Alachua County Commission agrees to delay purchase of GRUCom’s Trunked Radio System to end of year

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their September 26 meeting, the Alachua County Commission agreed to delay the purchase of the City of Gainesville’s Trunked Radio System to the end of December.

The agenda item for an amendment to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Alachua County and the City of Gainesville was originally on the consent agenda, but Commissioner Ken Cornell asked for it to be pulled from the consent agenda for discussion. He said the issues include a legal question about whether the City has the authority to sell the system before the GRU Authority is seated and “some new operational issues.” Cornell said if the issues could not be quickly resolved, he favored moving forward with building their own system. 

History of the purchase

The County and other agencies that use the radio system began looking for other solutions when GRU quadrupled the bills in 2021, and the Alachua County Commission decided in December 2022 to allocate part of their American Rescue Plan Act funds to either purchase GRU’s system or build and run their own system.

The deal negotiated between City and County staff members calls for the County to pay GRU $8 million for the system, which handles all law enforcement and emergency response communications in the county. In return, GRU will pay $164,000 for five years ($820,000), and the City of Gainesville will pay $937,000 for two years and $750,000 for the following three years ($4,124,000) to use the system. Payments for service for all agencies will be fixed for five years, and after that, the City will be billed consistently with other users. The City and County Commissions agreed on those terms in March. 

County Attorney’s Memo

County Attorney Sylvia Torres sent out a memo to County Commissioners on Sept. 23, laying out a number of issues with the current negotiations. The memo, written by Senior Assistant County Attorney David Forziano, stated that the City will not provide a legal opinion that they have the legal authority to sell the system; the City says they cannot provide legal access to the tower sites at closing because they do not have the legal authority to do so; and the City has not provided critical information for the County’s due diligence.

In addition, Forziano wrote that the City will not indemnify the County for potential losses if the GRU Authority demands the return of the system; the City will not agree to use the $8 million to pay down its debt; and the City wanted the County to take responsibility for the condition of the towers at the time of the sale, including the financial responsibility for any needed improvements. In addition, Forziano wrote, the City will have the unilateral ability to terminate co-location agreements for the use of towers, which could make the system inoperable if suitable replacement towers cannot be found.

Prizzia: “Living up to that commitment is important”

Cornell said he wasn’t interested in requiring GRUCom to spend the $8 million to pay down their debt, but Chair Anna Prizzia disagreed, saying, “I do want to make sure that they spend it on the debt related to the Trunked Radio System and that the money goes to GRU because we’re buying it from GRU, and I think that its money should go to that purpose.” She said Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward had said the City intended to do that, “so I think living up to that commitment is important, and I think it shows good faith of the whole conversation that’s been going on.”

Cornell asked, “Why would they push back, then, on that?… Why is the City having that as an open issue?”

Prizzia said she saw the issue as “giving us three more months to wait and see what happens with [the GRU Authority] getting set and with sort of the next steps before we move forward with signing an agreement.”

Cornell said he didn’t want to “continue to put our staff through negotiation where the goalposts continue to get moved. I would rather us just make a decision that we can’t get to a meeting of the minds and move forward with building a county-wide system. I don’t want to do that… I don’t think that we should add things like… ‘you pay down the debt’… And I think the City represented to JLAC that they were going to do that, but that’s for the City to decide.”

Cornell added, “I also don’t want to wait on the Governor; we waited on the Governor with [Children’s Trust of Alachua County] for a year and a half.” However, the Governor announced the appointments of the first three members of the five-member GRU Authority, enough for a quorum, a few hours later.

Crosby: “Now it’s our equipment… What if it breaks?”

Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby said one of the issues is “protection of the system in general: We have some pretty significant issues about some warranty issues with the tower–now it’s our equipment; now do we have to start paying for engineering studies, or what if it breaks? There are some lease issues that I think are significant… without them being resolved in a way that protects the County.” However, Crosby said it would cost significantly more than $8 million for the County to build a new system, “so while it may be cumbersome and taking longer than we like… we’ll get through it… I’m just not ready to make that recommendation to break it off.”

Prizzia said she was fine with the delay to sort out any legal issues with the GRU Authority and know who has the authority to make contracts on the GRU side. 

Chestnut: “Delay, delay, delay… Stop stringing us along”

Commissioner Chuck Chestnut said he favored moving ahead with building their own system so “we don’t have to keep going through this delay, delay, delay… We don’t know what that new board is going to do or not do, and it’s still delay, delay, delay… I just don’t think that it’s in our best interest to keep delaying something that eventually will probably not be in our favor, so I’m just frustrated… I just don’t think the commitment is there from across the street… If you don’t want to sell it, let us know, stop stringing us along.”

Commissioner Mary Alford said there is a risk that the GRU Authority could challenge the sale, “and you know, that’s $8 million right there that the citizens are out.”

Prizzia felt strongly that they should give it until the end of the year to avoid having a “stranded asset” that was paid for by taxpayers but is no longer being used. She said, “I think we need to give [the City] the time and the respect to allow them to deal with a pretty difficult situation, and I understand delay, delay, delay, but they were thrown a monkey wrench when the State came in and thought they could take away our publicly-owned utility and is now trying to do so.”

Cunningham: GRU is “absolutely committed to… getting the deal done”

GRU General Manager Tony Cunningham said GRU is “absolutely committed to continuing this process and getting the deal done.” He said the operational issues will take “a little bit of time and work” and that the legal uncertainty “may be cleared up in the near future.” He added, “We’re absolutely going to apply it to debt; there’s just some questions about tying us to certain things, and then certain outcomes, if they don’t happen over time–our debt, as probably most people know, is very complicated. So it’s not just like paying off your credit card; we may pay it off over time… We don’t want to have any lanaguage that’s gonna tie us up, even though that is our intent and that absolutely is what we are going to do with those funds.”

Cornell asked whether the sale could occur if the Governor doesn’t appoint the GRU Authority by the end of the year. Cornell continued, “I gotta tell you, y’all, I think there’s a high likelihood that that doesn’t happen, that they don’t get a City board by the end of the year. And I have a number of reasons why, and we could have a whole debate about that.” 

Cunningham said, “I cannot definitely guarantee that [a purchase agreement] can happen… But that is what we’re trying to work toward.”

Motion and vote

Cornell made a motion to extend the MOU until December 31, 2023, and ask their staff to identify any open items for board discussion that still exist by the end of October.

Prizzia suggested having County staff develop a memo about the County’s interest in the Trunked Radio System and its importance for public safety so the GRU Authority can get up to speed “even before they have their first meeting… and hopefully, at a very early stage in their process, make a determination that this is acceptable so that we can go ahead and move this thing forward.”

Cornell added that as the second part of his motion and then added a third part stating that if the sale can’t be completed by the end of the year, staff should move forward with building a new system. He said, “The legislature could have, in my opinion, with one sentence in that legislation, could have fixed this. And if that means that we need Representative Clemons to do a clarifying bill that all 12 of us [Gainesville City Commission and Alachua County Commission] agree on, then that’s fine, too. I just don’t want to keep leaving this up in the air at our citizens’ expense. I think that’s unfortunate.”

County Attorney Sylvia Torres asked the board to give her authority to negotiate with the GRU Authority, and Cornell also added that to his motion.

During public comment, Tamara Robbins asked that any negotiating between Torres and the GRU Authority be held in public: “I think that this has dragged on long enough that the public needs to be part of the discussion of what’s happening here and know what’s going on.”

The motion passed unanimously.