GRU Authority defends their governance of the utility, votes to challenge 2nd ballot referendum

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the June 11 meeting, the GRU Authority defended its governance of the utility and authorized the utility’s attorney to file a lawsuit challenging a November 2025 ballot referendum to return control of the utility to the City Commission.

Director comments

During the first Director Comments period, Director Jack Jacobs led off by countering comments from the public about the board being an unelected commission that doesn’t answer to the people: “I’ve never talked to anybody from Tallahassee since I’ve been elected. I’m on this board as a citizen and a customer of GRU; there’s nobody that’s told me how to vote… I’m here to make sure we can right the ship and pay off our debt.” He said he had “never talked with Ron DeSantis” or “anybody from Tallahassee since… they told me, ‘Congratulations, you’re on [the board]. Good luck. Hope you can straighten it out.'”

Jacobs continued, “By every single metric, GRU has improved over the last two years, since the board’s here. Our debt’s gone down, our interest rate’s gone down. We just got a bond rating approved… By every metric, everything’s improved. So how are you going to argue against it? How are you going to take the opposite side of what’s right in front of your face?… The only thing that went up was a 20% increase on our garbage pickup… That was implemented by the City Commission… You need to talk to your City Commissioners about that.”

Regarding the previous assertion from directors that students are not GRU customers, Jacobs said, “A lot of times it’s included in their rent, and they’re only temporary residents. They’re here for a year, two years, three years, and then they’re gone, but the policies they vote for stay here forever.”

Referring to a firefighter who came to last week’s City Commission meeting to talk about the conditions at the City’s fire stations, Jacobs said, “You’ve got to ask yourself: by that $750 million [GRU] has been giving [the City] over the past two decades, did your roads improve? No, the crime improved. We’ve got shootings almost every other weekend. The homeless situation improved; we’ve got homeless at every intersection here, begging for money, even though we’ve got some of the nicest facilities and resources for them to take advantage of, and we’ve still got the homeless everywhere – fecal matter, biohazards, tent cities. Nothing has improved… Where did that money go and who was the steward of using your money wisely?”

Director David Haslam said, “During my time on this board, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve listened a lot. I don’t always agree with all you guys. You guys think that means that I’m not listening. I am listening; I just don’t agree with a lot of what you’re trying to push on us.”

Haslam said the “horrible mess” he found when he joined the board was caused by “a lot of bad decisions made by multiple [City] Commissioners.” He also said he had never met the Governor or even spoken to the Governor: “The Governor doesn’t know me or care about me. You guys are silly. I wish I was that important. I’m not… I’m not beholden to some sort of big fossil fuel craziness. In fact, I love the outdoors, I love environmental stewardship… I hope we can conserve our resources; I hope we can take care of our local community… I’m your neighbor.”

Referring to comments about Authority meetings being “scary,” Haslam said, “I don’t understand how lowering bills by 25% is scary – or living within a budget… I mean, it might be scary for those who want to seize control of our piggy bank here at GRU, but it’s not a piggy bank. It’s taking care of our utilities, keeping our lights on. It’s keeping people employed, fed.”

Referring to a comment that power generation at GRU is in jeopardy, Haslam said, “That’s just not true. The IRP (Integrated Resource Plan) is a piece of paper. It’s a report. The skilled men and women of GRU are going to act on those plans, and I trust that they’re going to do the right job.”

Referring to multiple comments from Gainesville City Commissioner James Ingle that the City is being “robbed” by the Authority, Haslam said, “They’re mad at us because they can’t have the money that rightfully belongs to GRU to pay a horrible debt that, frankly, they created. Commissioner Ingle said he’s in favor of pretty much anything necessary to get control back. Well,… that right there is what’s scary, is when a politician says ‘anything necessary.’… The City Commission has been an abusive parent, in my opinion, to GRU; the State stepped in like social services would,… [saying,] ‘You’ve been beating [your child] for 20 years, so we’re going to take that child from you and [give it] to someone who respects it and wants to take care of that child and make that child healthy again.’… That’s what this is all about.”

Director Chip Skinner said, “I keep on telling people – I have zero contact [with Tallahassee].” He added that he still has an MOT (Maintenance of Traffic) certification and gave kudos to GRU for doing “a phenomenal” job in several big projects.

CEO Comments

During CEO Comments, CEO Ed Bielarski said, “I want you all to know that our nose is to the grindstone here.” He said GRU staff has finished the budget for the next year and is “gearing up for… various projects, not only at GRU, but with the City.” He said he is working on SLAs (Service Level Agreements) with the City Manager and her staff, and GRU will probably continue to use the City’s payroll services; he added that the City’s new IT director has asked for a “transitionary period,” so GRU and the City are working together on that. 

Bielarski continued, “[For] the boots on the ground, there’s not any animosity… It’s good for the City.” He said he’s been talking with the City about whether there is some “compromise solution” on moving trash pickup fees from the GRU bill to the property tax bill because the City will lose the ability to bill nonprofits if the fees are billed with property taxes: “We don’t want to hurt the City when it comes to any of those synergistic efforts that we’re making with shared services, and we’re going to continue to do that.”

Attorney comments

Attorney Scott Walker said his firm had provided “a little memorandum on what we can say and not say” to Authority members. “A major piece of the memorandum is, you don’t check your First Amendment rights at the door. You have the right to say the things that [directors] have been stating here this evening. And, you know, you have the right to get our message out, which is factual.”

Referring to Director Craig Carter’s last meeting as an Authority member, Walker said, “This service for the public is your finest hour, in my view, and what I’ve seen accomplished here, both in debt reduction, rate reduction, and the like, is exactly what House Bill 1645 is supposed to do.”

Attorney Kiersten Ballou said the firm has filed a Notice of Appeal with the First District Court of Appeals, challenging two of the rulings by Judge George Wright on the Authority’s lawsuit challenging the City’s 2024 ballot referendum to return control of GRU to the City Commission. 

Chair Eric Lawson thanked the attorneys for the memorandum and added, “It’s important for us, as board members, to be telling our story… and that we’re factual… The way I look at this is that it’s not so much what the board has done as the board… allowed the leadership to run itself and to make the right decisions, and we supported those right decisions. And so, you know, we are going to be out telling our story in every way that we can because everyone needs to understand what has been accomplished.”

Attorney Derek Perry briefly introduced himself as GRU’s full-time, in-house utilities attorney. He said, “I’m a resident property owner, I’m a father, I’m a husband, I love practicing law, and I look forward very much to representing the authority and working with Folds-Walker and Mr. Bielarski and all of the staff.”

TEA Resource Management Agreement

As part of GRU’s resignation as a member of The Energy Authority (TEA), both parties have signed a Resource Management Agreement in which GRU will have access to TEA’s portfolio of energy-related services such as power marketing and natural gas management. The agreement has a term of one year, with an effective date of August 1, 2025, and the services cost $91,500 per month, less than the $132,000 per month that GRU pays as a member of TEA.

By withdrawing from its member position, GRU received about $11.5 million in equity and eliminated $46 million in guarantees, a potential risk. 

Responding to a comment from the public about an ordinance that prohibits selling utility assets without a voter referendum, Bielarski said, “This is not a utility service that we’re getting from TEA. The other condition is, ‘The disposal must materially reduce the capacity of that system.’ Well, by definition, it doesn’t, in that we’re entering into a contract to provide that same service.”

During public comment on the motion to approve the agreement, Chuck Ross said he was concerned about the IRP “because [TEA] helped you prepare the IRP, it’s been paused,… and this is why I made a comment about the concern about future power generation.”

Bielarski responded that the IRP “is a plan. It hasn’t changed. It probably hasn’t changed substantially over the past decade. We’re looking for solar, if we can get it. We’re retrofitting our plants where we can, and we’re looking for RICE engines. This is not complicated. What’s complicated is actually getting the plants built, deciding where they’re to be built, developing those options… We’re not [doing something wrong.] We’ve stopped the constant iteration of the IRP, and it is what it is, and we’re moving toward that.”

The motion to approve the agreement passed unanimously.

Misinformation about GRU and GRUA

Bielarski thanked the directors for “jumping on board because that’s what educating the public is about.” He said GRU has dropped from the highest rates in the state in March 2023 to 14th out of 38 utilities in April 2025. 

Bielarski said he also asked for a list that included the co-ops (like Clay Electric), and on that list, GRU is 25th out of 52, close to the middle. He then went through a list of “fact versus fiction” slides in a presentation. Click here to see the presentation.

Responding to frequent statements that the Authority doesn’t listen to citizens, Bielarski said the meetings are advertised, open to public comment, and modeled after City Commission meetings; the directors’ emails are listed on GRU’s website, and listening doesn’t mean agreeing.

Responding to a criticism that future power generation is in jeopardy, Bielarski said that City Commission decisions have saddled GRU with almost $2 billion in debt, limiting generation options, and the solar deal “mutually dissolved due to repeated price/cost hikes.” Bielarski added that the utility is actively reducing carbon emissions by investing in modernization, gasification, and retrofits of diesel and coal units. 

Responding to Commissioner Ingle’s statements that the Authority is robbing the City by randomly cutting the General Fund Transfer (GFT), Bielarski said that City Commission decisions have reduced GRU’s profits, “which necessarily reduce what GRU can transfer to the City.” He said that 95% of GRU’s profits have gone to the City since 2000, which led to debt service that required a 2021 City Commission Resolution to increase electric and wastewater rates annually until 2027, and the reduction of the GFT was necessary to pay down debt (accrued under the City Commission) and satisfy bond rating agencies.

Bielarski said Ingle’s comment was “malicious… It assumes that the City is entitled to GRU customer money, [and] over four years, from 2018 to 2021, they took more money than GRU actually made.”

Responding to statements that the City and GRU are in a position unlike any utility in America, Bielarski said the City Commission’s management resulted in debt levels that are four times the ideal levels. He showed a chart with the ratios of outstanding debt to operating revenue of all Florida municipal utilities (below). Bielarski added, “House Bill 1645 was not punitive; it was protective of all GRU customers. The State performed a rescue mission… to save the utility from the City Commission’s mismanagement of its resources.”

Responding to statements that the City Commission is needed to bring stability to GRU, Bielarski said the 2024 ballot referendum “fueled uncertainty,” and a pending 2025 ballot referendum “has investors concerned about the utility’s ability to issue debt for operations.” He also pointed out that the language in the 2025 referendum would change the City’s Charter to remove existing limitations on the GFT, which could “challenge GRU’s ratings.”

Bielarski said GRU is still a public municipal utility and is still managed by a local board. 

Responding to statements about the Authority unilaterally withholding money from the GFT, Bielarski said the amount of the GFT should be based on making the utility financially stable, and the GFT is adjusted when the City Commission makes decisions that reduce GRU’s profits, potentially requiring higher rates to make up for funds transferred to the City; he mentioned County streetlight costs as an example of a decision the City Commission made that led to an additional million dollars in annual expenses for GRU. 

Bielarski also showed the accelerated debt reduction over the contractual requirements (shown in green).

Responding to assertions from the public and City Commissioners that the people have already spoken against an independent board to govern GRU, Bielarski said a judge determined the language of the 2024 referendum is misleading, and the ruling is currently being appealed; he added that one-third of customers live outside the city limits and cannot vote on the issue. He said, “They have no rights. They have no ability to deal with the extra-territorial rights that are bestowed on the City by the legislature.”

Bielarski said the average residential bill has fallen 25% in two years, there have been no electric or gas base rate increases for two years, GRU has the lowest natural gas rates in the state, and GRU is among the lowest utilities for total bills for the combined four services. 

Jacobs said that at the June 5 City Commission meeting, “they talked about the people that were disenfranchised. They recognized the fact that they were disenfranchised, and their solution was, ‘Well, tough. Get annexed into the city.’… They’re lucky [the legislature doesn’t] deregulate [utilities]” because customers could switch to another electric company. He said the City is now planning to spend another $220,000 to hold another referendum, “but it’s a process,… and it needs to be allowed to continue without wasting any more money.”

Lawsuit against City’s 2025 ballot referendum

Based on the expected passage on June 12 of the second reading of an ordinance setting a November 2025 ballot referendum to return control of the utility to the City Commission (as expected, the ordinance passed unanimously this afternoon), Utilities Attorney Derek Perry recommended that the Authority authorize him to challenge the ordinance, along with authorizing the $450 filing fee; Perry said the Authority could authorize additional spending, if needed, at their July meeting, but he wanted authority to file the lawsuit because the Authority won’t meet again for a month and the election is only a few months away.

Haslam said he didn’t like the idea of spending money on a lawsuit, “but this has been foisted upon us.”

The motion to authorize filing the lawsuit passed unanimously.

State of the Utility

During the State of the Utility update, Chief Operating Officer Tom Brown said the Kelly plant had been taken offline that day; the plan is to cool it down for a few days and then diagnose the problem with a borescope, fix it, and bring it back online. He said the company that does the borescope work won’t come to Gainesville this weekend because of the scheduled protests, “and they don’t feel their employees are safe, so it will extend the outage at least 48 hours.” He said the outage causes an increase in generation costs of $150,000 a day, “so our local protest cost the GRU customers $300,000.”

Director Comments

During the second Director Comments period, board members thanked Director Craig Carter for his service; Carter, whose term expired last fall, announced at the May meeting that this would be his last meeting.