Gainesville City Commissioners postpone City Manager search, agree to sell 27 acres to GRACE Marketplace for $1

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the October 23 General Policy Committee meeting, the Gainesville City Commission postponed a search for a new City Manager and agreed to sell 27 acres to GRACE Marketplace for $1.

City Manager search

Human Resources Director Laura Graetz said considerations on the timing of the City Manager search include a pending report from the State’s DOGE audit and the upcoming Special Election to decide the governance of GRU, along with litigation around that referendum and the 2024 referendum. She said the costs for a search could range from $22,000 to just under $100,000, and the search would take about 16 to 20 weeks. She also reminded Commissioners that four City Commission seats will be on the ballot in 2026. She suggested waiting until at least January to start the search, but if Commissioners want the new Commissioners to be part of the process, they may want to wait until later in 2026. She concluded, “So if we were to start the search around August, that would give us an opportunity to see how the first round of elections [goes], and then give an opportunity to those candidates to be part of the process and determining what’s the kind of person we’re looking for in our City Manager and then be part of that selection process.” She said that would also allow staff to complete the FY2027 budget before the search.

Mayor Harvey Ward said he thought it was important for the City Manager applicants “to have an opportunity to see who they’re going to be working for.”

Commissioner James Ingle said he preferred waiting until the new Commissioners are sworn in, in January 2027, before making the decision about which applicant to hire, so he suggested starting the process in October or November of 2026. 

Commissioner Casey Willits said that by the first week of November 2026, the Commissioners would be set, and even though they would not be sworn in until January, they could review resumes and attend interviews. 

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut said she did “not have a problem starting the whole process in January 2027,… and then move through that year… When new Commissioners come on board, it takes them a while to really get acclimated.”

Ward said, “This is not a decision that we have to make today… My thought would be, let’s have time pass and then just see where we are, toward the end of the first quarter of next year.”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said they should set a date for Graetz to bring this back, and he suggested March 2026.

Ward said they didn’t have a motion on the table and didn’t have to take action, but Graetz would come back to them in March to discuss the search again.

Selling 27 acres to GRACE Marketplace for $1

The next agenda item was a discussion about transferring 27 acres of land with 15 single-story buildings, appraised at $4.6 million, to GRACE Marketplace for $1. The property was originally developed in 1991 as a State of Florida correctional institute, was declared as surplus property by the State in 2013, and was transferred to the City at no cost. 

City Manager Andrew Persons said that if the City Commission wanted to proceed with transferring the property, staff would bring back a resolution to declare the property as surplus and transfer it to GRACE. 

Persons showed a map with the two parcels – one where GRACE is currently sited, and one to the west (north is up on the map). Persons emphasized that the property has a reverter clause dating back to the transfer from the State to the City, requiring it to be used as a Continuum of Care facility, so it can only be used for homeless services. He said the transfer would be mutually beneficial because, as the property owner, the City has spent about $1.5 million in maintenance and improvement of the property over the past five years, on top of the money paid to GRACE for homeless services. By transferring the property, GRACE would assume the responsibility for these costs while adding the property as an asset. Under the agreement, the City would retain ownership of NE 28th Drive, but GRACE would maintain the entrance road. 

Ward said this would be a “cost savings, it seems like, to the City of Gainesville” and GRACE would be able to make improvements “far less expensively” than the City could.

Eastman said one benefit to GRACE would be that it could qualify for more grants if it had more assets on the books, and it would have control over its facilities: “It’s a classic win-win.”

Motion

Chestnut said she initially had some concerns about the transfer, but understanding that the property can only be used for homeless services made her comfortable with it. She made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation to bring back a resolution to declare the property as surplus and transfer it to GRACE.

Ward asked a GRACE representative what percentage of GRACE’s total budget comes from the City, and the answer was that it’s about 36% of the organization’s $5.1 million budget, which includes in-kind donations. 

The motion passed unanimously, with Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker absent.