Gainesville City Commission hears IT update, sets timeline for Comprehensive Plan adoption, and schedules one-way pairs discussion

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the November 13 General Policy Committee meeting, the Gainesville City Commission heard an update on their IT agreement with GRU, set a timeline for adopting their Comprehensive Plan update, and scheduled a discussion on two streets that are slated to become one-way pairs after several Commissioners said they were unaware of the project, which was approved by the Commission in September.

IT Service Level Agreement with GRU

Ed Nagy, Technology Director for the City of Gainesville, said that after Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) significantly increased the costs for providing IT services to General Government, the City hired Berry Dunn as a consultant, and Berry Dunn said the City could save 25% to 40% a year by creating an in-house IT support services team, after the initial setup costs. Nagy was hired in May, and he has negotiated a one-year Service Level Agreement (SLA) with GRU to cover the transition period. 

Nagy said the original estimate from GRU for Fiscal Year 2025 was $5.9 million, and that was reduced to $5.4 million; he said the agreement was “left unsigned, so the City didn’t really agree to that amount.” He said, however, that the City received the services listed in the agreement and paid the bill. For Fiscal Year 2026, the City agreed to pay $3.7 million to GRU for IT services; Nagy said the City will continue paying GRU for internet connectivity, “whether we’re independent or not,” along with General Government’s percentage of the Microsoft 365 licenses. Nagy concluded by saying the agreement positions the City “to be able to make a transition and have a better relationship with GRU, as we make those changes.”

In response to a question from Commissioner Ed Book, Nagy said the “savings” for FY2026 will help offset the costs of transitioning to in-house IT services: “That’s going to go into all the software and technology that we have to bring on board, the services that go along with that.”

Comprehensive Plan update

Before staff presented the Comprehensive Plan update, Mayor Harvey Ward said his recommendation was to “go over the whole thing today, not with a fine-tooth comb,… and then… [Commissioners can] put your concerns and questions together, meet with staff over the next month and a half or so, and then in January, let’s have another conversation about this… I don’t want to have 18 meetings about this. We really don’t have time to do that,… but we do clearly need to work through questions in this draft.” He suggested putting the Comprehensive Plan update on the agenda of the January 22 General Policy Committee meeting, and City Manager Andrew Persons asked Commissioners to submit their questions by December 13.

Click here to read the current draft of the Comprehensive Plan.

Sustainable Development Director Forrest Eddleton said the Comprehensive Plan is updated every 5-7 years, with both a 10-year and 20-year planning time frame, and it’s due for an update in May 2026. In response to a question from Commissioner Bryan Eastman, Eddleton said there are no major changes in future land use in the updated Plan. Ward added that the City of Gainesville typically views the Comprehensive Plan as a “vision document, and then the nuts-and-bolts document is the Land Development Code.”

During public comment, Peggy Carr and Kim Tanzer suggested asking for an extension from the State, given the tight timeline before the Plan must be approved in April to meet the May submittal deadline. Tanzer said, “[This document] is really important, and it’s important to get it right.” She said the Plan should have more data “so that you can tell in five years if you’re doing better or worse… There’s no indication of the number of housing units or the types of housing units in the document, so we don’t know how much housing we have, how much we’ve added, of which types, or where.” She said she believed Gainesville Neighborhood Voices would be willing to co-host meetings to go through each chapter of the Plan. 

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut said she would like to see another round of community engagement, given that previous community engagement meetings were held during COVID, and she supported involving Gainesville Neighborhood Voices in that process. She also supported seeking a delay in submitting the Plan to the State. However, Persons did not recommend delaying the submission of the Plan.

Ward said he expected “five to six public meetings” before the Plan is adopted, most likely at the April 17 meeting, and “there is space in there for many community groups… to hold a discussion or multiple discussions… I know the holidays are busy, but we can’t take two months of the year off the shelf. Most of the business world doesn’t do that, and we can’t do that. I believe there is time to fit this in.” He asked staff to bring a schedule of meetings, culminating in the April 17 approval meeting, to this week’s City Commission meeting.

One-way pairs of West 10th/12th Streets

During Commission Comment, Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker said she had participated in a community walk-through to look at the impacts of the one-way pairs projects that is planned for West 10th Street and West 12th Street. Persons confirmed that an informational meeting will be held for the public at the Santa Fe College Blount Center on December 2, “to get a better understanding of the process, the timeline, everything along those lines,” and he reminded Commissioners that they are scheduled to have a follow-up discussion about the project at this Thursday’s meeting.

Mayor Ward: “We have what I’m learning to call ‘bulldozer syndrome’: when we start to feel the rumble of the bulldozers, the meetings we didn’t go to become important.”

After Commissioner Casey Willits suggested postponing their discussion until after the December 2 public information meeting, Ward said, “I want us to be entirely clear-eyed about the fact that we voted on this a couple years ago… Money has been spent… We did outreach prior to that, but we have what I’m learning to call ‘bulldozer syndrome’: when we start to feel the rumble of the bulldozers, the meetings we didn’t go to become important… This is ARPA money. The clock is ticking on it… I think we need to stick to a timeline.”

City Manager Andrew Persons: “If, on the 4th, the Commission decides, ‘Oh, we’re not going to do this project,’ that would be a significant change for staff… Because this is, in part, an ARPA-funded project, we would have to reallocate funding to another Vision Zero project, and I don’t believe that we have a Vision Zero project that’s sort of ready to go.”

Duncan-Walker also said she’d like to move the discussion to December 4, and Ward said he was happy to do that. Persons said, “I do want to say that we do have a construction manager on board. They are ordering materials. We’re moving forward… If, on the 4th, the Commission decides, ‘Oh, we’re not going to do this project,’ that would be a significant change for staff… Because this is, in part, an ARPA-funded project, we would have to reallocate funding to another Vision Zero project, and I don’t believe that we have a Vision Zero project that’s sort of ready to go.”

After clarifying that the two-way pairs will run from SW 8th Avenue to NW 8th Avenue, Ward suggested that construction could start at the south end, “so the last block is a little more flexible.” Chief Operating Officer Brian Singleton said construction probably won’t start until January, “but like Mr. Manager said, subcontracts have been signed, materials have been ordered, materials are on the way.”

Duncan-Walker said she would like the City to do more to “ensure” that people have received the information sent when the public is notified about a project: “It’s one thing for us to say we sent it to you, but it’s a completely different thing for folks to really understand what’s going on.” Book agreed that he wanted to hear from the community and take another look at the traffic engineering data.

Construction contract was approved by Commissioners on Sept. 18, 2025

Chestnut asked when the project was approved, and Singleton said the design and planning started in 2022, but “it has been on your Vision Zero ARPA update each quarter, and then the construction agreement was approved at the second meeting in September.”

A contract with Oelrich Construction “for the construction and conversion of W 10th Street and W 12th Street to one-way pairs” was on the consent agenda of the September 18, 2025 City Commission meeting but was pulled from the consent agenda and discussed in the morning session of the meeting; the vote to approve the contract was 5-0, with Commissioners Book and Duncan-Walker absent.

Chestnut: “We’re going to have to pay a little bit better attention.”

Chestnut responded, “I’ve just been amazed this year at so many things that are coming forward that I was not aware that we had voted on and had approved. So I must have bulldozer syndrome, too, but we’re going to have to pay a little bit better attention.”

Ward said there will be many more votes as the 8th & Waldo projects approach and added, “I’m saying buckle down, because there’s a whole bunch more of that coming as we build things. As we make things real, there are going to be lots of last-minute concerns. That is what we’ve signed up for here.”