Alachua County Commission indicates support for increased funding for community resource centers, starts budget process

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – In two special meetings on April 1, the Alachua County Commission indicated support for increased funding for community resource centers and began the FY2026 budget process.

Community resource centers

The discussion on community resource centers was requested by the board on December 10, 2024, and Director of Community Support Services Claudia Tuck said her staff began by developing a definition of a community center: a public location where members of the community gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes.

Tuck’s staff developed a list of 11 community centers in the county (shown below) and reached out to each one with a survey to determine which populations they serve and whether they have needs. Four of the community centers are supported by municipalities – Alachua, Archer, Newberry, and Waldo – and the rest are run by nonprofits or are grassroots efforts run by volunteers.

Commissioner Ken Cornell said he was “ready to allocate some funding for the Fiscal Year 25-26 cycle… The number I had in my mind, which may be a totally wrong number, but somewhere between $2(00k) and $250[k].”

Commissioner Anna Prizzia said she would “hate to put a number on it until staff have had a little more time to have those conversations with the [Community] Foundation [of North Central Florida], with the Children’s Trust, with the other institutional partners, and the resource centers, to see what the needs are. But I am totally down with moving forward with this, putting this into our next year’s budget.” She said the County has “beautiful new volunteer software” and could make that available to the community resource centers. 

Chair Chuck Chestnut said he thought those funds should be limited to the listed resource centers, rather than a broader group of nonprofits.

Motion

Cornell, who was participating remotely due to “extraordinary circumstances,” made a motion to direct staff to identify which entities on the list are municipally run versus run by nonprofits and/or volunteers and send that back to Commissioners. The second part of his motion was to request operating budgets for the entities and provide that to Commissioners. The third part was to ask staff to meet with the Community Foundation and the Children’s Trust and develop recommendations for an amount of funding and a process for funding the resource centers for FY2026.

After a second from Prizzia, Cornell added a fourth part, directing staff to help the organizations gather the information sought by the County. 

The motion passed unanimously. 

FY2026 budget

At an FY2026 budget development meeting held in the afternoon, Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby reminded the board that there are a lot of uncertainties this year due to pending bills in the legislature related to property taxes. He also said staff is taking a different approach this year and will look at each department to support the need for the services they provide instead of just looking at what each department wants to add to its budget. The FY2027 budget will be based on the Strategic Plan that will be presented to the board on June 4. The FY2026 budget will be a one-year budget, but the goal is to go back to two-year budget projections, starting in FY2027. 

Solid waste deep dive

The board will hear presentations from all of their departments in future budget meetings and heard an update from Solid Waste during the April 1 meeting. Gus Olmos, Director of Solid Waste and Resource Recovery, told the board that the County’s agreement with the New River landfill expires on December 31, 2028, but it can be renewed for five years with two years’ notice. He said his staff has determined that “we’re not going to get a better option than New River, at least in the next five years.”

Motion

Commissioner Mary Alford made a motion to authorize staff to initiate negotiations with New River Solid Waste Association to extend the existing agreement for an additional five years, and Cornell seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously, with Cornell voting remotely.

Question about continuing to use X for County communications

During Commission Comment, Wheeler asked Communications Director Mark Sexton about an email from a citizen who urged the County to stop posting information on X (formerly Twitter). Sexton responded, “Her concern is that X has become an overtly political platform, and she’s suggesting that we no longer use it. My feeling on this is that we have over 12,000 residents that are signed up to receive our information. We only put out factual information. We use it in a in a way that has integrity. And I would see no reason to stop sending out information on that platform to folks who use it to get our messages. We have very little interaction on that platform, unlike Facebook, where we have a lot of reactions and a lot of back and forth. So I understand her concerns, but my recommendation would be we continue to feed information to folks who’ve come to rely on that platform for County information.”