Alachua County Commission agrees to consider anti-ICE resolution, discusses Boys and Girls Club property

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the June 23 meeting, the Alachua County Commission agreed to consider an anti-ICE resolution in August and discussed the future of the northwest Boys and Girls Club property.

During General Public Comment at noon, two people spoke about the Boys and Girls Club’s northwest facility, which has been placed on the market. Rochelle Reber George said the property is priced at $2.5 million, even though the Jacksonville club that owns it “received it in good faith from the Northwest Boys and Girls Club… No in-person conversations, no town hall, no explanations… The staff… found out… by reading about it on social media… The history and memories at this location cannot be replaced at another location. You can feel the magic and the history on those fields when you sit in those bleachers. You know it’s the same bleachers your parents sat at in the 1970s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s. It is generational. You feel the magic.”

A 16-year-old Buchholz High School student spoke about the “sense of community” at Boys and Girls Clubs and said that losing the property would “essentially be losing a hole in the heart of this community.” She asked for “someone to help save our Boys and Girls Club.”

Alachua County Boys and Girls Club merged with Northeast Florida club in 2020

Vincent Hampton, who serves on the advisory board of the Boys and Girls Club in Alachua County, said the club had merged with the Northeast Florida club in 2020 “with the promise of greater resources, stronger organizational support, and expanded opportunities for the children in Alachua County.” He said there are “very few clear answers” about what comes next for the club or the property, and he asked for “transparency from Jacksonville,… community engagement, and we are asking that every possible option be explored before a permanent decision is made, including restoring local governance [of the club]… Once a community asset like this is sold, it is gone forever.”

Another board member of the Boys and Girls Club said he felt betrayed by the Jacksonville club, which he believed bought the club “to sell it down the road and make a quick buck off of it.” He said there are already two offers for the property, one for $2.5 million, and nobody in Jacksonville will talk to the Gainesville board members. 

Anti-ICE resolution

Five people also asked Commissioners to adopt a resolution from the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion initiative (GINI). 

History of this resolution

A similar group spoke on April 28 and asked the County Commission to pass a resolution supporting five points, found in this petition:

1. Announce opposition to ICE offices in Gainesville or Alachua County, as was recently done in Orange County;
2. Reiterate the Commission’s commitment to immigrant safety and inclusion as outlined in the Gainesville/Alachua Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion (GINI) Blueprint for Immigrant Inclusion;
3. Advocate that the Gainesville Police Department continues to serve the best interests of the community, public safety, and their department by not signing onto a 287(g) agreement;
4. Speak out against the indiscriminate and destructive arrests of our neighbors, joining the voices of countless community members and even recent critique from DeSantis-appointed sheriffs of Florida’s own State Board of Immigration Enforcement; and
5. Develop policies to require that all ICE officials working within the county display identification of their name and federal affiliation and be unmasked—no secret policing.

At that meeting, Commissioner Anna Prizzia made a motion to refer the five demands in GINI’s petition to the County’s attorneys “for developing a resolution to bring back to us at our next regular meeting and to include all points, one through five, that are included on the petition from the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion initiative.” Commissioner Mary Alford seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.

However, at a May 5 special meeting, Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said, “I think, in light of some new information that we’ve got coming in, we could hold off on that for a while before we put it out to the public.” She continued, “I just feel like, at this point, there’s some issues that are coming forward in the community that would be beneficial to the community if we would hold off.”  She made a motion to delay consideration of the petition, and Commissioner Charles Chestnut seconded the motion.

Prizzia asked, “Hold off until when?” and Wheeler said, “Until further notice.” Alford responded, “I think until the Sheriff’s Department has a chance to…” Wheeler responded, “Until we — yeah,” and Alford said, “That’s what I’m concerned about.” It was unclear at the time what Alford and Wheeler were concerned about.

Wheeler said, “It’s not only about our law enforcement,” and Prizzia responded, “Well, I understand what it’s about,” and Alford said, “It’s mostly symbolic.”

Wheeler agreed to add a request to her motion to bring back the petition in the fall, and her motion passed unanimously. 

On June 18, the Gainesville City Commission voted to consider the petition at their July 16 meeting. 

Commissioner Anna Prizzia: “I would make a motion that our board agree to put the resolution on our next upcoming regular agenda.” 

At the June 23 Alachua County Commission meeting, Prizzia said she thought the initial desire to delay was “primarily until the legislative session was over, to be honest with you, and the Sheriff had asked to wait so that they could have time to have input. There’s now been months for them to provide some substantive input, and I know our attorney has worked to make sure that we have language that reflects the fact that we understand that we are statutorily limited in what we can and can’t do, and so I would make a motion that our board agree to put the resolution on our next upcoming regular agenda.” 

Chair Ken Cornell said the July meeting is full, so he asked whether August 11 would be acceptable, and Prizzia agreed.

Wheeler seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously. 

After the motion passed, the discussion became heated

During a subsequent discussion about whether the County could get a list of everyone who has been arrested in Alachua County for immigration violations, Wheeler said, “Listen, guys, I’ve worked on — I ran for Congress in 2016 on this very issue.” [Editor’s note: Wheeler later wrote in an email to a news outlet that she misspoke; she ran for Congress in 2014.]

Prizzia interrupted, “You’re the one who diverted it and said you wanted to kick it down the road until the fall.”

Wheeler said, “The deferment, Anna, came from the Sheriff’s Department,… not me. It came from a request from the Sheriff to wait, and that’s what we were trying to do, is to make sure we knew who all the players were and where the power was in this community. I don’t know why you’re scoffing at me. This is really…”

Prizzia interrupted again, “Because you said you didn’t mind if it even got killed at the time; she said you didn’t care if it ever came back, that was literally what you said at that meeting.”

We reviewed that meeting, and we can’t find any evidence that Wheeler said that. She said it would “be beneficial to the community if we would hold on” and she supported delaying the item “until further notice” and then immediately agreed with Alford, who said they should wait for more information from the Sheriff’s Department. She said she just wanted to “make sure that we have all our ducks in a row before we commit to it broadly” and agreed to amend her motion to ask for the issue to come back to the board in the fall.

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler: “I feel like it’s our responsibility, if there are people living and working in our community, we know who they are and advocate for them, every opportunity we have, from this board.”

On June 23, Wheeler said she did not recall saying anything “that callous or that flip,… because if I said that, then I truly lost my mind, and it is time for me to come off this board… This is real, we have to make sure that we’re doing it correctly, and if the Sheriff is the one who is asking us to hold back on it, that’s where I came back on it. But these are people that I care about,… so I feel like it’s our responsibility, if there are people living and working in our community, we know who they are and advocate for them, every opportunity we have, from this board.”

Boys and Girls Club

Changing topics to the Boys and Girls Club, Wheeler said she was concerned that the Gainesville board had not understood “what they were giving away,” and she suggested that the County’s Parks and Recreation Department could “demand from these people in Jacksonville who are trying to abscond with our Boys and Girls Club, that we have somebody from our group interact with that group, especially if the Children’s Trust is involved.”

Cornell said he’d had numerous discussions with Doug Johnson, who “I believe has a right of first refusal on any purchase.” He said Johnson is trying to acquire the property for a separate local nonprofit “to save the Boys Club.”

Chair Ken Cornell: “I’m not in favor of any zoning changes,… so whoever’s looking to acquire it, I just want them to hear that from me.”

Cornell said the property, which is in the unincorporated county, is zoned Institutional, and “I’m not in favor of any zoning changes,… so whoever’s looking to acquire it, I just want them to hear that from me.” He said he would love to open up a dialogue with the Boys Club “to keep it in its current use and have local control.” He also said he would be happy to bring the issue before the Children’s Trust Board.

Cornell said the issue is “really, really personal” to him, but “I can’t control a nonprofit; all I can control is land use, when asked,… and I do not want it to ever become an apartment complex or whatever they think the highest and best use is.”

Unintentional consequences of the GINI resolution

Alford went back to the GINI resolution and said, “We need to be aware that there may be unintentional consequences to bringing this forward and putting it out into the news… I feel like there are people out there that may feel like they have to make points.”

Prizzia agreed but said, “Our fellow advocates… are the ones who are closest to the immigrant communities,… and so I feel like if they understand the potential consequences and still feel it’s important to have a public statement of support and understanding that our local government does not support the detention of non-criminal immigrants in our community, who are here and supporting our community, I’m more than happy to do that… I feel like listening to GINI and listening to the Rural Women’s Health Project is sort of like listening to the immigrant’s family.”

Commissioner Prizzies: “There are laws that we have to follow, or potentially face removal, and I understand that.”

Prizzia added that she acknowledges that Commissioners have “statutory limitations. There are laws that we have to follow, or potentially face removal, and I understand that.” She said the County Attorney “has worked to make sure that we’re following both… the will of our community… and at the same time, recognizing that we want to be here to continue to serve them, and so we need to make sure we follow all the applicable laws and rules.”

Certified Local Government Program, Procurement Code

The board also unanimously accepted staff’s recommendation to not pursue the Certified Local Government Program, a historic preservation measure. The presentation highlighted budget uncertainty and limitations under SB 180.

After the vote, Alford said, “While this isn’t the right time for us to pass this, I do think it’s something that we should look at again, maybe in a couple of years, if we’re in kind of a different situation.”

Cornell responded, “Yeah, the world changes fast, and you never know what happens after November.”

The board also unanimously passed an updated Procurement Code with a small edit; they viewed the presentation in a previous meeting and did not have a substantive discussion at this meeting.