Gainesville City Commission moves forward with proposed Gun Violence Task Force but with “minimum impact to staff”

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the June 22 General Policy Committee meeting, the Gainesville City Commission voted to move forward with a Gun Violence Task Force but was hesitant to lead the effort because of budget and staff limitations.

The discussion followed up on a motion made by Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker at the February 2 City Commission meeting. The motion asked staff to draft a resolution declaring gun violence as a public health crisis in the City of Gainesville, ask the County to draft a similar resolution (the resolution has been drafted but not yet voted on), “advance and lay a foundation for convening a Gun Violence Task Force,” and ask staff for more information on ways the City can address gun violence.

Following a staff presentation about other communities that have set up Gun Violence Task Forces, Duncan-Walker said she was “very, very excited about how we are able to pull in, galvanize, create some synergy amongst institutional partners, nonprofits, individuals who all know that this has to be an all-hands-on-deck approach.” She said she also hoped the task force would provide leadership opportunities for youth and young people: “When you give them leadership opportunities is really when you see them shine.”

“May not be the most effective way to deal with gun violence”

Commissioner Ed Book said a task force “may not be the most effective way to deal with gun violence in isolation because merely standing up a task force takes time and effort and partners, where everybody’s already doing some things. Clearly, the work needs to be done, there’s no doubt about that. I’m not sure the task force would be as quick and operational as you may be considering.” Book said the upcoming Gainesville Gun Violence Summit may be a good opportunity to identify partners and learn what’s already being done.

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut favored letting it “rise up from the ground instead of us trying to impose it from the top.” She said that City staff already have a heavy workload, and she didn’t seem to favor adding the task force to that. Instead, she thought the Children’s Trust would be the appropriate agency to lead the effort. She added, “I don’t think this is something for the Black on Black Crime Task Force because all gun violence is not black on black.” She also pointed out that only two members of the Public Safety Committee were at the meeting where the task force was discussed (Commissioner Reina Saco was absent) and said, “I’d like to see the full Public Safety Committee flesh this out.”

“The longer we wait, the more people will be injured”

Mayor Harvey Ward said, “First, I will say that it is ironic, if not entirely Kafkaesque, that we have conversations about gun violence while pretending that guns aren’t the problem. But the State of Florida, that is what it is, and we are preempted from passing any rule, ordinance, or law relating to firearms or ammunition.” Ward said he didn’t want to wait because “the longer we wait, the more people will be injured… the more families will be shattered,” but he also didn’t “want to do something just to do something; I want to make sure that what we do is exactly the right thing.”

Ward said the City had picked up things over several decades “where if something wasn’t being done, the City of Gainesville picked it up. If there was an unmet need in the community, the City of Gainesville, very honorably, raised our hands and said, ‘This is ours, we’ll pick it up, we’ll figure out how to make this happen’–to the point that we are overstressed, we do more things than most huge cities do.” He said the County, the Children’s Trust, the University of Florida, Santa Fe College, and Alachua County Public Schools all need to “stand up and say ‘We are part of this.’… Even if we end up being the direction behind it, we’ve got to hold everybody else accountable.”

Ward said he wasn’t ready to make a decision that day, “other than ‘Let’s move forward.’… And I totally own the fact that by saying we’re not going to make a decision today, more families are going to be victims of gun violence. I get that. And that is awful. But I, again, don’t want us to make the wrong decision because we feel pressure to make a decision.”

“To me, there’s really not an option to not do it”

Duncan-Walker asked the Clerk to show the February motion again (see above) “because it sounds like this is a little bit different from the direction we’re headed in today.” She said that “advance and lay a foundation” for convening a task force “aren’t the words that I remember, but that’s okay.” She added, “To me, there’s really not an option to not do it” and said she never intended for the task force to be “very top-heavy… this has always been about the people, period.”

Duncan-Walker said she is interested in how other local governments are approaching the issue: “From my understanding, we are still working on trying to get both, if not at least one Demings [former Congresswoman Val Demings and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings] to come and speak [at the Gun Violence Summit], and it would be my hope that they could tell us how to do this [in Orange County]. Because based on what I’ve read… they’re doing it successfully.”

She said that while community organizations should “rise up and take the lead,” the City should “provid[e] some sort of impetus and push forward… I don’t think that you declare something as a crisis and just leave it there.”

“However we address things, it’s got to be prevention, education, intervention, enforcement, those are your four pillars”

Commissioner Ed Book said it was “very, very wise” of the commission to say gun violence is a public health crisis because “it opens up many more opportunities for many other organizations” to contribute. He suggested adding the Alachua County Medical Society to the list “because they have such a wide breadth of network.” Book, however, said the justice system should be “hardcore with the people who are victimizing others… However we address things, it’s got to be prevention, education, intervention, enforcement, those are your four pillars.”

Ward said he believes the Gun Violence Summit will be “a turning point for the community, it is an opportunity for the community to have tremendous input and for us to hear from policymakers in a variety of other venues.”

Saco, who was participating remotely, said she was also not ready to make a decision on a task force because “extra tasks would be a further weight on [our staff’s] already overstretched resources. That said, I do agree we need to do something.” She favored asking staff what format would work best for them and maybe looking at a model like the Central Receiving Facility, where “everybody had some tasks to take back to their respective organizations or groups.”

Saco supported including the Children’s Trust “because young people are becoming engaged in this. But a lot of our violence is not committed exclusively by young people. Violence doesn’t turn off when you go from 19 to 20. So I think it would have to be a much more broad approach and holistic approach because it’s not any one particular demographic, age, race, or otherwise, that is having these issues.”

Chestnut suggested inviting Alachua County Public Schools and other potential partners to the City’s joint meeting with the Alachua County Commission on August 28. She added, “[Moms Demand Action has] not been mentioned, but they definitely need to be at every table when we gather.” Ward said he’s also trying to get the Every Town national group involved in the Summit.

Desmon-Walker pointed out that the school district was invited to the Public Safety Committee meeting but was unable to attend; she said Superintendent Shane Andrew “has completely bought into the idea” of working with partners on addressing gun violence. She said she wanted to reconsider ending the Interrupters program, which was funded by a grant that is ending. She added that the Children’s Trust “has moved safety up in their strategic plan, on their list of priorities” and that they may bring some money that “would be very helpful.”

“[Kids] need to have the microphone”

Desmon-Walker said there will be a youth town hall on the first day of the Summit “because we do too much talking from the diocese… and we talk about the kids all the time. But they need to have the microphone, and they need to be informing and shaping policy and rules and guidelines and regulations.”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said the issue is “overwhelming, trying to figure out how to reduce something like violence when everyone has access to a gun right on their hip whenever they’re angry, whenever there’s a fight… What can you meaningfully do?”

Duncan-Walker said she didn’t want any members of the task force to be appointed: “I don’t like that. It needs to be open. I think we can identify our institutional partners because that’s something that’s very specific. But when you start talking about individuals from the community, or even community organizations themselves, that needs to be an open and organic process; they need to be empowered to lead this in various ways.”

Ward clarified that the City has not “cut the budget for the Interrupters; that was a grant-funded program that is ending. The grant is ending. It is not something we had in our budget.”

Another look at the open container ordinance

Book said that although they can’t pass gun ordinances, they can pass “ordinances that overlap with gun violence, or violence in general, and crime. We have a nuisance prevention ordinance that needs to be built out a little more significantly than what it is right now because you cannot have a business that has violence in their operation all the time, and yet that’s not a component of the ordinance.” He also said they should look again at the open container ordinance, and Ward said some changes to that ordinance will be coming back to the commission in late July or early August; Andrew Persons, sitting in for the City Manager, said a draft ordinance will be presented to the commission on July 28.

Motion to meet with the County and ask staff to propose a format for the task force

Duncan-Walker made a motion to “agenda a conversation about partnership opportunities and a task force discussion with the County and that we direct staff to bring back a format for a task force with minimum impact to staff.”

Ward pointed out, “If we name anybody to [the task force], it is a Sunshine Board. The more we have to do with the structure of it, the more it becomes probably a Sunshine Board. The less we have to do with–if we just kind of roll it down the hill, it probably can pick up steam on its own and make its own rules, but the more we have to do with the initial structure, the less nimble it’s going to be… Not saying that one or the other is better.”

Chestnut wanted the motion to reflect that, so Duncan-Walker added “and options” to the end of the above motion: “Agenda a conversation about partnership opportunities and a task force discussion with the County and that we direct staff to bring back a format for a task force with minimum impact to staff and options.”

The vote to approve the motion was unanimous.