Gainesville in October: Open Container, GRU, and Fest
What we have coming up in October in the City of Gainesville
First, Some Good News
The Gainesville Housing Authority won a $500,000 grant to improve East Gainesville neighborhoods in conjunction with the City of Gainesville. Gainesville’s Downtown won the “Downtown Achievement Award of Excellence” from the International Downtown Association. The City officially re-opened an upgraded Forest Park with more soccer fields and pickleball courts.
And the City Beautification Board awarded 10 great new developments in the city that add to the beauty of Gainesville:
![The Swamp, 4411 Dental Office Building, and the Clarence R. Kelly Center](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe164575b-6a2b-4ac2-923d-94831239a78e_1024x683.webp)
![The Swamp, 4411 Dental Office Building, and the Clarence R. Kelly Center](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F99c59b28-17a1-411b-b9a8-a86c22f1d8b4_2048x1536.jpeg)
![The Swamp, 4411 Dental Office Building, and the Clarence R. Kelly Center](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F42d7c81c-a2ea-42b9-9f52-b6c014fe8722_1320x882.webp)
The GRU Authority
Months of fighting, lawsuits, and protests came to an end last night when the Mayor swore in 4 of the 5 members of the GRU Authority at City Hall, completing the transfer of half of our city government to the State of Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The members are:
Chair: Craig Carter
Vice-Chair: James Coats IV
Tara Ezzell
Robert Karow
C. Eric Lawson
You can read about them more in the Gainesville Sun.
All things considered, the selections could have been much worse, and I have nothing bad to say about any of them personally. I know some of the members, don’t know most of them, but they seem to have pretty good resumes and none seem to be coming in with an axe to grind.
Considering how partisan and misleading the campaign leading up to this was, that was a pleasant surprise. Frankly, we as a Commission are going to need to work with them in the coming years to get through the multitude of issues this bill presents, and the monumental task of creating an unprecedented merging of City and State Government unlike anything else in the United States. So in that spirit I have nothing to say about them personally except to say “Welcome” and let’s try to make this work.
With that said, I have to say that their appointments strike me as more than a little hypocritical. Throughout this process, the arguments from Chuck Clemons were that this takeover was needed in order to ensure the utility is run by people “with utility experience” that represents “all of the ratepayers”, which will be represented by a “majority of Gainesville seats”.
None of that has turned out to be true. Almost none have utility experience. The only one close is Robert Karow, who worked in oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which is tangentially related to utilities, but miles away from what we do at GRU. Craig Carter was a City Commissioner, which means he spent years voting on GRU-related issues, but the core of the argument Clemons made was that being an elected official is not adequate experience to run a major utility.
At the same time, the bill is very clear that the representation of the board needs to be set by total electric meter customers, with a specific formula ensuring that the City has a majority number of seats representative to our electric metering. At the current number of meters that comes out to one county resident to four city residents. Chuck Clemons made this a main selling point when pitching the takeover to residents.
But four of them live outside the city, with only one inside the city, directly against the bill.
Of course, none of this is the fault of the members themselves, it’s the fault of the Governor and his staff. I’m still giving the board members the benefit of the doubt, and look forward to working with them on doing what is best for our City and ratepayers.
What Comes Next
On Friday Judge Angela Dempsey ruled against the city in our lawsuit against the Governor. This wasn’t a complete surprise, Judge Dempsey, a Bush appointee, has ruled with the Governor on everything from abortion restrictions to allowing him to withhold public records in his now infamous migrant flights.
We knew going into it that the deck was stacked against us in this judicial system, but the magnitude of the case, and the precedent it sets, required us to try. The basic right of residents of a city to select who makes their laws is “settled law” according to McQuillins Law of Municipal Corporations. State takeovers of portions of municipalities have been struck down in every state that I can find, from Georgia to New York. It has never been upheld.
But now it has, even on the weird technicality of the City not having standing. It’s a sad state of affairs for Florida, which seems to be sliding further and further from the basic tenets of democracy. This isn’t the end of the case though. Gainesville Residents United is a community group suing in federal court on the constitutionality of the takeover, and filed another court case on Monday against the appointments being outside the city. You can read more about those in the Gainesville Sun link above.
The Reinstating of the Open Container Ban
Last month the City Commission voted to eliminate open container city-wide, something that has been allowed since August 2021. That will be coming back to us on October 26th for first reading, to be implemented January 1st.
I voted against the city-wide elimination of open container. I thought the more targetted, incremental approaches the city has taken to stop pop-up parties has been largely successful and didn’t see the need to eliminate this right city-wide. Regardless of that, what did pass was a good compromise that gets us most of the benefits that open container brought in terms of small business growth and outdoor events.
So on January 1st, 2024 the ban on open container will be back in full force, but it won’t look exactly the same as it did before. Here are the changes I proposed, all were accepted by my fellow commissioners:
There will be no criminal penalty for being caught with an open container
Police are required to give you the opportunity to “correct” before a citation is given (throwing the can away, pouring the drink out)
The tighter restrictions on selling alcohol outdoors will not go back into effect, it will stay the way it has since 2021. Essentially, in the old ordinance, you couldn’t sell alcohol outdoors unless you were a bar and you were selling in an enclosed porch attached to the building. Now those restrictions are loosened, allowing places like Heartwood Soundstage and Farmers Markets to sell beer as they have since 2021.
Allow events selling drinks outside with open container in more places, instead of just downtown
This is just the draft, the final policy is open to changes before then, but this was what was passed 7-0.
I’m happy we were able to get some positive changes to this instead of just the full reinstatement. Decriminalizing open container means people won’t be in fear of jail time just for walking around with a can of beer. The more relaxed rules on selling alcohol outdoors will really help a lot of small businesses and keeps many of our current ones going.
But the most impactful will be the implementation of our three Arts, Culture & Entertainment Districts:
Arts, Culture and Entertainment Districts
The best part of open container wasn’t the public drinking, but the options it gave to business owners to better utilize their empty outdoor space. Thanks to open container, Loosey’s expanded their food service outside, the Bull has had some amazing bands on the Streetery, Samurai Skateshop put on popup punk rock shows in their skate park, How Bazar set up night markets that were amazing and a highlight of downtown.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e6a1912-807c-4a20-b465-503e23507773_2048x1536.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F27e5b093-1460-4a21-bb0a-bf0a20d932e3_960x720.jpeg)
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The “Arts, Culture, and Entertainment (ACE) Districts” are designed to allow these to continue in the areas where we want to incentivize events and arts like these. Within their boundaries you can drink on public right-of-way in anything but a glass container. We’re setting up three districts where this will be possible, areas where our arts and culture are thriving and growing: Downtown, South Main, and Grove Street.
In my original motion the direction we gave staff was to end the outdoor drinking in these areas at 2 am, but that is getting some pushback from fellow Commissioners and the Police Department has some concerns, so that may roll back to midnight instead.
My hope for these districts is that we see them as bigger than just “drinking districts”. These are areas where we are nurturing a robust arts and outdoor environment for people. Where people can go to enjoy the world-class arts and culture our city is famous for, and can do it on foot with local businesses who are working to use it to its full potential.
That is already happening. I was walking by Serpentine Plants + Provisions last Friday in Grove Street when they were having a wine and cheese event in their parking lot behind the shop. The owners told me that after the discussion of their area becoming an “ACE” District, the owners started to think about using their outdoor space better. They cleaned up the area behind their shop, set up chairs, and on that Friday night you could drink wine, try cheese from the local “cheesemonger” booth, and watch skateboarders at Samurai Skateshop.
That is exactly the goal. The city makes things like that possible, and local entrepreneurs and artists find creative ways to use it. From there it can grow into more investments, street art, promotion, whatever we’d like to do to highlight Gainesville’s world-class arts and cultural community.
Some Local Highlights
District 4 Business
The Theatre of Memory is an awesome museum off 6th Street that you have to check out. Ran by longtime local Bill Hutchinson, it’s a museum of the various items he’s collected over the years, and the items are amazing. There are collections of various shoes over time, old parchments and documents, Florida relics, he even has John Lennon’s glasses on display.
When you walk in, open Wednesday-Sunday 10:30-4:30, you’ll find Bill himself to greet you, and he relishes showing you his collection of cool objects from over the years. Bill was never a wealthy man, he worked for the City of Gainesville’s Cultural Affairs Department for much of his life, so this isn’t the typical collection of objects you’d see at a museum. Every item has a story to it. A friend of a friend traded him a cool item for something else, or he found an old relic in the back of a bookstore somewhere. That’s what makes it fun, and you should definitely go check it out. The best part is it’s 100% free.
Local Music Highlight
The end of the month is Fest where we’ll be giving a Key to the City to one of Gainesville’s great artists, Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! A lot of folks don’t know this band, so I wanted to give a quick primer.
Against Me! is one of the great Gainesville bands. They are the most famous and best of the subgenre of “folk punk”, and their early music is considered some of the most beloved punk rock ever recorded, recorded at Goldtone Studios in Gainesville.
They moved to Gainesville from Naples in 1997 to join the flourishing punk rock scene here, and as they grew in popularity they stayed here, remaining in Gainesville through their rise. Many still do: the drummer started Boca Fiesta, the bassist helped start Pop-a-Top, and they’re still firmly involved in the DNA of Gainesville.
Probably the most accessible song from their early work is “Baby I’m an Anarchist”, which shows their distinctly Gainesville mix of leftist politics, folk music, punk rock aggression, while not taking themselves too seriously.
But that only tells part of the story. The lead singer, Laura Jane Grace, made history in 2012 when she announced on the front cover of Rolling Stone that she was transitioning to female. For many people in the punk rock world this was their first encounter with the concept of being transgender, and it really made an impact.
Particularly because Against Me!’s next album “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” is an incredible record that talks about the struggles of transitioning in a way that is relatable and powerful. Here’s the title track, which still brings me chills every time I hear the chorus:
Against Me! might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for many people in my generation this music is synonymous with Gainesville, and I’m really excited we get to honor her for the great Gainesville artist she is at Fest this year.
Bryan, I greatly appreciate your very informative and readable updates. I think you're one of our better commissioners and an excellent public servant. Thank you for your diligence and integrity.