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Alachua County Commission approves $350,000 to fund GRACE Street Outreach Team for one year

GRACE Executive Director Jon DeCarmine speaks to the Alachua County Commission on September 5

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their September 5 Special Meeting, the Alachua County Commission approved $350,000 to fund the GRACE Street Outreach Team for one year and asked their staff to work with GRACE and the City to plan for a county-wide street outreach program.

The Special Meeting was scheduled after the County Commission voted last Monday to allocate $150,000 to fill a City of Gainesville funding shortfall for GRACE Marketplace and also voted to consider allocating $350,000 to continue the street outreach work, which would otherwise end on November 1.

While introducing the agenda item, Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby said his staff assumed that the $150,000 would come from “the excess funds we had from the vaccination program, that were left over from ARPA funds,” which were previously rolled into the General Fund. He added, “So it’s a one-time use.”

Crosby then asked whether the board wanted to provide the $350,000 that had been requested for the Street Outreach Team. 

Commissioner Chuck Chestnut immediately said he was not in favor of providing the funds because the City and County are in the final year of a five-year contract in which both entities committed to spending $1.5 million this year on homeless services, with the City providing the emergency shelter (GRACE) and the County providing supportive permanent housing. Chestnut said, “You know, I feel sympathetic for [the City] in terms of the situation they’re in, but that’s not our fault, that they’re in that situation.” 

Chestnut said that if they decide to fund the team, he would prefer that the team be brought under the County: “If we’re going to spend $350,000… I’d rather see that $350,000 go to supportive permanent housing and also rapid rehousing… but the outreach seems to be a good program, and bringing it under the County seems like the right thing to do.” He said commissioners received many emails over the weekend, urging them to keep the team under GRACE’s umbrella.

“Blindsided”

Commissioner Mary Alford agreed that permanent housing “is the long-term answer, but this is the step that we have to take–you know, the first hands we have on some people are with the Street Outreach Team.” She said GRACE and Jon DeCarmine were “blindsided” at the August 28 meeting by the suggestion that the team be brought under the County. 

Alford thought that County employees might not be as effective in reaching the homeless as the members of the outreach team: “I support it staying in GRACE.”

Chestnut: “If it comes to a vote, I’m not supporting it”

Chestnut said he didn’t see the difference between leaving it at GRACE and bringing it under the County: “They’re still doing the same work.” He observed, “I think that it’s not a priority of the City of Gainesville to fund it, and they want us to fund it, and I just have some real concerns with that… because we’re gonna have to give up something if we give them $350,000… If it comes to a vote, I’m not supporting it.”

Chair Anna Prizzia said she believes “the Street Outreach Team is a really critical piece of permanent supportive housing,” but she thought the County should “explore a lot more” before making the decision to bring it in-house. She favored looking at what has been done in other parts of the country and what the total cost would be for county-wide street outreach, as opposed to the current program, which focuses on the city. She suggested, “We ask them to continue the work, we spend the $350,000 this year with GRACE and give the direction to our staff that over the next year, we negotiate a plan for a county-wide street outreach program and that they bring that forward to us during our budget negotiations next year.”

Prizzia said to Chestnut, “I’m with you. I’m sad that the City didn’t prioritize this and didn’t put it into their budget. But I understand they had a lot of really difficult decisions to make. And at this stage, I feel like, regardless, they have made the stance that they’re not going to fund it. And I do believe this is a really critical, critical resource that’s working and doing positive work in our community. And I don’t want to see it stalled or ended while we try to figure out the budget situation. So I’d like to do both.”

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said she had no problem with a one-time $350,000, but “I have not heard the City say that they would pick it up after this one-time shortfall.” She said putting the program under the County would give the team security and benefits and that she thought the commissioners should speak directly to the team members to see what exactly they do.

Wheeler: “If the County did not come to the rescue, [the Street Outreach Team] would go away”

Wheeler also said she felt like the emails received over the weekend were “really misinformed, in terms of what we were actually trying to do. It makes me feel really bad that the community thinks that we were trying to do something awful when really, what we were trying to do is to have the discussion to make sure that this actually is continued on. If we did not fund this, if the County did not come to the rescue, it would go away… So I feel like we were misrepresented to the public… And it makes me feel like, you know, are we really partnering with somebody who cares about us, as an entity in the community? You know, I mean, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and I felt like that’s what was happening.”

Prizzia disagreed, saying that when staff presented the idea of taking it over “without having any conversations with the stakeholders who are running that program ahead of time–to me, that’s an ambush… I think that the reaction isn’t an ungrateful partner or person… I think it’s the reaction of someone who felt ambushed.” Prizzia said she was disappointed that the people writing emails didn’t recognize “that we are trying our best to fill a gap the City is creating” but added, “I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt; I agree with you, it wasn’t the best reaction, but also I can get why.”

County Manager Michele Lieberman said the idea to bring the program under the County came up in internal discussions among staff on the Sunday before the Monday meeting, “and the thought was only as an option because this was a program we already ran… for three years… We don’t want it to end, either, and not knowing where the Commission was going to be on that, they wanted to provide options. It was not to ambush anybody; it was to provide an option to maintain a program that was beneficial.”

Cornell: Emergency homeless shelter “should be one of the highest priorities of the City”

Cornell said he thought an emergency shelter “should be one of the highest priorities of the City… if not the very highest, one of the core services that the City provides.” He said the staff of GRACE, the City, and the County all need to work together to determine the best place for the Street Outreach team. He also suggested funding the team from CRA (Community Reinvestment Area) funds the County sends to the City every year: “We have not budgeted for an extra half a million dollars that [we decided to spend] last Monday night.” Cornell specifically did not want to take the funds from the amount the County budgeted for supportive permanent housing.

Cornell said he wanted to have a discussion with the City in the next budget year regarding their failure to fund GRACE as specified in the five-year agreement and that if they’re not willing to fund GRACE with at least $1.5 million a year, “then I think we have a bigger issue… I really don’t want to talk about anything else with the City of Gainesville until we resolve this issue: Are they going to support emergency shelter services, or are they not?” He said he would meet individually with each of the five members of the street outreach team as part of deciding whether it should move under the County. 

Prizzia disagreed on diverting CRA funds because “I think they’re really for economic development… and I’m not sure that us taking money that was supposed to be for economic redevelopment and channeling it to homeless services is the best option.” She pointed out that the County now has a Housing Trust Fund, as well as 30% of their Wild Spaces Public Places infrastructure surtax funds that have been set aside for affordable housing.

Cornell said he wants the City to “resolve the… agreement with GRACE. It’s a five-year agreement, it expires at the end of [FY24]. I want to know that they are committed to either continuing at $1.5 million, or increasing at $1.5 million, their commitment to GRACE… And then if they’re not committed to GRACE, and I mean 100%, like at a minimum of $1.5 million or more… then I would like to have a discussion about CRA.”

Prizzia: “I didn’t ever hear the City say that GRACE wasn’t a priority”

Prizzia said Cornell was “putting a lot of words in the City’s mouth… I didn’t ever hear the City say that GRACE wasn’t a priority… In fact, I’ve heard the Mayor again and again and again say that GRACE is his number one priority… But they had a major, major budget shortfall, they had to figure it out, and the City Manager had to come and make really difficult decisions… And they made GRACE a priority and got it into the budget at almost full funding.”

Cornell said, “I just want to see what they fund [next year]… You fund your priorities.” 

First motion

Alford made a motion to fund both the $150,000 and $350,000 requests from the City from CRA funds, but Crosby said he didn’t need a motion for the $150,000: “We can build it in as a one-time, one-year, period. Give it to the City, grant it to the City, however you want to phrase it.” However, he said he was hearing two different things about the $350,000 – a one-time use and a long-term solution to street outreach.

Crosby said as long as they were saying it’s a one-time allocation of $350,000 and that any ongoing funding for street outreach would “have to compete for dollars like everybody else in Fiscal Year 2025, then we have enough excess in ARPA funds, the vaccination program, to fund that amount.” Crosby later clarified that the funds were originally ARPA funds but had already been moved to the County’s General Fund, so they are no longer subject to the limitations on using ARPA funds. 

Amended motion

Alford amended the motion to fund $350,000 for the street outreach team, directly to GRACE, for this fiscal year and for staff to come back with a plan for a county-wide street outreach team, built in collaboration with stakeholders. Wheeler seconded the motion. 

During public comment, GRACE Executive Director Jon DeCarmine thanked them for supporting the project and apologized: “We did send out a Call to Action on Friday, and in that we had the line, something to the effect of ‘Here’s the problem: the County will not fund this program unless they take it over.’ We should have said ‘may not,’ we should have been less direct on that. And I’m offering my apology for that.” To give some context, he said he and his staff were surprised at the August 28 meeting when the idea arose of the County taking over the team, and in meetings after that, they got different interpretations of the motion from County staff and County Commissioners. He said County staff said they would get clarity at today’s meeting, but GRACE wanted their supporters to “have the chance to weigh in and let the County Commission know that they believe the outreach team should remain with GRACE.”

Prizzia winked at DeCarmine and suggested that he send out an email to GRACE’s supporters about the decision made today by the County.

The motion was approved 4-1, with Chestnut in dissent.

  • The county could use funds to pave roads, fix the infrastructure, and stay out of the GNV mismanagement. What about the rural communities and ppl who are suffering? What an absolute slap in the face to the citizens. I hope all of you are voted out. None of you deserve to represent the citizens when you only care about gnv.

    • Things will only continue to get worse as long as Gainesville is used as a free-stuff beacon for every drug-addicted high-school dropout and criminal lowlife in the eastern US (and I’m not just referring to our city commission). They flock here like flies to…our mayor.

      Best thing county residents can do is to break off into your own county and lock us survivors in here with these degenerates. Just pour out a sip of beer every July 4th in our memory.

  • Hey county commission…What happened to the old hotel you bought to turn into an emergency shelter?

  • They got the call from up above…from the party that runs them and the city. What a bunch of sellout political hacks. If it come to anything regarding man made climate change, second amendment, vaccine pushing, bum/addict pampering, racial division, welfare expansion, anti-small biz, etc etc then these political activist will never break from the political agendas pushed down from the big daddy money funnel that perpetuates this irresponsible governance.

    All they do is follow the approved talking points…and it is so damn easy to see!

    • Speaking of ” political agendas pushed down from the big daddy money”, your handlers at Fox and the GOP are getting their money’s worth with you.

      By the way, look up “rapid intensification” and “Idalia”. Climate change, which you and the governor think are a hoax, has resulted in more of these types of hurricanes which go from zero to 120 mph in days, and not after traveling the Atlantic.

      Rapid intensification is “…an increase of wind speed of at least 35 mph in under 24 hours. Idalia went from a tropical storm over Cuba on Monday night to briefly a Category 4 hurricane last night. So we essentially saw an increase in wind speeds of about 55 mph in a 24-hour window. So it’s textbook rapid intensification…..the conditions which make rapid intensification more likely – specifically hot water temperatures – now exist more often because of our actions….”

      • 1. The Republican Party sucks too. They just aren’t as malicious and mentally ill currently.
        2. Fox News has nearly as much propaganda as the rest…turn the TV off.
        3. Thanks for alerting me to the latest talking point: rapid intensification. I’m sure I’ll see this trope repeated often by media and govt going forward.

        • It’s all a bunch of horse manure.

          In any event, I’ll be driving my 8 cylinder pickup with the associated hydrocarbons, running my wood fireplace and outdoor fire pit AND enjoying my gas utilities.

        • Hmm, thanks for the latest propaganda from the oil money funded group CINTEL which has signatures from a bunch of engineers, medical docs, physicists, and one ancient climate scientist who hasn’t done any research in decades. Try this:

          “..This consensus is supported by various studies of scientists’ opinions and by position statements of scientific organizations, many of which explicitly agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis reports…..No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points. The last national or international scientific body to drop dissent was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[31] which in 2007[32] updated its statement to its current non-committal position.[33] Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions….Since 2001, 34 national science academies, three regional academies, and both the international InterAcademy Council and International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences have made formal declarations confirming human induced global warming and urging nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The 34 national science academy statements include 33 who have signed joint science academy statements and one individual declaration by the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2007….American Association for the Advancement of Science as the world’s largest general scientific society, adopted an official statement on climate change in 2006:[63]
          The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. … The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now….”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change#:~:text=97%25%20of%20the%20scientists%20surveyed,scientific%20evidence%22%20substantiated%20its%20occurrence.

          The article lists all the concurring scientific organizations in the world and their position – they all agree on climate change. But hey, if your list of crackpots and contrarians untrained in the field of climate science make you sleep better and/or you don’t care what kind of world you leave for your grandkids, enjoy your ignorance. You really have to be trying, and especially after an event like Idalia which literally sprang from nothing near the Yucatan and crashed into Big Bend with 120 mph winds in a few days. “Rapid intensification” has been witnessed before, but the incidents of it are increasing with our temperatures.

          • Just lower GRU bills and there won’t be as many homeless here. Not your longwinded global doomsday superstition.

  • They should get zero tax money going towards Grace if government can’t keep panhandlers out of the street medians.

    • With all the money that goes to Grace Marketplace, we shouldn’t see one panhandler on the street or bum flopping around crapping up the city with trash & crime.

  • Just hand out fliers saying “You’re in the wrong town, you’ll never escape poverty here. You’re feeding a failed narrative instead of yourself. Go anywhere else”.

  • Why is the County supporting a strictly Gainesville giveaway? The ONLY thing Grace has done is attract an ever increasing number of dopers and drunks looking for a free ride. You need only look at the cities the local incompetent Democrat politicians try to imitate to see the glaring problems.

  • Hope you readers picked up on that, Prizzia said, “the County now has a Housing Trust Fund, as well as 30% of their Wild Spaces Public Places infrastructure surtax funds that have been set aside for affordable housing.” So not only are taxes going towards housing but 30% of the tax you voted for yourselves are as well.

    Besides exchanging “winks” with DeCarmine anyone wonder if anything else is being exchanged? Makes you wonder about that big push by her for the meat facility.

    Cornell, “I really don’t want to talk about anything else with the City of Gainesville…” So now he wants to take his toys and go home. They should have done that a long time ago instead of partnering with that group of fiscally incompetent knuckleheads.

    “Gainesville” and “highly educated” don’t belong in the same sentence.

  • “Cornell: Emergency homeless shelter “should be one of the highest priorities of the City”
    What about fixing the roads? Is that the LAST of your ‘priorities’?
    Attracting more bums to our community is stupid.

  • Fact…… 96% of those living on the street and woods refuse GRACE services of any kind.
    Reason…. they would have to sober up, follow the rules and want to receive help.
    That 96% have no desire to change their lifestyle. So, being that the county and city commission know this fact, they still plan on wasting $350,000 of taxpayers money to say they did something to stop homelessness.
    What a scam.

  • Good idea, build them all permanent housing, so others from across the nation, er world, can migrate here and get a free one too. Be sure they have food and clothing too so that they can spend their gov check on liquor and drugs.

  • Jon DeCarmine, the same one who, without informing anyone, got one of the low priced properties he was in charge of managing for the poor for himself around 2016? Then, mayor Po Boy smoothed it over. Great.

    • I heard that somewhere. If I remember correctly, he bought a property that was originally deeded to a homeless non-profit and he somehow came into ownership of.
      How is one able to have dibs and then purchase a property that was a charitable donation for a program he is involved with? Perhaps Poe did provide consult work. Given City Hall’s history, another former mayor may have as well.

      County may want to direct staff to investigate before they sign the check.
      🤔🤐🤔🤐🤔🤐

      • Here is an article about the scam:
        https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/local/2017/07/11/grace-marketplace-gives-director-discount-on-home/20281344007/

        The Alachua County Coalition of the Homeless and Hungry (ACCHH) used $29k of funding to repair a donated house that they listed for $145k.

        The ACCHH then dropped the price by $40k and sold it to current GRACE director Jonathan Decarmine for ZERO dollars down. He got a 30 year mortgage on $105k at 2.5 percent interest, which was below market rate. His salary was $60k at the time.

        Alachua County Commissioner Lee Pinkoson called the sale “very concerning” and “a violation of trust.”

        Auditors called it a “material weakness” (the most serious form of deficiency).

        ACCHH Executive Director Theresa Lowe said the sale was approved by the ACCHH before she signed off on it in a Feb 2016 meeting, but somehow that decision and conversation wasn’t documented in the board’s minutes.

        Sam Mutch, former ACCHH chair, “I have a pretty good recollection of things and I would not have approved something like this,” he said. “This is not good.”

        Decarmine’s house was one of three donated properties that were fixed up and sold for less than the appraised values and cost of repairs.

        • Thanks!
          Wonder if the County Communications Director will pass that information to the commissioners and taxpayers.

  • Any ecological niche has a “carrying capacity” for the life forms that live therein. We are discovering the carrying capacity for bums on our streets. If we make housing for them, some will move to the housing and quickly be replaced on the streets until they are again at their carrying capacity.

  • You all get that arresting the “bums” would raise your taxes a lot more than Grace costs, right? Do you understand that the impact of Grace on downtown has been significant and beneficial, that due to court rulings in the 1980s, committing people to mental institutions and arresting loiterers has become much more difficult, and that Republican Marion County has very similar numbers to Gainesville for it’s homeless population.

    You know all this, right?

    • As previously noted, on a per capita population basis, Alachua county has significantly more hobos camping out in the than there are in Marion county.

    • It is called deterrence. Surely you are aware of this concept. Enforcing laws is known to deter criminal behavior, especially drug related crimes. Thus reducing costs and preserving society in the longer term.

      This area has become a magnet for drug addled bums due to the local government and local law enforcement allowing, and many times promoting, the influx of old-of-town vagrants by not enforcing existing laws and by funding/defunding related programs and departments.

  • We need to spend our money more wisely than this. 350 grand? Fro what? Salaries for a few people to go around the city handing out hotdogs and water to the panhandlers?

    • GRACE Executive Director Jon DeCarmine seems awfully proud of the miserable failure that is GRACE Marketplace. He did scam our worthless city commission out of another half a million dollars, but that’s like taking candy from a baby.

      He and his “street team” have done nothing but help turn Gainesville into a violent, dirty cesspool in the same vein as San Francisco, Chicago, etc. The number of homeless has skyrocketed since the program begun as more violent drug addicts join the free stuff brigade.

      Jon DeCarmine, I am speaking to you directly: You are nothing but a con-man. Your work is not appreciated. You and your team are not respected or wanted. The citizens of Gainesville will cheer when you and the rest of you scammers are finally defunded and run out of town.

  • >Crosby later clarified that the funds were originally ARPA funds but had already been moved to the County’s General Fund, so they are no longer subject to the limitations on using ARPA funds.

    What kind of money laundering BS is this? A city can take tax dollars earmarked for a specific purpose, with specific restrictions, then just throw it into the general slush fund and use it for whatever they want?

    https://home.treasury.gov/services/report-fraud-waste-and-abuse/report-fraud-or-misconduct-related-to-government-contracts-or-grants

    • ARPA has a provision that governments can calculate their COVID-related expenses and transfer money into their General Fund as reimbursement for those expenses. That’s what this is.

      • Thanks for the context. All I can say is “what a scam these people have worked out for themselves”.

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