It’s a bit slower of a month for the City Commission, as we kick off July with a 3-week summer recess. But when we get back on July 18th there are a lot of big ticket decisions on the docket. Here’s what the City is working on in July:

First, Some Good News

The SW 62nd Connector is open and ready to drive on, with a multi-use trail, some bike lanes, and sidewalks. The County is starting work on NW 23rd Avenue as well. The City of Gainesville, in collaboration with the University of Florida, is beginning a full census of our trees.

The City Commission passed a change to make it easier to build single-room occupancy residential buildings, creating more diverse housing options. We also approved support for a Catholic Charities managed affordable housing project off NE 2nd.

Ben Hill Griffin Stadium is in the running to be the 2027 location for the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jaguars are renovating their stadium so it’s between Gainesville and Orlando for their temporary home as that happens. This would be a huge economic boost to the City and make a very fun weekend for football fans.

Local author and UF professor Jill Ciment got this great writeup in the New York Times about her new book “Consent.” It’s a memoir about her and her husband, whom she started an affair with at 17 when he was 47, and was happily married to ever since. She went back and recounted that relationship today in the post-me-too era, and the article is great.

Gainesville is sending a huge team of Gators to Paris to compete for the 2024 Summer Olympics. This (likely) includes two-time NCAA national champion and long-distance record holder runner Parker Valby, 2020 swimming gold medal winner Bobby Finke, five-time gold medal winner Caeleb Dressel, and women gymnastics alternate Leanne Wong.

The Gators are also pulling in national championships left and right. The Men’s Track and Field team won their third straight NCAA National Championship. The UF Bridge Building Team won their fourth straight national title. And apparently there’s something called “concrete canoeing” that UF won their 4th consecutive title for. Go UF concrete canoeing!

City Commission Election & Qualifying

The next election for the Gainesville City Commission is coming up. Two weeks ago the candidates for City Commission qualified and now they’re out campaigning for the August 20th election.

My colleague Cynthia Moore Chestnut did not get an opponent this year, so she’s automatically reelected1. District 1 Commissioner Desmon-Duncan Walker filed for reelection and has an opponent. Reina Saco chose not to run for reelection2, and two candidates are running for her seat. Here are the candidates you’ll see on your ballot:

District 1:

Desmon Duncan-Walker

Michael Perkins

At Large A: 

James Ingle

Fareed Johnson

Only voters in District 1, which represents East Gainesville, can vote in the District 1 race, but everyone in the city limits can vote in the At-Large A race.

Alachua County League of Women voters did a very nice forum a few weeks ago that allowed each of the candidates to give their pitch. They are all very different from one another and there are some clear policy/personality contrasts between them, which is nice. I’d recommend checking it out:

The election is coming up sooner than you think. Vote by mail will be going to most voters late this month. New state laws have meant that if you want a vote-by-mail ballot you’ll need to sign up again every election cycle, so if you haven’t signed up yet for a vote-by-mail ballot sign up here.

Affordable Housing Decisions

As I mentioned, the City Commission is on break for the first half of July, which means there are going to be some very heavy agendas in late July.

Two big affordable housing decisions that have been discussed for years are going to be on the July 18th agenda: minimum lot size reform and inclusionary zoning. These are coming at the problem from two different angles: one increases the amount and types of housing available, the other mandates affordable housing in new large-scale apartments.

Minimum Lot Size Reform

Scheduled for July 18th. This is the proposal I’ve had before the Commission since I first came into office. The goal is to create more starter homes and housing types by reducing the land required to build a single-family home. This is designed to protect single-family zoning while allowing more single-family homes to be built while modernizing our lot dimension sizes. It reduces the minimum size restrictions for the lot a single-family home can be built, creating more options for where and how small a home can be built.

I’ve already talked about this in many posts before in “A Proposal for Sensible Lot Sizes in Gainesville” if you’d like to read more.

Inclusionary Zoning

This is scheduled for July 18th. “Inclusionary Zoning” is a requirement on new apartments to set aside some of their apartments at an affordable rate for people making below a certain amount of income. In Gainesville’s case the amount is 10% for people making below 80% area median income.

It’s a fairly common affordable housing mandate, one that is seen across the United States, even if less so in Florida. However, Tallahassee, Miami, Coral Springs, and others have similar requirements on the books.

The recommendation is going to be for every new apartment above 50 units, 10% of the units need to be rented to people at 80% area median income for the fair market rent for people at that level.

According to a recent analysis by city staff, this would have created just under 400 units of below-market-rate apartments since 2021. This isn’t a silver bullet for housing affordability, but it is another tool that helps to bring the cost of housing down and I look forward to finally seeing it come to a vote.

GRU Authority Budgets

After a year of tough talk and mass resignations, the rubber met the road and final decisions were finally made at the GRU Authority last week.

I don’t have much more to say about GRU after the long and in-depth article “Correcting (More) Misinformation on GRU” that I just put out, but since it’s top of mind for a lot of readers of this I figured I’d at least give an update.

The City Charter requires the GRU Authority board to submit their budget to the City on July 1st, so they stopped talking and finally put their name to some official decisions. Here is what came out:

Elimination of Net Metering

The GRU Authority eliminated solar net metering, which is the way utilities across Florida interact with homeowners and businesses with rooftop solar. Here’s an easy one-minute video that explains it well.

Essentially, during the day you are producing solar energy for your home and sending that back to the grid. When you create excess energy the utility is “crediting” your house, which you are using for when the sun isn’t out.

This is how every private utility in Florida works, but GRU has now left this behind. Now, solar homeowners will not receive the full “net metering” total, which will mean higher GRU rates for them.

Gainesville is now uniquely oppositional to rooftop solar. Florida Power and Light still has net metering, as does Duke Energy. When the legislature passed a bill in 2022 to roll back net metering, Ron DeSantis vetoed it because it would cost Floridians more money.

General Services Contribution

The General Services Contribution (or General Funds Transfer) is the money GRU pays the city as a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes and a dividend to the City. It’s a standard business practice, but has been aggressively fought about for years and has been a bone of contention between the Authority and the City Commission since the utility was given to the governor.

The Authority voted for an $8.5 million transfer for ten years. Their budget reduces it by holding the transfer flat and cutting it further by $6.8 million per year to collect $68 million from the Commission over 10 years. This was to “clawback” money that, as pointed out in “Correcting (More) Misinfomation on GRU”, they claim was “overpaid”, but the number is deeply misleading. It is a number they had to cherry-pick to get to and includes over $100 million per year in depreciation, an on-the-books accounting write-off GRU never actually paid. GRU has made $37.5 million in real excess revenues since 2018.

While this isn’t the worst-case scenario, this still leaves a budget gap for the City that we’re going to need to fill. It also means roughly $90 million will be taken out of taxpayer’s pockets over the next decade, which will need to be found in other ways, either in increased taxes in the future or reduced maintenance/services.

GRU Rates Aren’t Coming Down

The headline in all of this is that GRU rates aren’t going down at all next year. All rates, from water, wastewater, electric, and natural gas are staying exactly where they are.

Despite all of the service cuts, tax increases, fights, and rate increases for solar, I think it says a lot that GRU rates aren’t going down by a single penny. This is a pretty banal outcome considering everything that’s come from this takeover. The City Commission kept rates flat frequently, even as recently as 2020. The end result, inevitably, was a much larger rate increase later to make up the difference.

Band of the Month

Confession Kids is a perfect heir to Gainesville’s long tradition of great folk punk bands. More Violence Femmes than Against Me! the Confession Kids have a real feel for catchy hooks and fun folk/punk lyrics.

Their standout song is “Feel So Fine”, a really charming song with a catchy chorus and a music video that’s a blast. Check it out:

Local Arts Groups of the Month

Normally I highlight a local business here, but there have been some serious hits our arts agencies have taken recently and they can use our help.

In June Ron DeSantis took out his veto pen and vetoed $32 million in arts funding statewide, leaving arts organizations across the state reeling. At the time no one understood why he did this: this funding has never been controversial in the past.

Over the weekend DeSantis finally came out and said it was because a small sliver of money was used for the “Fringe Festival” in Orlando. This is America’s longest-running avant-garde theatre festival, an LGBTQ-friendly festival that draws over 50,000 attendees.

Locally the impact of this veto has meant $1,481,919 in lost funding for arts organizations and museums. Here is the breakdown:

This is a huge hit for these organizations, who rely on this funding year-over-year and never expected it to be vetoed. Many still haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic, and this funding was a real lifeline.

Get out and try and support these organizations. Theatre groups like the Hippodrome and Gainesville Community Playhouse have upcoming shows that are fun (Putnam County Spelling Bee & In The Heights). The Gainesville Circus Center has a lot of fun family events. The Gainesville Chamber Orchestra and Dance Alive have some great shows upcoming.

Or just donate to them individually, here are some of their donation pages:

Gainesville Fine Arts Association

Hippodrome State Theatre

Sequential Artist Workshop

Gainesville Circus Center

Cinema Verde (Gainesville Environmental Film and Arts Festival)