Gainesville City Commission approves ordinance on first reading that would require GRU to pay permitting fees

BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their March 7 regular meeting, the Gainesville City Commission approved an ordinance on first reading that would require Gainesville Regional Utilities to pay permitting fees that are currently exempted under City ordinances.
The amended ordinance deletes a provision exempting GRU from a City ordinance that requires a written permit from the City when performing a long list of activities related to utilities on the public right-of-way. The ordinance requires GRU to pay permitting fees for replacing infrastructure if the replacement is larger than existing infrastructure, excavation, closure of a sidewalk, or closure of a vehicle or parking lane. A memo from GRU Chief Operating Officer Brett Goodman estimated that this will cost GRU $350,000 a year for routine operations and $104,500 for new development projects, costs that will be passed on to customers.
City of Gainesville Public Works Director Brian Singleton said, “Historically, GRU has not been required to pull permits, it’s been one of those unformalized SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that we’ve been working on rectifying… The legislation limits the permit fees to the costs associated with these duties, and they are already included in the fee schedule.”
There was no public comment, and Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut made a motion to approve the amended ordinance on first reading.
In response to a question from Commissioner Bryan Eastman, Singleton said the City currently coordinates informally with GRU. Eastman said that permits are important for “communicating within our own municipality… I think it would be insane for us to not have this… To me, this has little to do with costs and everything to do with how you run an efficient operation. We can’t have an entity that does not directly answer to the main municipal governing board that would be cutting up the road without adding oversight from Public Works… The way we do that is through permitting.”
Commissioner Ed Book asked the GRU representatives in the room if they had any comments on the ordinance, and Goodman said, “I think what this shows is [that] there’s a cost of doing business for each one of us… This process [has] cost implications for our customers, for the folks in the city, so it’s our job to work very collaboratively and efficiently… Our motivation is to drive [these costs] down.”
Mayor Harvey Ward said, “There are actual costs to this process, and having it formalized, as it is for nearly everybody else that we do permit activities for, makes sense. Those costs will either be borne as part of a GRU bill or ultimately a tax bill or probably a little bit of both. In the past, all that cost for this particular thing has been borne on the tax bill. All this does is make it a little bit easier on the ledger for everything to be entirely clear.”
Commissioner Casey Willits said, “In essence, we’ve already been doing all of this, and GRU has just gotten, frankly, a good deal, from what I’m hearing… They haven’t had to pay for it. So at that point, we’re just gonna have a little more revenue.”
Singleton said he anticipated requesting an additional staff person in the next budget year to handle the more formal process; he said the costs would be offset by the revenue from GRU.
The ordinance was approved on first reading by a vote of 6-0, with Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker absent.
So the commission saddles GRU with bad debt and now wants them to pay to make repairs when the citizens need their utilities maintained. Only a back-Ward azz Mayor would do this.
Another move by the city and it’s incompetent leaders to pass on fees to the public since they’ve had the golden teats taken away from them.
Ward thinks that everyone should enjoy having something shoved up their arses as much as he does.
He’s been exposed though, he likes it from both ends.
When it becomes painful to the Democrats maybe they’ll finally have the common sense and courage to say take it out.
But Carter seems more than happy to go along with whatever the Mayor tells him to do?
Thank you for the Hogs at the trough attack on Gainesville Citizens and GRU Captive Customers. You are true to the Bone , money hogs. The State Legislature will take note. This is small change in comparison to the Audits finding that you took tens of millions of dollars form GRU coffers with no profit shown to begin to allow that. Buckle up and Pucker up . It could be a justice beginning.
The city government should be a fraction of its current size. Everyone knows this. City constantly blames everything but themselves. And to be honest, most city services & programs disappoint and should be cut.
There’s a reason they keep City Hall under lock and key. If you walked around floor by floor, you’d see a bunch of middle-aged ladies sitting at their desks all day long, mostly not doing anything. It’s like a giant episode of Seinfeld, but we’re paying for it.
Easy fix…reduce general transfer by ten times that amount. Too bad there isn’t a board to make these decisions right now. Maybe one day.
Duncan-Walker MIA again?? What is its problem?
“Long Covid”
They will try to find a way to get their money back and we will pay for it.
Carter playing patticakes with the Mayor doesn’t seem to be working out very well.
The terrible and ineffective leadership on the GRU board needs to be immediately replaced.
problem is who wants to deal with all that serving in an unpaid position?
Spot On, he has more than proved he is one of them. Let Desantis know.
That will be a joke on the customers and taxpayers. Already need another person to process the paperwork because usually when GRU has a job to do, its an emergency repair. The process for right of way permits is cumbersome and the inspectors act like God with their over the top demands. Maybe GRU will have better luck than us contractors do.
…or GRU just says, “Sorry, we can’t fix that until the permit’s filed, talk to the City, it’s their rule.”
next TS/Hurricane that scratches Gainesville, power will likely be out for a while, due to permits having to be pulled and all.
Corrupt aholes are trying to find more ways to steal money from hard working citizens.
The city needs to do something about the vagrants, potholes, & what’s with the 🐷 wearing the face diaper in the photo?
Anything to increase poverty, so their campaign donors in the Poverty, LLC industry can keep in business 🍦👹🤡D
“new development projects, costs that will be passed on to customers”
Did you expect anything less from this so called ‘leadership’?
This ordinance takes effect “immediately” in “Right of Ways” GRU has occupied for 100 years. Phase 2 of the “Full Cost Allocation Adjustment” (sic) to untold millions of Interfund Transfers is to take effect Feb. 2025. Ward claims it will take “years” to quantify the actual, total annual City Gainesville siphoning of GRU Ratepayer funds. The Auditor General found 100’s of thousands of IT and other Ratepayer ripoffs. Coats found $4.5 million last year and $3 million this year on IT ALONE! The current GRU FY 24 Budget runs afoul of HB 1645 while GRU financial metrics erode. GRU has quoted me a fee of $1200 to get the total FY23 payment (Direct and Indirect GSC) from GRU to the City. Conversely, GRU Ratepayers continue to fund a rogue City Attorney with no reimbursement for the $758/hr Akerman Attorney who helped Nee with the HB 1645 challenge. There is at least $7 million of questionable GRU payments or freebies in the FY 23 GRU budget.
JK, how does permitting work for GRU in the county service area?
These pathetic people have absolutely no concern for the people. They say “GRU has had a pretty good deal”, What about the deal that had when they drove G.R.U. into debt to the point that control had to be taken from them. What about the millions of dollars that they stole? G.R.U. response should be to sue general government for the money they took over the profits of GRU (GRU is a nonprofit obviously). If this was done by a private nonprofit these clowns would be in jail. Cut all transfers to zero and charge general government a fee to repay the debt created by the excess general fund transfer. Then attach any incurred costs created by City Government to their utility bill. I say that not even sure they pay a bill. Wake up people. These unscrupulous criminals have NO CONCERN for you, only their own personal interests!
It’s not clear from this if the added expense is strictly for permitting, including fees, preparation of documents, and staff time or includes any of the work by city crews not part of GRU. Probably the former, though reference is made to these expenses already being incurred but not covered by GRU. In any case, one expects that the code is followed by governmental agencies as well as private. Permits and inspections have a valid purpose in protecting the public and ensuring that the built environment, which typically outlasts it’s builders and owners, is safe and of good quality.
As to Mercy Me’s comment, we have good relations with almost all the city inspectors we deal with based on mutual respect and find them reasonable and pleasant. Judy – about to retire – is especially professional and even helpful. The time it takes to get a permit is a nuisance, but much better than many other places – including my experiences with Marion and Lake County – and the software the city uses for permitting – you upload drawings and other documents – is as rigid and unfriendly to users as one can imagine. The city didn’t create it and need to buy a new one.
They should hold all past politicians responsible who voted for the biomass plant and go after them civilly & criminaly and put leans against them…starting with Hanrahan. We shouldn’t have to pay for their stupid mistakes….they should have stayed in their lane instead of trying to comply with UN dictates….
Sadly, your last line exemplifies the type of thing that is going to get a very low priority now that the city has to live approximately within its means.
With all the thousands of local governments doing pretty much the same thing, it seems the process could be improved in many ways by moving the underlying IT component to a cloud-based service.
PS Steve, the fact that the city and county are using the same software (independently) for serciving existing permits (setting up inspections, paying fees, etc) leads me to believe there is not much competition right now for this type software and hopefully this will improve over time.
ps GRU Service Level Agreement (SLA-Related) losses are not properly reflected on GRU Financial Statements which results in a material misstatement.
What ever happened to the investigation into Ward purposefully saddling taxpayers with an addition $2.9 million in fees because he asked GRU to delay the bond issuance?
Hopefully Ward has poked the beehive with this latest obstruction and attention will shift back to his criminal behavior.
so when the sewer backs up at yur house sunday night they can’t fix it