Alachua County Commission moves Newnans Lake development forward, brings up nine new topics during Commission Comment

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the August 12 meeting, the Alachua County Commission moved forward with a proposed single-family housing development near Newnans Lake and brought up nine new topics during Commission Comment.

During the afternoon session of the meeting, Commissioners asked staff to explore a 24-hour childcare pilot program for public-sector employees. After the afternoon agenda was complete and all members of the public had left, Commissioners brought up nine new topics during Commission Comment.

Funding for the Small Farms Grants

Commissioner Anna Prizzia said she had “just one” comment and explained that she thought the County had continued funding for the Small Farms Grant, but it was not included in the proposed budget; she made a motion to continue the funding and also give staff the flexibility, “as they get Farmers’ Market surveys back and they get more information back from the community, to maybe bring us back recommendations for adjustments to the program, based on the experience of the past two years and data they get from the community.” Commissioner Ken Cornell seconded the motion.

County Manager Michele Lieberman said if the board approved the motion, she would make sure that $100,000 was in the budget for the program. She added, “Staff has some really good thoughts on how to expand the opportunities with those funds.”

The motion passed unanimously.

Cornell reminded Prizzia of a comment she’d made earlier in the meeting, and she said, “Oh, yeah, I guess I have two other things.”

Regulating privately-owned surveillance cameras

She made a motion to refer to the Attorney’s staff the question of whether the County has any ability to regulate private surveillance cameras like FLOCK cameras: “There’s more and more proliferation of these surveillance cameras for private companies, and oftentimes, the data is retained and then sold… I’m talking about, like, Home Depot hangs up FLOCK cameras for surveillance of their parking lots, and then that data is surveilling everybody in that parking lot and then collecting that data and selling that data.”

Commissioner Mary Alford added, “Although the Ring cameras are also an issue because people have them aimed at people’s bedroom windows,” and Prizzia said, “Things like that, yeah,… I was interested to understand what regulatory authority we have.”

County Attorney Sylvia Torres said she would be happy to look into that.

Processes around asking employees to review their experiences with job applicants

Prizzia continued, “The last thing [is]… processes around involving employees in reviewing applicants for a specific job.” Earlier in the meeting, several members of the public had objected to the confirmation of the County Manager’s selection for IT Director because other employees in the department had been asked to review the Interim IT Director, and she did not get the job. Cornell seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously.

Turn lane near Jordan Glen School

Cornell said he had two things: He said there was an accident on Archer Road in front of Jordan Glen School, and he asked Lieberman if she needed a motion to ask her to contact FDOT about that intersection. Lieberman said the parents should go to the MTPO meeting (3 p.m. on August 19), and  Growth Management Director Jeffrey Hays said staff would be prepared to bring it up at that meeting. Cornell said they should recommend “a turn lane” or some other safety improvement.

Staff authority vs board authority for temporary use permits

Cornell also made a motion to schedule a discussion regarding staff’s authority to grant temporary use permits and which ones need to come to the County Commission. He said that any venue holding “large events regularly” should come before the board, “and simultaneously, because of what’s going on out in Melrose, I would like to refer that the staff consider initiating a Special Area Plan for the Melrose rural cluster, which would also include the proposed Wildflower Music Park site that lies just outside the rural cluster.” Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler seconded the motion, and the motion passed unanimously.

Herbicide regulation

Alford said, “It’s come to my attention that we have the ability to, similar to how we do fertilizer regulations, we can also have some amount of regulation of herbicides. There are many folks that are putting herbicides on public lands — like in the City of Archer, they use herbicides on the parks, and in doing so, they’ve made mistakes and actually killed trees, trees that we planted. And so I would like to refer to staff, you know, what a herbicide regulation might look like, in terms of providing, you know, training, or requiring training for the folks that are actually applying the herbicides.” Cornell seconded the motion.

Prizzia said she believed there are already requirements to get a handlers’ permit to apply herbicides and pesticides in public spaces, but she was fine with asking staff for more information. 

Alford said, “I know that there’s stuff out there, but I don’t know if it’s not being enforced or if there’s some exemption for smaller towns or what — I just don’t know what’s going on.”

Cornell said, “So you’re talking about a regulation that would require [cities] to opt out, a county-wide regulation that would require them to opt out.” Alford responded that she thought it was worth looking into: “I don’t know how far we can take it… Public spaces are the most important thing.”

Archer concrete batch plant

Alford said she’d received “a bunch of citizen complaints” about the proposed site for a concrete plant in Archer: “They are doing major, major land work, like a three-story-high pile of dirt and a very, very deep hole, and I am concerned about dust and other things from that work, and I’m concerned [whether] what they’re doing matches up with any sort of permit that they got.” She asked staff to drive out there and take a “look at what they’re doing, because I feel like there’s environmental issues happening there… I’ve not seen that amount of earthwork happening on such a small space since I don’t know when. It’s monstrously huge.”

Wheeler agreed, “Yeah, there’s weird stuff happening, and I’m not sure that the road that is being built out to the main road has been approved by FDOT.”

Prizzia seconded the motion. 

She moved on to her third thing, but Chestnut said they needed to vote on her motions. They voted unanimously in favor of a combined motion to approve her recommendations on herbicides and the concrete plant.

Cottage neighborhood on Williston Road

Alford said she’d also received “a bunch of citizen concerns” about the cottage neighborhood on Williston Road “because work is stopped… My question is not necessarily about just that but about all projects where work stops and citizens are left in this, like, state of half-construction where their road is being affected by the construction.” She said nothing had happened in six months on the site. 

Principal Planner Chris Dawson said he would ask Public Works to check on it “and just make sure the site is secure.” He said site work can continue for “a couple years,” but the developer is required to maintain their site in a way that doesn’t impact other properties.

Commissioner district maps

Prizzia said she was interested in scheduling a conversation about releasing the shapefiles for their Commission district maps and asking for public submissions of district maps before they vote to set new districts. She said, “I move that we open a public process for people to submit public maps regarding voting districts and release the shapefiles provided by our consultant, Dan Smith.” Cornell seconded it “for discussion.”

Cornell said, “First of all, I think you know, the law of the land is, we’re currently elected at-large… I think the maps submitted by our consultant have a number of problems, and I’m not really interested in many of those. Perfectly happy, though, to receive maps from the public.”

Prizzia said, “I know we’re voted at-large, but we do still represent districts. We have to live in those districts, and… I’ll just say, as one Commissioner, my experience, having to run as a district Commissioner was very, very different than me running at-large, and it really made me value what it means to be a district Commissioner. And while I’m still very supportive of the at-large process, I think that the districts really matter because you represent that constituency.”

Alford said, “I did want to say, to your comment, Anna, about having maps that represent different types of constituencies in urban, suburban, rural, whatever — while that allows us to serve that population better, it would put us more at odds with each other… I feel like I’ve seen the Commission operate just a little bit differently since we’ve gone to single-member-district voting.”

Prizzia reiterated, “I’m not recommending we go to single-member districts. We’re at-large. Now, I hope that we win our lawsuit and we stay at-large. I just think the districts that we represent might better represent the way that our county is evolving.”

The motion passed unanimously. 

Evening agenda

During the evening session, the board passed updates to the Unified Land Development Code regarding agritourism and some other changes to align with new statutes. The motion to adopt the updates on first reading passed unanimously; there will be a second reading at a future date.

The board next considered a Large-Scale Comprehensive Plan Amendment for a development with 149 detached single-family homes on SE Hawthorne Road and Lakeshore Drive. 

Prizzia made a motion to adopt the amendment, and Cornell, the seconder, asked her to add a condition that access to the development must be from Hawthorne Road (except for a pedestrian/bike path or a locked gate for emergency vehicles), not Lakeshore Drive, as was originally proposed by the developer. 

Several members of the public spoke about the motion, with some expressing concerns but most praising the developer for the commitments that had been made to address environmental concerns. 

The motion passed unanimously, and the rezoning of the property also passed unanimously.