Gainesville City Commission raises residential trash collection fees by 20%, sends “strongly worded letter” to the GRU Authority about recent bills, joins amicus brief against NIH policy restricting indirect costs

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

Updated at 2 p.m. on February 25 with public record received from City of Gainesville

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their February 20 meeting, the Gainesville City Commission increased residential trash collection fees by 20%, passed a resolution supporting prohibitions on the use of wireless devices while driving, voted to send a “strongly worded letter” to the GRU Authority about errors in recent bills, voted to join an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit to restore NIH funding for indirect costs, and added the Florida Theater to the local Register of Historic Places.

Hands-free resolution

After approving a preliminary design for the Streatery, Commissioners took up resolution to support HB 501, which extends the current civil traffic prohibitions against texting and driving to most uses of wireless devices while driving, with exceptions.

Commissioner Casey Willits said, “I think our society has to go one step further and say that you just can’t have the phone in your hand. You just need to put it down.”

Willits made the motion to approve the resolution, Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker seconded it, and the vote to approve it was unanimous, with Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut participating via Zoom. 

Complaints about solid waste fees on recent GRU bills

The Commission next took up a second reading of an ordinance to increase residential trash collection fees by 20%, but before they discussed the ordinance, Commissioner Bryan Eastman asked about “a number of questions” he had received about “solid waste fees and stormwater fees on the utility bills this month.”

Public Works Director Brian Singleton said the City works with GRU as its billing partner for solid waste and stormwater fees, and “basically, with their dynamic scheduler, something happened where some bills were prorated in the prior year, where there were some underpayments, so the system is catching up on those. However, some of those bills are erroneous, as there were no prior prorations.” He said GRU is going through the bills methodically and will issue credits where credits are due, “but some of the bills are valid. Some of them are erroneous. They have 20,000 accounts to go through.” He said GRU has been working with him on the issue and keeping him up to date on their progress.

Eastman asked when residents will see the 20% increase in solid waste fees, and Singleton said the effective date of the ordinance is April 1. 

Eastman said his trash bill was 26% higher on his latest bill, and his stormwater was about 30% higher: “It was like four or five bucks, in total.”

Singleton responded, “We’ve seen some as little as 5% difference, some as much as a 50% difference. But it all is related to their dynamic scheduler. Again, some of them are correct.”

GRU CEO Ed Bielarski told Alachua Chronicle that GRU is working on the problem and that the dynamic scheduler software was selected and set up by the City before the governance of GRU was transferred to the GRU Authority. The dynamic scheduler software makes sure that customers only get 12 bills a year, even when the meter reading schedule varies from month to month, and this can mean that solid waste and stormwater charges are pro-rated. Getting an extra bill in a year would add an extra month of customer charges for each utility service used by the customer.

Mayor Harvey Ward said he had planned to bring up the issue during Commission Comment and continued, “I have major concerns about this,… and we may as well have that conversation now… It isn’t a problem that we’ve had in the past, as far as I know… I’ve had lots of people reach out to me; this is not a small thing. It’s a small thing for one bill on one month, but that adds up pretty quickly when we talk about tens of thousands of accounts.” He said he thought GRU was showing “a lack of urgency in getting it addressed.”

Ward continued, “I’d like you to direct me to send a letter to the GRU Authority, asking them for some written detail about exactly what’s going on here.”

Willits made a motion to ask Ward to send the letter, and Eastman seconded the motion. 

Commissioner James Ingle asked whether the contract for the billing services included something “where, if they’re not performing what they’re supposed to be performing, there’s… some sort of penalty… It seems like there should be something besides a strongly worded letter.”

Singleton responded that the Memorandum of Understanding for the billing “does not address performance. I will say that the GRU staff has been very communicative with me. They have a lot of accounts to go through… They have assured me credits will be issued for any account that was billed erroneously.” He said the City pays $800,000 to GRU for the billing services.

Ward said, “Mistakes happen, I get that, but there’s nothing on their website indicating to customers that there’s a recognition of a problem. I had hoped that this would be addressed at the GRU Authority’s meeting last week, but nobody said anything… I feel like if we don’t send a strongly worded letter to begin with [when an issue arises], we don’t ever get further down the road.”

The motion passed unanimously.

20% increase for residential trash collection

Eastman made a motion to approve the ordinance raising residential trash collection fees by 20% on second reading, and Duncan-Walker seconded it. The motion passed unanimously in a roll call vote, with Chestnut participating via Zoom. 

Amicus brief supporting lawsuit challenging NIH cuts to indirect costs

In the evening session, Ward said he had placed an item on the agenda for the City to join an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit that challenged recent cuts in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. Ward said that the NIH “and a variety of other federal institutions have slashed funding recently, and I believe arbitrarily made a lot of changes to the way funding is apportioned.” He said the University of Florida (UF) could lose between $30 million and $70 million this fiscal year due to the new policy, which limits “indirect costs,” or overhead expenses, to 15% of a grant. UF’s indirect costs for organized research are 52.5%.

Ward continued, “This goes directly to salaries and support operations that also pay salaries right here in Gainesville.” He said the American Association of Universities and “and a long list” of other universities sued the federal government, and “people at the City of Boston” reached out to ask if the City of Gainesville would sign on to the amicus brief. Since the deadline was Wednesday, Ward said he signed on as “Harvey Ward, Mayor of Gainesville.” Alachua Chronicle’s public records request to the City of Gainesville for any documents sent by Ward to sign on to the lawsuit received a response that there were no responsive records. [Update: after this article was published, we received an email in which Mayor Ward corresponded with the Public Rights Project and the Chief of Policy and Strategic Planning at the City of Boston to ensure that he was listed as “Harvey L. Ward, Mayor, City of Gainesville, Florida” on the amicus brief.]

Ward said there may be an opportunity to update the amicus brief, “and if there is, I would love to have… the City of Gainesville to sign on to this brief, as well. And even if we can’t, I would love to have your support for the decision.”

Ingle said, “You’re gonna have all kinds of strongly worded letters to write this week.” He asked for clarification that there was no cost to signing on to the amicus brief and made a motion for the City of Gainesville “to participate in this.” Duncan-Walker seconded the motion.

In response to a question from Commissioner Ed Book, Ward said that UF had not signed on to the amicus brief and “I assume there are lots of complicated political reasons for that.”

Willits, who said he works in a UF department that receives grants, said, “My understanding of this indirect cost – it’s called ‘indirect’ because if it was easy to say, ‘This supports this,’ it would be included in the grant – … [In] a modern, 2025, research institution, it takes a lot more than just the money that goes directly to the Principal Investigator… It’s everything that goes into a university… or other research center… I think it’s a little terrifying because they don’t know who they’re going to have to cut at this point… I figure that my job is on the line there because I work in the College of Medicine; I’m an indirect… I support researchers.”

City Attorney Dan Nee said there is no legal risk or liability associated with joining an amicus brief.

Willits suggested asking the City’s federal lobbyist to add this as a priority because it’s the City’s job to “advocate on behalf of the entire economic region… These jobs here at UF are just so important for the whole region.” He said he would also like Ward to write the region’s Congressional representatives in the House and Senate and ask them to oppose the policy. 

The motion passed unanimously, with Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut absent.

Florida Theater added to the local Register of Historic Places

The last agenda item was the unanimous approval of the nomination of the Florida Theater to the local Register of Historic Places.