Gainesville in June: Budget cuts, NE 9th, and SW 62nd
June is a shortened month for the Commission, following our summer recess through most of July. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean its slowing down for decisions. As the heat is cranking up so are the i
June is a shortened month for the Commission, following our summer recess through most of July. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean its slowing down for decisions. As the heat is cranking up so are the issues we’re taking on. Here’s what the month of June looks like in Gainesville:
First, Some Good News
Unemployment ticked down slightly in April from 3.7% to 3.4%, well below the national unemployment rate. Gainesville was chosen to participate in the 2024 LEED for Cities program.
Our UF womens sports teams are doing great, with Women’s Lacrosse ending in the final 4 of the season, their best year ever. The UF Women’s softball team is in the Womens College World Series and just beat Alabama.
The city just launched a downtown events grant program through our CRA dollars, which you can find here. We also launched a grants page where local businesses, arts organizations, and home buyers can easily find the local funds available to support them.
And the Florida Museum of Natural History just opened their new “Incredible Insects Exhibit”. Go check it out, along with their “Water Shapes Florida” exhibit.
Budget Cuts Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
Here we go again. The GRU Authority is, once again, considering taking more money from the City to balance its budget. This is the infamous “General Services Contribution”, and it is industry standard across utilities, set to approximate taxes and a return on investment to the owners of the utility.
In 2021 the City Commission voted to reduce the transfer by $2 million every year in a plan that then GRU General Manager Ed Bielarski told the Gainesville Sun, “was an historic, holistic plan that was approved for the utility by the city commission to ensure the long-term financial health of the utility1.”
Then, in 2023 the City Commission reduced it again by $19 million, by far the lowest it’s ever been and the lowest of any major utility in Florida. I can’t actually find any major energy-generating utility in the nation that is as low as ours.
This reduction resulted in massive budget cuts and 125.5 positions being eliminated. It was a hard year of hard cuts, and our hope was there would be some stability after that year.
Gov. DeSantis just appointed his new board, and the new board has until July 1st to submit their budget to us. Until then we have no idea what they’ll do, so we’re preparing for various scenarios depending on what they eventually decide. Last week the City Commission met and went over the budget cuts for the next year if the transfer is cut to zero.
The result is a $15.3 million cut, an additional 10% of the budget of the City of Gainesville. That will result in 73.2 positions being eliminated.
And as I’ve said before, there is no more fat to cut, we cut all of that last year. The only things left are core services, programs, and community organizations.
Out of the 73.2 positions here are the major layoffs for what we’ve reviewed so far:
22 Police positions eliminated
10 Public Works positions eliminated
5 Fire Rescue positions eliminated
Some of these positions are vacant, but many aren’t. These are people, with families that rely on this income to to survive.
And, of course, city taxpayers rely on them as well. The biggest impact of these cuts is in broad services. Cuts to public works mean that sidewalks, roads, and stormwater simply won’t be fixed as quickly or as well. There will be fewer police officers on a shift, so you may not get an officer as quickly and they won’t be patrolling as much. Parks will get less maintenance, and there will be fewer programs.
But there are some specific program cuts as well, particularly to Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs:
Elimination of Bo Diddley Plaza Events (Free Fridays)
Shutting down of Ironwood Golf Course
Enhanced funding for summer programs
Most of the elimination of the City’s Community Resource Paramedicine Program
On June 18th City staff is coming back with their proposed cuts for housing, the Gainesville CRA, planning, transportation, capital projects, and non-departmental. That will include the future of GRACE Marketplace, RTS, and other big-ticket items, so more will be coming this month.
These cuts, it should be noted, will not result in GRU rates coming down at all. This transfer makes up 2.9% of GRU’s budget, and while those funds mean a lot to the taxpayers of the City, they mean next to nothing for GRU rates.
As our staff pointed out at our last budget meeting, GRU is set to make $31.5 million in profit this year:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but they can balance their own budget with $31.5 million in profit.
This new board is going to need to figure out which direction they go in, but as I wrote in “Why cutting the GRU transfer hurts everyone, even GRU” I think this is a very bad idea. To quote the GRU Authority Chair back when he was working for the residents of the City, not the Governor:
There is virtually no one who would legitimately argue that the GFT is NOT a transfer that GRU should make to GG. Virtually every municipal utility does so and almost every for-profit utility pays equivalent franchise taxes or Taxes paid in lieu for the right to serve a city's customers.
Well said. Whatever else happens, the charter requires that the GRU Authority submit their budget to us by July 1st, so we can craft our budgets based on that. That’s a really tight timeline for the City to craft a budget, but at least there is a required timeline. But even that is up in the air, as the GRU Authority Chair seemed to suggest they can flout that portion of our charter with no repercussions:
If there's not the full-fledged budget that's ready for Ms. Rasnik and her team to enter into her software programs by July 1, we're not going to go to budget jail you know we can get an approved, or we can we can actually get approval after the fact after you submit what the budget is.
That would be shocking and against the clear written word of the law, but perhaps the chair is right. There seems to be no one who is capable of holding this board accountable, even for flouting their own laws. They can’t be voted out, the Governor can’t even remove them except in a narrow set of circumstances.
That speaks to my larger point about this from the beginning. This board has complete power with no check-and-balance from anyone, and answers only to the Governor of Florida, with total control over billions in City assets. It’s a bad structure unlike anything else in the United States. Speaking of which….
Local Public Utilities on the Ballot
Late last month the City Commission voted to put the local public utilities referendum on the ballot in November. Here is the ballot language:
Local Public Utilities
Shall the Charter of the City of Gainesvile be amended to delete Article VII, eliminating the governor-appointed Gainesville Regional Utilities Authority and its appointed administrator that manage, operate, and control the City of Gainesville’s local public utilities, and placing that responsibility with the elected City Commission and Charter Officer; and eliminating limitations on Government Services Contribution and operational directives, as proposed by ordinance No. 2024-352?
A campaign’s been launched by a group of local activists called “Let The Voters Decide”. Last week they launched a website, Facebook Page, and donation page to help fund the campaign. Go to the site if you’re interested in supporting.
NE 9th Street Redesign
NE 9th Street is a major road that runs right through the heart of the eastern Duckpond area2. Surrounded by single-family neighborhoods, it leads directly from our most walkable neighborhood to Howard Bishop Middle School.
As you can see from the photo, the road is in rough shape and in need of repaving. It’s also a poorly designed street for where it is. As I mentioned in my last post, “We can design streets that are safe for everyone, here’s how”, driving is as much psychology as it is geometry.
And NE 9th is a fast road, a wide road with a lot of on-street parking, most of which never gets used. Since the area is all residential, nearly everyone parks in their driveways. The result is that driving down it feels more like you’re driving on a highway than the slow/medium-speed residential road its meant to be. People drive on it like it’s a highway, and no one I know that lives near it feels comfortable biking on it.
Here are the three proposals staff is bringing forward for a redesign:
My position on this is there needs to be physical protection between the cyclist and cars on this road. Our recently passed standards, written by NACTO, mandates that roads at high speed and AADT have protection. I think these standards should be applied here, but it also just makes sense for the context. It is a road that leads to one of our largest middle schools, Howard Bishop, and connects south to various parks and neighborhoods. It should be a road bikable for everyone, regardless of their age and ability.
Minimum Lot Size Reform
After over a year of community conversations, staff review, and multiple votes, my proposal to reduce minimum lot sizes across the City is finally coming up for first reading on June 20th.
I wrote it about the proposal in depth in my, “A proposal for sensible lot sizes in Gainesville” if you’d like more details. The goal is to create more starter homes, modernize our outdated regulations, and create opportunities for more diverse housing options, all while preserving single-family zoning. I think it’s good common sense. As yard sizes have shrunk in recent decades our code still maintains a .28 acre minimum to build a house. This means that the national average .18 acre new home can’t be built across the vast majority of the single-family zones in Gainesville:
As an older city there are already lots of smaller lot, starter homes across the City, particularly in our historic areas.
I think it’s a good idea, and I’m not the only one. There’s been a rash of cities passing rules just like this one recently. Two weeks ago Austin passed a very similar proposal to this one, smaller lot sizes across the city, but their minimums are about half of what I’m proposing.
This is coming up on June 20th, so if you’d like to make your voice heard, either for or against it, email the commission or show up to let the commission know how you feel.
SW 62nd Connector
The biggest project in the City of Gainesville in many years is scheduled to be opened this month. The SW 62nd Connector will connect SW 62nd Blvd to the north to the Clarke Butler Blvd and Butler Plaza to the south.
This project has been twenty years in the making, costing around $17 million with city, county, state, and federal funds all together to make this happen. The end design will be a two-lane road with buffered bike lanes and a multi-use trail to the east.
Here’s why this matters:
This connects a road gap between two dense areas of our city. The primary way people move north to south over this gap is through I-75. That means there can be huge delays as people get on and off the highway in those areas, making driving past I-75 a traffic nightmare, not to mention how long it takes someone in the north to drive to Butler Plaza. This connection won’t solve the problem entirely, but it creates a much better connection between the Oaks Mall and Butler Plaza and will reduce congestion around I-75.
Better connectivity is one of the most effective ways to reduce congestion. By giving people multiple options to get from point A to Point B drivers can better funnel onto roads that are less congested. Increasing connectivity is far more effective than expanding existing roads, but getting the land, construction, and design for it can be very hard. Many, many people spent many, many years getting this project done, and it’ll be cool to see it open.
Local Business of the Month
The guys at Stomping Ground games are nerds in the best sense of the word. They love games, love talking about them, and have an encyclopedic knowledge of so many of them. A locally owned game shop with tons of cards, new games, and throwback video games, it’s worth stopping in. I go there to stock up on my Wii games, which I recently got set back up to play with family. It’s reasonably priced and they have a great selection, despite Wii being discontinued over a decade ago.
They also have weekly Magic the Gathering , Star Wars, and a bunch of other card game events for games I’ve never heard of3. I’ve walked in during one of these events and the place is buzzing with people, and it seems like they’re having a good time. Anyway, go check them out and support this small, locally-owned business.
Local Band of the Month
Prizilla is a local singer with a soulful vibe that feels fresh but rooted in classic pop/soul. She also just has a killer voice and backup band.
I’ve seen Prizilla on a lot of lineups lately, and the band is a lot of fun to see live if you ever get the chance. My daughter is a particularly big fan of the song above, and always starts dancing when I turn it on.
This makes sense for him to say. Ed Bielarski’s debt reduction plan for FY 22-27 for the City Commission averaged out to a $33.3 million GFT over six years, with a lot of fluctuation. The Commission’s counter, which was crafted by now mayor Harvey Ward, averaged out to a $31.2 million GFT over that same time. That’s right, the City Commission was bolder than Ed Bielarski in reducing the transfer.
We really need a name for this area of town. It’s not really Duckpond, but it’s not really the East Side either. Any ideas?
Despite having a pretty killer collection of Pokemon Cards as a kid, I never got into any of these other card games. But I’m glad they have these events for people to get together and play.
Shabbat Shalom, Amigos.
Today, Saturday, June 22nd, is #MotherEarth’s northern hemisphere’s first full day of #Summertime. And the Living’s easy for those of us fortunate to afford the Time to attend the Heartwood Studios’ #SummerSoulstice today.
It’s #MusicAndDanceTherapy so #ComeOnDown!
Lew A “Lincoln” Welge
Thanks sooo much for this invaluable information Commissioner Eastman!