February 27 Alachua County Commission Regular Meeting
Press release from Alachua County
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Alachua County Commission will conduct its regular meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024. The regular meeting is in the Jack Durrance Auditorium on the second floor of the Alachua County Administration Building (12 SE 1st St., Gainesville). It begins at 11:30 a.m. and reconvenes at 5 p.m.
The meetings can be viewed on Cox Channel 12, the AC TV app (Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku), the county’s Facebook site, or the county’s Video on Demand website.
During the regular meeting, the public can make comments at the meeting in person or call in during the 12 p.m. (noon) comment period. Callers will have 3 minutes to comment on anything not on the agenda and 3 minutes to discuss anything on the agenda. Callers can choose either or both. Those commenting on items on the agenda will not be allowed to comment again on agenda items if attending the meeting in person later in the day. The call-in number is 1-929-205-6099. When prompted, enter meeting ID 873 5974 1977. Callers can hear the meeting while on hold and can use the system to listen. If you wish to comment, “raise your hand” by dialing *9 (star nine). Once you are called on by the last four digits of your phone number, unmute your phone by dialing *6 (star six).
Daytime items of interest:
- Consider applications for Economic Development Advisory Committee with a term ending in September 2025 and a term ending in September 2026
- Appoint Full Member to Recreation & Open Spaces Advisory Committee Vacancy with a Term Ending September 30, 2027
- Appoint Full Member to Recreation & Open Spaces Advisory Committee Vacancy with a Term Ending September 30, 2027
- Appointments to the Alachua County Housing Finance Authority (HFA)
- Rural Concerns Advisory Committee Update – Annual Workplan and Accomplishments Report
- Request Approval of Joint Wild Spaces Public Places and Infrastructure Projects with the City of Newberry
- First Amendment 11462 with Cenergistic LLC to provide a Customized Energy Conservation Program
- Presentation on Community Agency Partnership Program (CAPP) Request for Applications (RFA) 25-198 for FY 2025-2027
- Permanent Housing Pilot
- First Assembly Faith Fellowship Special Exception for Childcare Center
- Z23-000008: Pine Glade PD Minor Amendment
- Z24-000001 – A Request for the Dissolution of the Springhill South CDD
- Adoption Hearing for Amendments to the Land Development Code (ULDC) related to Building Design, Development Review and Rural Agricultural Subdivisions with nine lots or less.
- Public Hearing to Consider Amendments to Unified Land Development Code Chapter 407 Article XII, Concurrency Management and Chapter 364 Transportation Impact Fee
Evening items of interest:
- Northwest 122nd Street Right-of-Way Purchase Agreement with 122nd and Newberry, LLC.
- Preliminary Development Plan for South Pointe PD – Phase 2, Unit 2 C
View the meeting agenda and backup items.
The link above goes to an agenda page without the hot links going to the backup info. The county’s web site has a linked agenda.
The Cenergistic LLC contract is one of the biggest fiascos the BOCC has ever done. They were hired in 2019 to suggest energy conservation methods. Their payment was half the money they “saved”. Well, all the easy low hanging fruit has been done.
This new contract? “The County will pay Cenergistic a set rate of $26,700.00 per month, for the five-year term of this Amendment, for a total of $1,602,000.”
Total waste of money. Cenergistic LLC is a Dallas Texas company. In Texas they know how to promote the use of fossil fuel, not encourage folks to do anything that looks like “energy conservation.”
The biggest electric bill the county has? The jail. What will Cenergistic LLC suggest, turning off the exterior lights at night? That makes me feel much much safer.
Biggest energy waster the county owns? The new Sports Center at Celebration Pointe. It is a cheaply built steel industrial warehouse building. No insulation. No windows, run all the inside lights in the daytime. No solar panels on the roof. No high efficiency air conditioners. No energy conservation elements were required by the BOCC. Just cheap 1970 style construction.
It was permitted to private construction standards, NOT the improved energy efficiency standards the county requires for ALL public buildings.
They are hiring a construction management firm for the new courthouse to ensure compliance with all regulations.
They did not do that for the Sports Center. They handed $30 million to a Viking raider and allowed them to design and build WHATEVER THEY WANTED with NO oversight. The Viking raider pillaged the county treasure. (It is what Vikings do.) I don’t blame Viking, as the BOCC ALLOWED the county to get ripped off. The BOCC blew it.
Result: That energy hog building has an average GRU bill of $1000 PER DAY. Forever. Your tax dollars at work. (Renting 16 pickleball courts a day does not cover the light bill.) Celebration Pointe, Viking, and RaddSports get all the income as “expenses” with a bad one way contract. The Sports Center is a money losing pig. Always will be.
Citizens would hope the Chronicle would do an investigation at the horrible stewardship of public money the BOCC did on this Sports Center.
The bonds alone are scary. One is for 15 years INTEREST ONLY no principle payments until 2036 when the entire principle of $15,000,000 is due as a single balloon payment. Who is their financial advisor? What government does this?
Meanwhile $1.6 million to Cenergistic LLC of Texas. I guess there are no engineering departments at UF who know anything about energy conservation who could be consulted.
The BOCC is going to adopt updated design standards, but similar to the old rules.
“Sec. 407.105. Required design elements.
All non-residential, mixed use, and multi-family buildings that are part of a new development plan, not located within a TND or TOD, shall must meet the standards outlined in this Section. Building elevations, prepared by a Florida registered architect, must be submitted during the development review process in order to demonstrate that these standards are met.
(a) Building Design Standards (1) Scale and massing. a. Individual buildings must use human-scaled, pedestrian-oriented architectural features, such as windows, balconies, porches, awnings and arcades, and must clearly articulate the first story and primary entrances. Decorative, pedestrian scale lighting must be provided at the entrance of all buildings.
(b) Any building with a single frontage of more than one hundred (100) feet must be designed to create the visual impression of a series of smaller buildings or sections. These treatments may include, but are not limited to: windows, doors, shutters, columns, masonry detailing, variations in the front roofline, recessed building walls and variations in colors and materials to break up the mass of a single wall plane.
(c) Buildings within a block shall reflect a continuity of building scale at the building line. d. Buildings shall avoid uninterrupted walls or roof planes. Windowless walls are prohibited along street frontages. Walls shall be broken up using a variety of articulation techniques and areas of transparency.
(2) Building articulation and materials.
a. No more than twenty-five (25) feet of horizontal distance of a wall shall be provided without articulation or architectural relief for building walls facing a street or greenspace.
b. b. At least twenty-five (25) percent of the exterior wall treatment must vary from the primary facade treatment, except for brick and stone.
(3) Glazing.
a. Glazing must be provided on front and side building walls for all facades that front a street, civic space such as plaza or square, or directly adjacent pedestrian walkway.
b. Glazing percentages for the first floor shall be calculated based upon the facade area between three (3) feet above grade and eight (8) feet above grade. Glazing percentages for floors above the first shall be calculated based upon the full facade area. 1. Front building walls shall have windows covering at least fifty (50) percent of the first floor facade. Front building walls above the first floor shall have at least twenty (20) percent glazing. Page 22 of 23
c. 2. Side building walls shall have windows covering at least thirty (30) percent of the first floor facade. Side building walls above the first floor shall have at least ten (10) percent glazing. d. Windows or glazed areas facing a sidewalk on the first story of a commercial or mixed-use building shall use glass which is at least eighty (80) percent transparent.”
TRICK QUESTION: Guess the largest brand new most butt ugly building in the county that meets NONE of the above design standards. None. I mean NONE.
ANSWER: The Celebration Ponte Sports Center, owned and paid for by Alachua County. Spend $38,000,000 dollars of public money, and make a big, featureless, windowless grey flat sided industrial tin barn that is hideously UGLY.
You blew it, BOCC. Can’t even follow your own rules. Just build ugly.