Alachua County Commission and Newberry City Commission discuss improving SW 15th Avenue

BY DAVID LIGHTMAN

NEWBERRY, Fla. – The Alachua County Commission and the Newberry City Commission held a joint meeting on May 12 and discussed Newberry’s CRA, possible use of Newberry municipal buildings as County offices, and Newberry’s desire to improve SW 15^th Avenue; the meeting, held at the UF/IFAS Extension Office in Newberry, was the first joint meeting between the two bodies since 2023 because the Newberry City Commission decided to “take the year off” in 2024.

Newberry CRA update

The first item of business was an update on the Newberry CRA (Community Redevelopment Agency). CRA Coordinator Uma Sarmistha said, “Our CRA was formed in 2021. We had a total area of 694 acres… We now have two permanent team members here… I have a PhD in Sociology. I am a joint faculty with the UF Planning Department and simultaneously work here as a CRA and ED coordinator. And I have Chelsea [Bakaitis] here. She is my planner and CRA specialist, and we both are trying to make our CRA a wonderful place.

“So here are some updates… We started with a base year taxable value of $36 million, which is now around $86 million, and we have a total budget of $1.06 [million]… This year, we did some changes in our annual reporting… From two pages of reporting, we now have 17 pages plus the audit, so a total of 53 pages…  Downtown Strategy: we did get a consultant to work on the Downtown 5-Year Action Plan…  We all need some kind of action plan to move forward, so this was our first step, which focused on downtown and making it more walkable…  Second important thing we did was the sidewalks… Sidewalks are very important when it comes to improving our downtown, our CRA district, and making it more walkable…  We accomplished 1900 linear feet of five-foot sidewalk coming to the downtown.”

Sarmistha said the new sidewalk is near Veterans Memorial Park, which will be inaugurated on Memorial Day. Discussing ongoing and future projects and showing the slide below, Sarmistha continued, “We have the façade grant… [for] our downtown. We have Barry Park beautification coming in; as soon as we will have our new City Hall, we will try to make Barry Park as a place where people can come and gather and live and play and have fun downtown. And the third project we are working on is Hitchcock Pond landscaping… It will be the entry and the gateway [to the CRA district], so we are trying to improve it. We have some projects going on in Seaboard Drive where we are acquiring land and trying to make maybe a farmers market or some kind of improvement there. And then, finally, implementation of the Downtown Strategy Plan is something we are looking forward to do for the next three years, and there are some more ongoing projects we just got with the blessing of the County. We are getting artist input, and we are trying to get more art in the city by summer, maybe… One of the major projects is Christmas decorations, and we are proud to say that we are the ‘Christmas capital of Alachua County.’ So we will continue with that… We are doing a lot of festivals, with Main Street and the farmers market… That’s about it. Thank you.” 

County use of Newberry municipal buildings

The next item was discussing the proposed County use of Newberry municipal buildings. Interim City Manager Dallas Lee said, “As the County may be aware, the City is building a new City Hall facility. We expect to be moving into our new City Hall in September or October, later this year. As part of that construction, we will be freeing up several City buildings in our downtown area. We’ve had some conversations with County staff about if the County would be interested in moving some County offices out this way to provide satellite services to the western part of Alachua County. So we just wanted to open that up for conversation between the City Commission and the County Commission. We’ve already had conversations with Ayesha Solomon, the Property Appraiser, who will be locating a satellite office here. And then, of course, we already have our Sheriff substation.”

County Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said, “I’m glad to see us talking about this because I’ve been very interested, too, in having outposts around the County so that folks don’t have to continue to come into Gainesville unnecessarily. So I’m excited about the conversation that we’re going to have regarding this. So thank you for bringing it forward.”

County Commissioner Anna Prizzia said, “I think this dovetails potentially into the conversations that we’ve been having around the resource centers. And I know that the resource centers that are out here are primarily just City recreation centers, not necessarily family resource centers… I do think this area is an area that’s sort of centrally located to a lot of our western County folks.”

County Commissioner Ken Cornell asked, “What County services are your citizens asking for? That would be helpful if we could get that information to our staff.”

Newberry Mayor Tim Marden said some of the spaces are “public-facing” and may be usable as walk-in-style County resource centers.

Newberry Commissioner Mark Clark suggested driver’s license and tag offices as possibilities. Cornell suggested contacting John Power, the Tax Collector. Lee said they have had conversations, but all of the spaces are too small to be useful for that purpose. Prizzia suggested installing a Tax Collector kiosk, which would provide a majority of the services offered at offices.

SW 15th Avenue

The third item was the SW 15^th Avenue road improvement proposal. Newberry Assistant City Manager for Utilities and Public Works Jamie Jones said, “Southwest 15th Avenue. We proposed to the County the possibility of a three-way partnership between the City of Newberry, the County, and some imminent development to potentially improve that road. I believe the bigger intent is that that’s just an example. What we would like to do is facilitate a discussion between the two governing bodies and see how we could improve or work together in partnerships on roadway segments like that, specifically in the areas where you have a roadway that is partially owned by the City, partially owned by the County, and we could improve those roads and convey them over to the City for long-term ownership and maintenance once they were brought up to a standard. So we believe that would reduce annual maintenance costs to the County as well as the long-term improvement costs of that road… The gist of tonight is just to facilitate that conversation and see if the County is willing to explore those kinds of partnerships.”

Marden said, “I guess really the purpose of this item was, as Jamie said… to kind of pick your brain about what sort of road projects you would be interested in, here in Newberry.”

Cornell and Wheeler asked to see more information about SW 15^th Avenue. Jones said it is a canopied (largely tree-covered) road that has been chipsealed but still has major drainage issues. 

Jones showed the following slide, which lists the developments that will be connecting to SW 15^th Avenue and cost estimates for each segment, broken down into City, County, and developer shares. He said the ultimate goal is for the City to take over the road for maintenance, once it has been improved.

Wheeler asked, “Is that a scenic highway?” Jones said he wasn’t sure if it was classified as scenic, but it is “classified as a canopy road.” 

Commissioner Mary Alford said, “I was understanding that it actually is a scenic road here in Alachua County.”

“I don’t have any desire [to deviate from the established road improvement plan]… Some of those live oaks are right up to the road, so I have a big concern about any developments that are going on SW 15^th, and I intend to make sure that those live oaks are preserved.” – County Commissioner Ken Cornell

Cornell said, “We just kind of reaffirmed the County’s plan to stick to our road improvement plan, and so at this time, I really don’t have any desire to pursue deviating from that plan. If our staff were to come back to us and say that there might be some benefits, you know, I certainly would look at it, but I don’t right now. I don’t have any desire. I would like to maintain that scenic road. It is an amazing road with an amazing group of live oaks on it. I know many of the people that live on that road. Some of those live oaks are right up to the road, so I have a big concern about any developments that are going on SW 15^th, and I intend to make sure that those live oaks are preserved. And so I have a lot of concerns about that road.” Cornell suggested charging developers impact fees to pay for the road. He concluded, “I don’t want to change it from a two-lane scenic road to a three- or four-lane road.”

Wheeler asked Cornell if County staff should stop focusing on 15^th Avenue in their discussions with Newberry’s staff. Jones reminded everyone that the purpose of the discussion is also about other roads. Cornell said he is open to hearing about proposed plans for roads other than 15^th Avenue.

County motion

Alford said she has concerns about assigning “land rights.” She made a motion to have staff return with additional information, including about other potential roads they could work together on, after more discussions with Newberry’s staff. She said, “I don’t feel like we have enough information.” Wheeler seconded the motion.

Prizzia said, “As much as bringing them up to some kind of a standard that a new development would need or that increased capacity would need as a result of the City’s growth and development, I feel like that is the responsibility of the City and the impact fees that developers are paying in order to have their developments come out on those roads… I will say that I also do think 15^th is the wrong place to be trying to expand a road. It’s a scenic byway. It’s a small road. It was never meant to take that kind of traffic… I also have the concerns about the trees.”

During public comment on the motion, Jessica Carey asked why County Road 235 hasn’t been fixed, especially given the large number of accidents there. She pointed out that Newberry’s growth has been generating extra tax revenue for the County.

Alford’s motion passed unanimously.

Marden reiterated, “I didn’t want the discussion to be about SW 15^th Avenue, per se.” He asked for direction about what roads the County might be amenable to consider working together on.

Alachua County Public Works Director Ramon Gavarrete said the main impediments to starting more projects are “money” and funding mechanisms. He directed Marden to the County website to see the roads near Newberry that are already scheduled for repaving. 

Clark said, “I know we’re beating a dead horse here on 15^th, but 15^th cannot wait any more time. It is a County road…  After a good storm,… in the very middle, that’s four to six inches deep, that the staff goes through after every storm and repatches. I mean, we have got to quit kicking the can down a road on this particular road. What if we just re-chipseal it completely? You don’t want to tear up a scenic road, you don’t want to do that. Let’s re-chipseal it right now. The money is not that expensive compared to y’all’s budget.”

Marden said City staff can present re-chipsealing SW 15^th Avenue as a potential plan to County staff.

Phoenix Awards for Life-Saving Excellence

The final item was a presentation of the Phoenix Awards for Life-Saving Excellence by Newberry’s newly-hired Fire Chief, Jason Lyman. See the slide below for a complete list of award recipients.

Concluding comments

During final comments, Alford said, “I hope that we can get the roads that need attention the attention that they need, as quick as we can. Unfortunately, we can’t pave all the roads at the same time. Getting the materials together and the workforce together to make that happen is one of our challenges, and we’re doing as best we can, we really are, and I’m sorry it’s not fast enough, but we are working on a 20-year backlog, and it’s really been frustrating to have to prioritize the way that we do. But we’re getting there, and so thank you for bearing with us.”

Wheeler said, “Mr. Mayor [Marden], thank you for welcoming us here tonight. I’ve got to tell you that your former mayor and I occasionally got together for refreshments. I would hope that maybe you and I could do that from time to time as well. We were able to discuss a lot of things that were happening in Newberry, and so I look forward to having some time with you, when you’re available, so that we can have a heads-up on some of these things that I can advocate for you all a little bit better.”

Cornell said, “We missed last year, but I’m glad we’re back this year… That’s a lot of road pavement that we’re going to be doing over the next 10 years. We’ve got a plan.”

Clark mentioned the Newberry Veteran’s Memorial: “We invite all of y’all to come out on Memorial Day, 9:30 in the morning. It will only take about 45 minutes, and then we’ll do the ribbon-cutting. So I think it’d be something for y’all to see, and see what has really come about from the citizens and what we’ve gotten from this community, and I think you’ll be quite surprised.” The address is 25440 West Newberry Road.

Commissioner Rick Coleman said, “I ain’t going to say what I want to say. But so, God bless America and Jesus is Lord.”

Mayor Marden thanked everyone for coming to the meeting.