Gainesville City Commission designates ARPA funds to fill budget gaps, passes bottle club and nuisance abatement ordinances on first reading

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their July 18 meeting, the Gainesville City Commission designated about $1.2 million in unobligated ARPA funds to fill their budget gap and passed bottle club and nuisance abatement ordinances on the first reading.

Moving ARPA funds to fill budget gap

During an update on ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds, staff recommended “de-obligating” about $1.8 million that had been designated for Oakview Apartments Phase II, a senior affordable housing development, and moving the funds to ARPA Revenue Replacement, to be used to fill the gap in the City’s budget so the property rax rate can be kept flat for the next fiscal year. The recommendation would leave about $1.7 million in Core ARPA, and that can be used for any project that is approved under ARPA, including affordable housing. 

JE Properties, the developer of the Oakview Project, was granted funds by the City Commission about a year ago, but Joseph Eddy, one of the owners, told the Commission that the U.S. Treasury told them they would lose matching funds if the funds were provided as a grant instead of a loan, so the company asked the City to convert the grant to a forgivable loan; however, the City Attorney said the City could not do that because the Request for Proposal was for a grant. The developer has also asked the County for support and matching funds to obtain a state loan, and Eddy asked the Commission to give the company 90 days to obtain the rest of the funding they need. 

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut said she thought the City had been “abundantly gracious” in giving the developer a year to get financing in place, and she supported using the money to fill the budget gap and avoid a property tax increase.

Commissioner Bryan Eastman favored giving the developer 90 days to see if the County funding comes through, arguing that the City would still have about 2.5 months before the ARPA deadline to allocate the funds if the Oakview project didn’t work out.

Mayor Harvey Ward said they were “living in a very different budget world” when the grant was approved, “and we have since then had tens of millions of dollars removed from our general revenue… So I want to keep that in everyone’s mind.”

Eastman pointed out that he was just suggesting a 90-day delay, but that would mean they would need to look elsewhere to fill the budget gap. He said ARPA was a rare opportunity for local governments to access tens of millions of dollars, and “when you have money like that, in my opinion, what you need to be spending it on are large-scale capital projects.” He said the County had sent a letter saying they are committed to exploring ways to help Eddy secure the gap funding, so “I think we need to give them the opportunity to follow through on that.”

First motion

Eastman made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation, amending it to extend the agreement with JE Properties for 90 days and ask the Mayor to send a letter to the County Commission, notifying them of the extension and requesting that they secure the remaining funding for the project. Commissioner Casey Willits seconded the motion.

Chief Operating Officer Andrew Persons said staff was concerned that the County would not provide the funds because statutory limitations on the use of their infrastructure surtax funds would require them to purchase the property from Eddy, but the property will only appraise at about a million dollars, and Eddy needs $3.1 million. He said the developer could add infrastructure to increase the value, but that is unlikely to be completed in 90 days. He said the County’s letter referred to providing match funding for the state’s 9% tax credit, but that deadline has already passed for this year, “so we’re talking the following year.”

Willits said 90 days was probably too long, given the short time that would remain for allocating the funds before the end of the year: “Unless we have an answer within 30 days, we need to move on to the next opportunity… I think 90 days is now too long, so I’m sorry, but I’m back on that side of this.”

City Manager Cynthia Curry said that if the Commission decided to reallocate the Oakview funds, she would want them to give her direction to do an abbreviated solicitation so other organizations could apply for the remaining Core ARPA funds. Her recommendation was to use the money that staff recommended returning to ARPA Revenue Replacement to fill the $1.2 million budget gap, leaving about $1.7 in unobligated Core ARPA funds, and she said she would bring the Commission recommendations on September 12 for allocating those funds. 

Eastman said, “I think we have to give [the County] a chance to follow through on what they say they want to do… 30 days is… nearly impossible.”

Ward said a 90-day deadline could potentially result in a situation where the funds don’t get allocated before the deadline and “we have to say, ‘Well, thank you, President Biden, we’re going to send your money back.'”

Chestnut agreed, “I don’t want to be known as the Commission that sent $1.7 million back to Washington because we were not good stewards of the money.”

Eastman’s motion failed, 1-5, with only Eastman in support and Commissioner Reina Saco absent.

Second motion

Chestnut made a motion to approve the staff’s recommendation, and Commissioner Ed Book seconded her motion. The motion passed 5-1, with Saco absent.

Bottle club ordinance

Changes to the bottle club ordinance were proposed by Book in a July 2023 Sunshine meeting, and Curry introduced it as “an important addition to our gun violence prevention suite of tools.” The ordinance amends the current bottle club ordinance to prohibit entry of people under 21 years of age (up from 19) and prohibits bottle clubs from being operated as dance halls or smoking lounges (including cigar lounges, hookah lounges, and vapor bars or lounges). Bottle clubs must close between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m., must not exceed occupancy limits, must prohibit attendees from blocking sidewalks or parking areas, and may not allow consumption of alcohol outside of the building. 

Gainesville Police Department Major Jaime Kurnick said the hours of operation aren’t very clear in the existing ordinance, and GPD would prefer the operating hours to mirror the hours during which bars can sell alcohol. She said there is only one bottle club in Gainesville, Painting with a Twist. She said the other changes will make sure that bottle clubs aren’t used for parties for juveniles and will keep hookah lounges from operating as alcohol establishments.

Eastman said he had spoken with the owner of Painting with a Twist, and they were concerned because children attend events at the business, but alcohol is kept in a separate area: “They got very defensive about the idea that anything they were doing there was inappropriate.”

Persons said Painting with a Twist is not “a bottle club as the City defines it… [The City’s bottle club license] is different from the actual license the state issues to operate a bottle club under state liquor law.” He said there are currently no bottle clubs in the city.

Eastman said he wanted to give GPD tools for cracking down on places that illegally serve alcohol, but he preferred discussing the issue at a General Policy Committee meeting. He said, “I’m not in favor of this. I think our current rules are too onerous.”

Saco said, “I would like to pass whatever tools we can give GPD to keep things under control after 2 a.m. because I’ve seen the post-2 a.m. clear-out wild-wild-west we have, where people find the next place to go, and it’s always a hookah lounge for some reason, where alcohol just happens to be.”

Motion

Book said, “This is what we do from the dais, create policy, and we try and be forward-thinking on things to prevent problems, as opposed to retroactive and reactive to problems have already come before us. So we’ve had the ‘reactive’ with bottle clubs and safety issues and youth in the wrong ages in clubs that led to, in fact, true gun violence.” He made a motion to adopt the ordinance on first reading. Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker seconded the motion.

There was no public comment, and when the discussion returned to the dais, Eastman said they already have the tools to “bust illegal bottle clubs… It feels to me like we’re putting regulations on there, when we could be simplifying regulations, making them work better, and then shutting down existing businesses that may or may not be following the rules.” He asked Kurnick what tools this would give GPD.

Kurnick said the state’s staffing is “extremely limited” to enforce laws on businesses that serve alcohol, and “the circumstance that we see often is that we will have a vacant storefront, and it could be anywhere within the city, and somebody will occupy that business and decide to have a juvenile – I will call it a dance hall party but without a permit. And so we scroll through social media, we see that alcohol is going to be served. We see that there are multiple places that this is advertised, sometimes it’s hidden until an hour before an event, and we as law enforcement try to scramble… Sometimes it’s very difficult for us to find those and to find them in advance, and then when we do find them, we’re finding remnants of alcohol that was served there, and remnants of illegal activity, and we’re trying to hold those people accountable.”

Kurnick continued, “What I will tell you is, people sometimes try to skate around the rules of the state, because the state can’t regulate hours of operation, only us, as the City, can, and so when you get a bottle club permit, it’s up to the municipality to determine when those hours of operation are and what other guidelines that we have as a City in order to help us prevent some things happening.”

Eastman said he still believed the ordinance was “a hammer looking for a nail, in a way.”

The ordinance passed 6-1 on first reading, with Eastman in dissent. 

Nuisance abatement ordinance

Major Kurnick said the nuisance abatement ordinance is “a tool… that can be put into effect right away.” The existing ordinance includes businesses that allow gambling, prostitution, and narcotics, but GPD is currently having problems with businesses that are “plagued with gun violence, and many of them have activities that are happening outside of them that the business owners, when notified,… don’t do a lot to remedy the situation.” She said there is a lot GPD can do to keep people safe on public property but not much they can do on private property without the owner’s permission; the nuisance abatement ordinance would help GPD hold business owners accountable for unsafe conditions on their property. 

The ordinance allows the City to track occurrences of certain incidents, and once the thresholds are reached, a special magistrate can declare the structures or properties to be public nuisances and determine sanctions. Both the police chief and the special magistrate have discretion about whether to declare something a public nuisance and which sanctions to apply. Persons explained that the decisions will depend, for example, on how much the business is cooperating with recommendations from the police department. 

Kurnick concluded, “I do believe this is probably the single most impactful ordinance that we will have that will affect gun violence for us, as a city.”

Motion

Chestnut made a motion to adopt the ordinance on first reading, and there were multiple seconds. The motion passed unanimously.