusionary zoning” policy, looked into our economy, and recommended this mix.
By state law, the City is required to “fully offset all costs” of any regulations like these, so we are giving a bonus of 30% on their density for implementing this policy. For every additional 10% of units set aside as “affordable” they get an additional 15% increase in density, as well as a reduction in various fees.
Here’s why this matters: thousands of apartment units have been built in the last six years, all luxury, market-rate homes, mostly for students. If this policy were passed we would have yielded 389 units of below-market-rate homes for working-class families since 2021. 389 units isn’t going to change the world, but that is 389 units that people would have been living in.
I’m a fan of inclusionary zoning as just one more tool to create more affordable housing options. It’s been used by cities since the early 1970’s, so it’s well-tested with lots of research on the impacts, and I like that the policy structure was designed for us by experts in this field. It’s a policy I ran on during my campaign, and am happy to see us finally implementing it.
Thelma Boltin Center
In my November article I went into depth on the Thelma Boltin Center because the vote was scheduled for November. That has been pushed back to December 7th, so we will take a vote on moving forward at that meeting. If you’re interested you can read my synopsis here, but there have been no updates since then. Let us know how you feel about the project by showing up then or emailing us at CityComm@CityofGainesville.org.
Some Local Highlights
Local Businesses (Holiday shopping edition)
With the holidays coming up it’s always a great time to shop local for gifts. Amazon is convenient, Butler Plaza stores always have something, but try and go out of your way for some local shops this holiday season. A Redditor created this great spreadsheet of local businesses that will help, but here are some highlights for me, focused heavily on District 4:
Auk Market: An array of local artisans for candles and vintage clothing. I’m partial to the owner’s “Timber Line Jewelry”, which I got my wife for her birthday and she loved it.
Sunshine/Hear Again Records: We have two great record stores in town, one in downtown and one in the Grove Street neighborhood, for your music-collecting family member.
Serpentine Plants + More: Another neat shop that focuses on plants but has a lot of other items that are perfect for holiday gifts.
Books + Music Wormhole: A neat little hole-in-the-wall shop across from Satchels Pizza that sells all kinds of vintage items, from books to records.
The Ox Shop: District 4’s newest business is a mix of all-ages punk venue and t-shirt shop, across from Cypress and Grove. Go check it out and buy some locally designed t-shirts.
Life Unplastic: Reusable items to help transition to a “zero waste” lifestyle, but also all kinds of useful holiday items from cards to pastels to Taylor Swift Christmas ornaments.
Third House Books: District 4’s own little alternative bookstore. They have a great selection of non-fiction and fiction books, along with a great list of social justice books. Check them out.
Holiday Markets: Before launching a full storefront most small entrepreneurs sell at pop-up markets to get started, so going out and buying from these local artisans is a great way to help small businesses right when they need it most. There are regular markets at Curia on the Drag, How Bazaar, and others.
Local Music Highlight
Travis Atria is amazing. Between his work in Morningbell, one of the greatest bands to ever come out of Gainesville, to his solo work, his mix of pop-indie-experimental is nothing short of masterful. His new album, released last month, continues on in this pop-experimental tradition and is very good.
Travis Atria and his band Morningbell have no business still being seen as a “local band”, their music is some of the best in this genre, and easily holds its own against bands like Vampire Weekend or Tame Impala. But they are a local band, so you can see Travis Atria play Heartwood Soundstage or the Wooly pretty regularly, which I highly recommend. Or see them in their Beatles cover band, the Sh***y Beatles, which is always a great time.
It's seems clear to me you would benefit massively from reading StrongTowns.org with your solid writing on all things urbanism.
They advocate for good town planning and show the true costs of suburban sprawl. Perhaps you can share a cautionary tale with them on what happened rezoning wise.
I'm sorry your town's almost trail blazing zoning code reform not only fell apart, but your town regressed and adopted even worse zoning.
I'm from Charlotte, NC and our rezoning process was a dumpster fire too barely getting across the finish line. It was subject to about as much hysteria. My observation is the country is in a new housing bubble and everyone is on edge. So every town trying to overhaul their codes are getting horrific pushback. Oversimplified; black NIMBYs are afraid of displacement. White NIMBYs are afraid of slightly poorer people moving next to them.
Combined, they make strange bedfellows and burn the process to the ground. They don't want more housing.
Brevard, NC redid their zoning code around 2012 and was pretty similiar to your changes. They did it though when housing prices were still declining. It was an orderly process, no one cared.
Good luck, it looks like Gainsville needs good leadership.