Alachua County Commission moves forward with regulations for breweries, votes to expand budget for Community Health Worker program in FY26
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their January 28 regular meeting, the Alachua County Commission voted to move forward with a code amendment to regulate small-scale alcoholic beverage production facilities and directed staff to bring back a plan to fund the Community Health Worker program after its pilot program ends.
Small-scale alcoholic beverage producers
Alachua County codes do not currently address small-scale alcoholic beverage producers such as microbreweries, microwineries, and microdistilleries; the proposed regulations would also allow restaurants and bars to produce alcoholic beverages for on-site consumption. The code would allow for tasting rooms or tap rooms, along with the sale of merchandise; this use would be permitted in light industrial zoning districts and as an accessory use in agricultural zones where there is an existing agritourism operation.
Commissioner Ken Cornell made a motion to approve staff’s request to advertise the Uniform Land Development Code amendment, and Commissioner Mary Alford seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Community Health Workers program
The board next took up the future of the Community Health Workers (CHW) Program. CHWs, currently in a pilot program, identify resources available in their assigned geographic areas, build relationships with the health/social service agencies in that area, connect residents to services in that area, and participate in community meetings in that area. They must obtain a CHW certification, submit a monthly service report, and attend scheduled CHW meetings.
Staff presented three options (shown in the slide below) and recommended the third option, which is already funded through the opioid settlement:
- Department of Health administers the program, CHWs are County employees;
- The CHW program and the workers housed in the County’s Community Support Services department;
- Integrate CHWs into the Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) team, currently under Alachua County Fire Rescue.

Click here for the full presentation on Community Health Workers.
The first two options have the same budget, $432,232 per year; the third option would not require any County funds. Staff recommended continuing the program under its current structure through September 2025 (through the current fiscal year) and then transitioning the program to MIH.
MIH team is focused on substance abuse
Commissioner Anna Prizzia, who has championed the CHW program, said she liked a combination of the options. She said it’s important for the program to be tied to the MIH team, but that team is funded by opioid settlement money and is focused on substance abuse, not overall community health. She said the current MIH employees already have a job, “and that job isn’t the job of a Community Health Worker – to go out and provide resources and do needs assessments and connect people broadly to our healthcare resources, do follow-ups on all kinds of medical appointments, etc., etc.”
Prizzia said that if it were to “make the kind of impact that was envisioned,” the program would need geographically-assigned CHWs, specifically in the unincorporated areas around the small cities, to go out into the community, engage with people, and attend events. She said that could be part of a planned discussion on Resource Centers in March. She wanted the CHWs to be County employees who are coordinated through Fire Rescue and aligned with the MIH team. She also asked staff to come up with a name for the MIH team that “rolls off the tongue.”
Prizzie: “Not just a safety net but a safety harness”
Prizzia recommended keeping the discussion “on the table” and thinking about “how this aligns with our other goals for providing not just a safety net but a safety harness that keeps people from falling in the first place in our community.”
Commissioner Mary Alford agreed with “a sort of combination of these efforts” and also supported having the services tied to the Resource Centers in the small communities.
In response to a question from Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler, Department of Health Program Administrator Cherisse Britton said there are currently five CHWs who have been trained and placed at agencies, and she has collected data from three of them and determined that they have about 127 unduplicated clients and have provided over 1,000 services.
Goal was to provide training and seek other agencies to hire the CHWs
Prizzia said her goal had been to hire, train, and place the CHWs and subsidize their incomes to incentivize other organizations, like programs at UF Health, to hire them, but “what we found is that most of those organizations aren’t willing to pony up the money to fund these positions long-term, and so they were wanting us to either fund them all the way or not take them on at all,… and they wanted to use our initial subsidy to train their own staff… So it’s a shift, it’s the same sort of concept but us kind of hiring those Community Health Workers instead of other agencies.”
Britton said the initial idea had been to train a CHW and ask, for example, an agency in High Springs to hire that person, but the agencies kept saying they couldn’t fund them and then the County would run into “perhaps contracting hurdles or budget hurdles.” She said making the CHWs County employees would “make it easier to have a CHW in High Springs without hoping that the agencies would be able to take on the financial impact.”
Wheeler asked for an example of an agency in High Springs that the County would contract with, and Britton said, “There are no agencies in High Springs. Most of the agencies are concentrated in Gainesville.” She said the CHWs are currently placed at the Department of Health, Gainesville Empowerment Zone, Pleasant Street Community Resource Center, and GRACE Marketplace, and there are discussions about placing a CHW at UF Obstetrics.
Wheeler said, “My idea of the Community Health Worker was that we would have people out in our communities doing that, not centered in Gainesville – using local people who just need a job, … people who are really committed to the health and welfare of their communities. And I didn’t realize, I guess, that we were having to work through agencies who were willing to partner with us.”
Prizzia said the original model isn’t working because the agencies don’t want to pay for it and they’re “not necessarily serving the broad needs of the community because each of these agencies kind of has their own idea of what a Community Health Worker should do.” She said it seemed to her that Britton was proposing that the County hire and place the CHWs out in the community.
Motion proposed and clarified
Cornell, chairing the meeting in Chair Chuck Chestnut’s absence, said he’d like to see a motion to approve staff’s recommendation to continue the program through the end of the fiscal year and to ask Alachua County Fire Rescue, through the Mobile Integrated Health team, “with a really cool name that Commissioner Prizzia likes,” to give recommendations on gathering data and deploying CHWs into the community and “really continuing this program” past the end of the opioid settlement grant with some additional funding.
Prizzia agreed and made a motion to ask staff to look at combining options two and three, with the goal of having geographically assigned Community Health Workers working in collaboration with the Fire Rescue MIH team, and bring back recommendations during the budget development process.
Cornell clarified, “So – option three with support from Community Support Services,” but Prizzia said she wanted to make sure that the MIH team would add additional CHWs to do “the work of general public health and well-being.”
Alford: “This could be an amazing model for other communities”
Alford said she would second the motion, but since Fire Rescue is in every community, this would be an opportunity for the community “to establish a better relationship with our Fire Rescue folks, which could have other additional benefits for health and safety… I think this could just be an amazing model for other communities if we can swing this kind of combination deal.”
Prizzia added direction to staff to bring back the discussion “in conjunction with our Resource Center conversation” because the County may want to place CHWs at the Resource Centers instead of at fire stations, depending on where they’re located. She added, “I know all of it’s going to take resources, and we have limited amounts of resources, especially given that we’re probably going to end up being the front line for emergency assistance since our federal government is cutting federal assistance programs, like, on the regular.”
Summary of the motion
Alachua County Fire Rescue Chief Harold Theus summarized the motion: “We provide to you, through the budget process – you would like to have a Community Health Worker program that is integrated into the Mobile Integrated Health program that [currently exists]… That Community Health Worker program would be geographically assigned throughout the communities and deployed into the communities. And what you’re looking for is consistent and reliable data they can provide of patients that they are working with, tracking those patients, and measuring outcomes.” Cornell said that was “Spot on.” Theus said his assumption was that the CHWs would be Alachua County Fire Rescue employees, which would require extra funds.
Prizzia clarified that ideally, CHWs will be people who come from the communities they’re serving, which is why she favored placing them at Resource Centers like the Hawthorne Resource Center or the Willie Mae Stokes Community Center: “So they’re our employees, and they work for Fire Rescue,” added to the existing MIH team.
Prizzia added that the exact number of CHWs would be a budget issue, with maybe three the first year and two more the next year.
The motion passed unanimously.
They wanna fund something BEFORE the pilot is finished, AND saying it’s a wonderful model for other communities… typical.
Anything Prizzia touches is garbage, she is delusional.
I wonder how many police officers could be hired for that $432,232 a year or how many pot holes could be filled in for $432,232 a year.
“Pot Holes Over People” – what a lovely sentiment!
Stay sad.
They’ll just use “community health” agents for polluting the water supplies with chemical abortion pills, and anything else Big Pharma gets subsidized for.
Wait. What? I was not prepared for this crazy take, but I guess I’m not surprised.
Come on, grandpa, let’s get you to bed!
Alachua County and Gainesville DO NOT need to be the innovators for other counties. They both need to focus on their PRIMARY infrastructure needs. Both know what their job is; they just refuse to do it.
I would consider fixing our roads innovative given their neglect.
“County Commissioners Push Towards Socialized Medical Care By Likely Increasing Future Taxes On Residents.”
~ Fixed it.
This is a great program that will help citizens who need it the most access medical care. A healthy community creates more stability.
~ Cry more.
Can’t fix those who don’t want to be.
~ Laughing at the gullible.
Why didn’t Medicaid AND Obamacare suffice? Oh wait… 👿👹💩🤡👺ACLUSPLCDNC
There has not been a good-faith effort to make it work, but only hinder it at every turn.
I like your emojis and strange acronyms.
LOLOMGWTF
Go burn down minneapolis again
Did you get the memo? Your ‘prediction’ for Teacher of the Year didn’t go as you thought.
Still waiting for you and the other commenter to man up and say as much.
Huh?
Don’t screw with our brew…..fix the damn roads!
Fixing infrastructure has clearly taken a back seat to all of these trendy buzzword grass roots mental health substance abuse gimicks. Lets try to heal the world they say… These gimick freebies are costing taxpayers big bucks and will draw even more indigent bums here as the word gets out.
I understand that the County is spending hundreds of millions on roads thanks to the infrastructure surtax. Those who complain about roads in every story, regardless of the subject, are sounding shrill and uninformed. But don’t let that stop you.
Usually when I spend money I have something to show for it.
What’s taking the County so long? I bet the Commissioners and their overpaid minions have something at home to show for their tax funded salaries.
Many asinine comments.
People with “old-fashioned common sense” question why Alachua BOCC are fretting over micro-breweries.
Our community has nothing else to worry about?