“A slap in the face”: City Commission eliminates single-family zoning on 4-3 vote

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Gainesville City Commission voted 4-3 to eliminate single-family zoning in the city limits, even though 47 out of 55 members of the public spoke against the change.

Vote for adoption of the agenda foreshadowed final vote

The direction the meeting would take was evident from the opening seconds, when Commissioner Harvey Ward said that almost everyone who is running for City Commission and for Mayor has committed to repealing the ordinances; he advocated for replacing the agenda items with a continuation to the second meeting in January, when a new City Commission will be on the dais. He added, “The amount of staff effort and resources that will be put into this, if we pass it today–to then turn around and walk it back the other direction, it is enormous, and I would rather see us not do this.”

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut agreed, saying, “We are in serious financial straits… We don’t have the funds to invest in what this is going to cost us going forward. And everyone but one person running for office, to be seated in January, has said that they would vote to reverse this. I think we owe it to the taxpayers to give them a fair hearing in January.”

Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker also agreed, saying, “I heard someone once say that grand sweeping decisions like this need to be made with a scalpel and not a sledgehammer. I think this is somewhat of a sledgehammer approach.” She said she hoped Ward would put that motion on the floor at the appropriate time.

Commissioner Adrian Hayes-Santos said they should move forward, adding, “I ran for office to make our city a more affordable place and for future generations and to fight climate change. This ordinance does all that.”

Mayor Lauren Poe also favored moving forward, saying, “If a future commission decides to change course, that is their prerogative… This is something that is incredibly important, and needs to be voted on, one way or the other, and that’s the prerogative of each of the seven of us and what we were elected to do.”

The motion to adopt the agenda passed, 4-3, with Chestnut, Duncan-Walker, and Ward in dissent.

Public comment

There was a brief presentation by staff, then the meeting moved to public comment. None of the agenda items were read into the record, and the public was told that there would be one public comment period for all three ordinances, with each member of the public getting 3 minutes to speak.

During public comment, Jane Burman-Holtom said that four of the commissioners – Ward, Hayes-Santos, Saco, and Poe – own properties that have “run-with-the-land deeds that most of us would kill to have” that have restrictions limiting them to single-family houses. She asked them to recuse themselves from voting on the ordinances because their properties are protected from the development that will be permitted under the proposed ordinances.

Casey Fitzgerald, President of Gainesville Neighborhood Voices, Inc., said that if the ordinances passed, the group would file an administrative appeal: “The silver lining… for concerned citizens is that these legal challenges will keep the ordinances in abeyance until a new set of commissioners is seated in January… Unfortunately, an even worse scenario is that if the reversal process and legal appeals are still pending until the legislative session begins in March, the legislature will likely pass preemptive legislation that will not only affect Gainesville but could even apply statewide. I’m sure we all agree that control of zoning issues should remain local, and preemptive state mandates are the last thing we need in Gainesville and the rest of Florida’s communities.”

City Commission Candidate Dejeon Cain called out the commission for having “the nerve to use racism in this… A lot of you have sold your soul to the devil… We should never get to the point where we don’t listen to the constituents… I can’t wait until November 8th. I can’t wait to work for the people. I can’t wait to reverse this thing. I can’t wait to have compassion! I can’t wait to listen to them! I can’t wait to do what’s right!”

Gary Gordon said the “gang of four’s” defense of the proposal “is really worse than the Gators on Saturday. It’s a terrible defense… I want to thank you for creating a teaching moment for the rest of us in this city who are paying attention, a teaching moment about the use of raw power… You are supposedly Progressive Democrats, and supposedly Progressive Democrats don’t resort to raw power; they resort to the will of the people. Clearly, that’s not the case here… You are the champions of raw power.”

Carrie Parker-Warren, who lives in Azalea Trails, said the commission “is willing to sacrifice us for your little egos, and we don’t like that.”

Several commenters mentioned the biomass plant as a previous City Commission decision that was opposed at the time and has remained unpopular.

Of the eight people who spoke in favor of the ordinances, almost all were young men, some of whom identified themselves as students; most said they were renters. Several said they represented the organization “Gainesville is for people,” which is a chapter of YIMBY Action, a 501(c)4 organization.

Commission discussion

During commission discussion, Commissioner Reina Saco responded to an earlier accusation from Robert Mounts that she had thrown away a print-out of his comments that he had provided to commissioners. She said she still had that piece of paper, but she had thrown away the deed restrictions to her property “because I already have one… and I don’t need veiled remarks or threats saying, ‘I know where you live.’ My home is public record; I don’t need someone coming here, telling me where I live and how to find me.”

She said she loves her neighborhood, but she thinks “so many people could live here” if there weren’t restrictions; “there is such a waste of space.” She said that the lots are covered with grass except for the house itself, “and that doesn’t help anyone, doesn’t help our planet. It’s over-watered, it’s over-fertilized, and it’s manicured every day, so it’s not actually helping anyone, in any way, shape, or form.”

Saco said she was “voting for people to have the opportunity to have families, I’m not voting to take away your home, I’m not voting to bulldoze your home… If your neighbor sells their land and somebody wants to bulldoze that house… and build something bigger and better that can benefit the community a lot better than a thousand square feet of not-at-all-efficient housing into something that shelters multiple people, I consider that a job well done.”

She made a motion to adopt the ordinances without the 5-year sunset provision that she had asked for in the meeting at which they adopted the ordinances on first reading.

Hayes-Santos addressed the deed restriction issue: “I don’t own that property. I’ve never owned that property.” We spoke to him after the meeting, and he clarified that he does not own the property that is described on the deed restriction provided by members of the public; he does own the property that he listed as his residence when running for office. There are three residences on his property, a single-family home and a duplex.

Poe then ruled the motion out of order because the agenda item hadn’t been read into the record. So the Clerk read the agenda item, and Saco made her motion again.

Ward said it was apparent that the community doesn’t want this, “and I think that we will end up regretting it.”

Poe said he was “more convinced than I have ever been that this is the right policy, it is the right thing to do for our community, and it will absolutely open up opportunity for people who right now do not have it.”

Duncan-Walker said the new commission will have to deal with the fall-out from this and that they should have left the decision to the new commission.

Chestnut said, “This is a very sad day for East Gainesville, and the reason is… you have opened the floodgates for gentrification… You say that you’re doing it all for affordable housing for us? No–no, sir. No, ma’am, you’re not… The only place that there is available land to develop happens to be in East Gainesville, and now you want to take that… from these hard-working black people who have worked all their lives to get a house so that they can pass that on to their children, and you have the audacity to sit here and take that from us!”

She continued, “I will work day and night in January to get this reversed… The mistake [this commission] made was in not listening to the people. You never asked the people… in East Gainesville… how can we help you?… Now they’re trying to do the same thing in rushing through inclusionary zoning. Get on the bandwagon, follow it, look, because we cannot have the same thing happen again. We cannot. But for black people in this community, this is a sad day. It’s a slap in the face.”

All three ordinances passed on a 4-3 vote, with Chestnut, Duncan-Walker, and Ward in dissent.