Gainesville City Commission discusses changes in agenda publishing, lists their priorities for the next year

The Gainesville City Commission met for their annual retreat on Jan. 23

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Gainesville City Commission held its annual retreat today at the Hogtown Creek Headwaters Nature Park and discussed publishing meeting agendas a day later than the current schedule. Each commissioner also had to opportunity to list their priorities for the next year.

After listening to their keynote speaker, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, in the morning (you can click here to watch the speech, but the audio quality is poor), the Commission came back in the afternoon to discuss several items.

Proposed changes to the agenda publishing schedule

The proposed rule changes, which will be voted on at a future meeting, mainly changed the deadlines for publishing agenda information.

Currently, agenda items must be submitted to the Clerk by 11 a.m. on the Tuesday of the week before regular Commission meetings, the draft agenda must be published internally by 10 a.m. on the Tuesday of the week before the meeting, final agenda items and back-up information must be submitted by 5 p.m. on the Wednesday of the week before the meeting, and the final agenda is published by noon on the Friday before the meeting. 

The new rules move everything one day later, with agenda items submitted by 10 a.m. on the Wednesday of the week before the meeting, the draft agenda published in the early afternoon of that day, final agenda items and back-up information submitted by 5 p.m. on Thursday, and the final agenda published on Monday.

There are no changes to the Agenda Review meeting, which is held on Wednesday of the week before the meeting.

Deadlines for General Policy Committee agendas are similarly moved forward a day, with the agendas published on Monday instead of the previous Friday. 

The changes can be viewed here.

City Clerk Kristen Bryant said the changes would take some pressure off her staff and noted that as soon as the agenda is created in their system, Commissioners and staff can access it. On the City’s public-facing website, the draft agenda is typically attached to the Agenda Review meeting, which is held on the Wednesday of the week before a Commission meeting, but that agenda does not have any backup material attached; under the new proposal, the backup material, which is now public by noon on Friday, would not be public until the Monday before the meeting. Bryant said that if there are any changes to the agenda after it is published on Monday, it will be re-published on Wednesday (this is currently done on Tuesday). 

Bryant said this would “still allow for adequate time for our community to be involved and engaged with the agenda… [and] kind of more accurately reflects the workflow that we’ve been able to observe in the Clerk’s office.” She said the document was just a proposal.

Commissioners prefer that the agenda continue to be published on Friday

Commissioner Ed Book said he would probably oppose moving the publication of the agenda from Friday to Monday “because that’s actually not minor.” He said that means members of the public only have three days instead of six days to adjust their schedules to be at a meeting if there is an item that concerns them. 

Bryant said, “Just for clarity, the draft agenda is not moving on its publishing day” because it will still be posted to the Agenda Review meeting on Wednesdays. However, it is not obvious to the public that the draft agenda can be found attached to the previous week’s Agenda Review meeting, as opposed to the City Commission meeting itself.

Mayor Ward: “The agenda is not the agenda until we adopt it at the beginning of the meeting.”

Mayor Harvey Ward interjected, “The agenda is not the agenda until we adopt it at the beginning of the meeting.” He said Alachua County publishes their agendas on the Friday before their Tuesday meetings, “so we do provide more transparency to the community… than most governmental organizations surrounding us, if not all.”

Draft agenda published on Wednesday does not have backup material

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said that the draft agenda published to the Agenda Review meeting on the Wednesday before the meeting is “just really an outline… what you don’t necessarily see is the backup.” He said that having access to the backup material on Monday wouldn’t give him much time to ask questions.

Commissioner Casey Willits agreed that the public needs to see the backup material to prepare for the meeting.

Bryant said Commissioners have internal access to the backup material as soon as it is added, but multiple Commissioners seemed to be unaware of that. 

Bryant said she might “tweak” the process after speaking to the City Manager, but “previous clerks had done some tweaks that – our current systems are outside the rules that have been passed, and so I want to bring things into alignment.” City Manager Cynthia Curry said she agreed that agendas needed to be “added in a timely way, so that not only you all can review it, but the public can review it.”

Ward said Commissioners are often the ones who add backup material or an alternate motion in the last few days before a meeting, so “let’s not lock ourselves in; I think we’re probably asking for something with unintended consequences, so be careful of those.”

Eastman acknowledged that he is usually the one putting alternate motions into the backup, but he said he thought that was preferable to making them on the dais because even if they’re posted the day before the meeting, other Commissioners have a chance to review them before the meeting. 

Law only requires public notice of a meeting

City Attorney Daniel Nee said the only legal requirement is to have a publicly noticed meeting; there are no strict deadlines in the law about publishing the agenda. He said it’s most important for the Clerk and City Manager to have “a productive process to both of them. The rest of us can generally fall in line.” Nee said it’s not necessarily a problem for Commissioners to add backup material to the agenda after the deadlines because they have the right to bring that material up on the dais, but it’s preferable to give the other Commissioners some time to review it.

Ward suggested that Commissioners review the rules and communicate with the Manager and Clerk; he proposed taking up the rules again at their second meeting in February. 

Commissioner priorities

City Commissioner also had the opportunity to list their priorities for the next year.

Mayor Ward

Ward said he wanted to continue to make progress on the things that worked in 2024: “Sometimes when you’re in the middle of it, it’s hard to realize, but we got some really great work done as a City organization in 2024. Cutting the number of murders in half is phenomenal, and that happened not only because we really empowered and leaned on law enforcement, but every department did this, and lots of neighbors came to the table and did the work. So we have to keep leaning on that. 

“We have to keep leaning on Vision Zero, because, again, it’s working. It’s working to the point that it’s rare that we have a pedestrian or cyclist death, and that’s how we want it to be. We want it to be tragic and to get our attention when it happens. Instead of having 12 of them happen in a year, which is where we were four years ago, last year we had four, and because of the public consciousness we brought to it and because of the re-engineering of some of our roads, including University Avenue throughout – there’s a lot more to be done, but the work that has been done is saving lives.”

Two pedestrians were killed by cars in the first two days of 2025.

Ward said one of his big priorities is “to get Citizens Field/MLK moving.” He said he wanted to “make some decisions and get a shovel in the ground” and get something started in 2025.

Ward continued, “The other thing, just more generally, that I want to do is make sure that we get serious about economic development, not only telling the story about what we are actually doing for economic development but making plans to move forward. It’s about jobs. It’s about a vibrant city economy, and that means jobs. It means convenience of commercial options, which means it’s easy to go get and buy things and get to the places where we get to buy things, and to have some jingle in your pocket to be able to go buy things.”

Commissioner Book

Book said his priorities are in five areas:

  • Keep the property tax millage flat and invest any funds from increased property values into staff;
  • Economic development in the downtown area, the NE 8th Avenue corridor, and the Newberry Road/Oaks Mall corridor;
  • Public safety support, including gun and personal violence and traffic violence and policies and funding that support police, fire, and public works;
  • Roads;
  • Community and Commission professionalism, civility and compassion – the way Commissioners treat each other on the dais, to set an example.

Commissioner Chestnut

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut said she wanted to see “a shovel in the ground this year” for Citizens Field. She wants to partner with the School Board to prepare students for high-tech jobs. She’s interested in promoting home ownership for the working poor and continuing the holiday parade. 

Commissioner Duncan-Walker

Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker said her priorities are public safety, “but specifically the tremendous work that we’ve been able to accomplish in that gun violence space; I really want to see us strengthen the Alliance” and “keep it community-centered.”

Her second priority is equitable development, including creating a map of resources such as healthcare facilities: “We know East Gainesville needs these resources, but for us to be able to see this on the map is something that I’m currently working on.”

Duncan-Walker wants to pursue opportunities for healthcare expansion in East Gainesville, along with engaging young people in more meaningful ways, such as creating a Youth Commission: “We have way too many conversations about issues that impact them directly that they’re not even a part of.” She also wants to pursue more “partnerships, in general” and strengthen those partnerships. 

Her other priorities are a Cultural Arts Center and developing a pipeline for young people to get jobs with the City, including apprenticeships. 

Commissioner Eastman

Eastman said he was thinking about ways to support small businesses: “it’s probably time for us to sort of look at – what are the rules and restrictions that we’re putting on small businesses; people are opening up these new shops, how the permitting process is going,… because we just don’t have as much money as we used to in terms of being able to do cultural events… as a City, and I think making sure the community can support, you know, local entrepreneurs that are moving into those same spaces, is something I’d like to see us work on.”

He said that if the City regains control of GRU, “as a Commission, [we] have to show that we are committed toward a production plan, that we are committed to affordable energy. All the things that we have been criticized for, as related to this – that we take very strong and decisive action,… and we take very seriously the criticisms, and we’re going to do it a different way as it relates to GRU so that we are not back in the same situation that we were in, you know, this past time.” He said they would likely need to cut their budget again if they do not regain control of the utility.

Eastman said the next year will be “very roads-heavy,” along with a mobility fee discussion and the Bicycle Pedestrian Master Plan, and he wants to push for greenspace trails and for equitable development in southwest Gainesville: “We have very poor infrastructure in southwest Gainesville. We have very little access to parks, very little access to a lot of different things.”

Commissioner Ingle

Commissioner James Ingle wanted to address affordable housing, learning more about “what levers we can pull to make that happen.” He wants economic development to be “pushed down to workers, as well,… whether it’s apprenticeship programs… [or making sure] we’ve got a workforce that can afford to live here.”

His third priority is “a pretty simple idea that I think will save us a bunch of money, just by changing the retirement structure for the City Commission.”

Commissioner Willits

Willits wanted firm commitments for the City’s affordable housing funds; a park in southwest Gainesville, possibly paid for with fund balance; more frequent updates on budget matters, particularly with the uncertainty of whether they will govern GRU; bringing back some of the RTS routes that were recently cut; and working toward fairness for renters and apartment dwellers, particularly making sure the mobility fee “doesn’t unfairly impact just apartment dwellers” and not “putting the burden of our goals and budgets on apartments and renters.” 

  • “Head” waters…how appropriate.

    Before you liberals object, wipe your chin.

  • Maybe this illiterate group should meet monthly to slow down and somehow begin to minimize their carnage on the citizens and community. They are way past just simply doing the basic requirements of running a City. They are in Control Freak Mode. Why oh why do they continue down the path of failure? Because that’s what Woke Democrats do and excel at!

  • Good God…”affordable housing” yet again. Best thing government can do it to take a look at permitting and regulations.

  • Where are the tax cuts for anyone of the new homeowners? Sorry, FJB Dems keep puking out statements people would like to hear, but no path to home ownership!

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