GRU Authority approves financial transactions, votes to move General Public Comment to the end of the meeting

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the February 18 GRU Authority meeting, the board responded to comments from the public, approved financial transactions to replenish capital project funds and refinance bonds, and voted for several changes to its Code of Business Conduct, including moving General Public Comment to the end of the meeting.

In response to a comment made during General Public Comment, CEO Ed Bielarski said the board has paid down close to $200 million in debt: “So that’s not a fictitious number; that’s a real number. And although we are asking for additional debt [later in the meeting], it’s a sawtooth type of process, and it was all planned this way, and it’s still part of the Debt Reduction Plan that was originally started at the City Commission… We’ve done better than what the City had planned, without base rate increases.” Chief Financial Officer Claudia Rasnick later clarified that GRU has paid down $177 million in debt.

In April 2023, the Gainesville City Commission adopted a formula for the General Fund Transfer that, combined with annual base rate increases through 2027 that were adopted in 2021, promised to cut the debt-to-capitalization rate for GRU from 87% to 70%, a reduction of $315 million in debt, by 2033. One of the assumptions in that formula was that GRU would borrow additional debt for capital projects over that time period, and those additional amounts of debt were factored into the calculations.

“People did not go without power” during hard freeze

During CEO Comments, Bielarski responded to commenters who said GRU’s facilities are dirty and out of date, and he praised GRU’s employees for maintaining power during the hard freeze in January, even though the Kelly plant is in a planned outage: “In spite of [the outage of almost 100 MW of capacity], in spite of all this talk about obsolete equipment, equipment that’s not worth keeping, all that, we’re one of the only utilities in the state of Florida that didn’t have to ask our customers to shed load. There were some Publix [stores] that were asked to run on generator power in some areas because the utility couldn’t provide them power. That didn’t happen in Gainesville with our equipment. It isn’t filthy, and it isn’t old. It’s been retrofitted. It’s been maintained like somebody would a classic car.”

Bielarski also said that when the price of gas soared in early February, “we didn’t have to buy it because of the diversity of our fuel. And part of that was ramping up DH2 to 160 megawatts, running on coal. We also ran the biomass plant. So people did not go without power. So our plan worked and will continue to work.” He added that the utility actually sold some power during that period.

Regarding the biomass plant, Bielarski said that one of his first tasks when he became General Manager of GRU in 2015 was to negotiate a buy-out for the plant’s Power Purchase Agreement, and “I like to run it as much as I can. It’s not a low-cost unit. So whenever we have these opportunities to run it, it’s great, but if we ran it all the time, it would cost millions of dollars to customers. So for people that come and toot the horn of the biomass plant, be careful, because it has its use. It’s just like using coal at DH2 — we don’t want to run it all the time. It’s there as an emergency, and both those plants give us base load capabilities.”

Regarding the fuel adjustment charge, which was increased in February when natural gas prices went up, Bielarski said it will increase again in March, to replenish the fuel levelization fund; he said other utilities will have to make similar price adjustments, “but after we’re through that period of time, then you get back to normal operations.”

“It’s not within your power to sell the utility”

In response to a comment from a member of the public who said the board’s “unspoken plan is to weaken GRU over time… and ultimately sell the utility at a bargain to a private company,” Director David Haslam asked Bielarski to confirm that the Authority cannot sell the utility. Bielarski responded, “That’s correct. If the utility were to be sold, it would have to be a referendum vote by the people… It’s not within your power to sell the utility.”

Resolutions

The board approved two resolutions. The first one authorized staff to apply for funds from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection that would allow the utility to invest in wastewater infrastructure with a loan that is 100% forgivable. The funding is a supplemental appropriation for Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the Hawaii Wildfires and was established by Congress in 2024 through the American Relief Act. GRU could receive about $19 million if the application is approved, and the proposed projects include improvements to wastewater lift stations and force mains.

The second resolution authorized Bielarski or the Chief Financial Officer to execute financial transactions to replenish the fund used for capital projects and refinance bonds that will expire in May and June. The resolution also asked the Gainesville City Commission to adopt a parallel resolution; if they failed to approve the transactions, GRU would have to find about $250 million to pay off those bonds. Bielarski said the resolution is “business as normal, unfortunately conducted in an unusual situation” because of uncertainty about the Authority’s future.

During the discussion of this agenda item, Rasnick responded to previous questions from the public about GRU’s external audit: “GRU has an annual audit; it’s completed by Baker Tilly… The deadline is March 31, unless you get an extension… We’re issuing [the audit] today,… and once it’s issued, it will be posted on the website.”

The resolution passed unanimously.

[Editor’s note: The Gainesville City Commission approved the financial transactions this evening in a 6-0 vote; we will cover this in a future article.]

Code of Business Conduct

The last item of business was a new Code of Business Conduct for the Authority. Attorney Derek Perry said he worked with Haslam to make some changes to the Code that was adopted in 2023:

• Change the speaking time from three minutes to two minutes per speaker during public comment;
• Add Chair Comments, Member Comments, CEO Comments, and Attorney Comments to the agenda template;
• Move General Public Comment to the end of the meeting, with a time limit of 30 minutes.

Perry also suggested using speaker sign-up forms, and Haslam supported the idea. Perry reminded the board that they can update the Code at any time if they find that the new rules aren’t working. 

Haslam liked the idea of moving General Public Comment to the end because he has previously complained about people who make the same comments at every meeting but don’t stay to hear the board’s response: “Other than the faithful few, everybody’s cleared out. They’ve said things that possibly aren’t true or misdirected or whatever else, and they didn’t get to hear the whole meeting.” He thought two minutes was fine for General Public Comment, but he supported leaving comments on agenda items at three minutes. 

Director Jack Jacobs also supported moving General Public Comment to the end; he was “on the fence” about reducing public comment time to two minutes and suggested leaving it at three minutes but having the option to reduce it if there are a lot of people signed up to speak. Perry said the Chair already has the authority to do that. 

Director Chip Skinner favored leaving the time at three minutes unless a lot of people are signed up to speak. 

Motion on Code of Business Conduct

Haslam made a motion to move General Public Comment to the end and have a sign-up sheet; his motion did not include changing the speaking time from three minutes to two minutes. The motion also asked staff to make any changes necessary to clean up the existing Code and bring back the final copy for approval. 

During public comment on the motion, Chuck Ross opposed moving General Public Comment to the end because “people come here to speak about their concerns, and some people want to go home with their family, and that’s just the way it is. It’s not always just to walk out on this board.”

Nancy Deren also felt strongly that General Public Comment should stay near the beginning of the meeting. She added, “This seems like yet another effort to remove the public from our publicly-owned utility and silence our voices and concerns.”

Jeff Fitzgerald, who said it was his first Authority meeting, also said that moving General Public Comment to the end is “pretty transparently an attempt to prevent people from speaking — or hearing things that you don’t like. I think that’s unfair.”

After public comment, Haslam responded, “To be clear, we’re not taking away public comment. We’re putting public comment at the end, so people will still be able to comment, and hopefully they’ll stay and get informed.”

Jacobs agreed that it is not “an effort to avoid public comment, but to educate the public.”

Skinner agreed that they “are not limiting your comment at all,… and we always have emails. Our emails are public… We can always change this back if it is not working.”

The motion passed unanimously.