GRU Authority hears from public about fluoride, pushes back on claims made by opponents of the board

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their February 12 meeting, the GRU Authority heard public comment about fluoride and expressed reluctance to make any changes, heard updates on lawsuits against the Authority and pushed back against opponents of the board, and heard financial and operational reports.

City Clerk objects to policy on public records requests

The consent agenda included the creation of GRU’s Office of People Resources and the accompanying People Policies for human resources, “separate and distinct from the City of Gainesville’s long-standing human resources policies.” The Public Records policy establishes a Records Management Liaison Officer, designated by GRU’s CEO, but does not name that person.

Gainesville City Clerk Kristen Bryant spoke during public comment on the agenda and said she had given the board a 20-page document that detailed the City’s and State’s policies and processes on public records, compared with the one-and-a-half pages of GRU’s policy. She said the policy leaves “blanks and vagaries and staff not knowing exactly what is needed to be done” and doesn’t list the custodian of public records, which is required for notice of lawsuits. She also said the policy requires mandatory training but removed the word “annually,” which introduces risk since the statutes are updated every year.

GRU CEO Ed Bielarski responded that the HR People Policy was intended to be non-prescriptive, and “we plan to incorporate all the items that the City Clerk has discussed in our procedures, so it just isn’t in the overriding document… And I’d also indicate that we’ve been handling public records for a long time in the organization, and we have institutional knowledge here of how that’s performed and accomplished.”

A motion to approve the agenda passed unanimously.

Haslam criticizes lawsuits, says opponents “want political control over GRU and its revenues“

During Chair Comment, Chair Ed Lawson asked if any board member wanted to make a comment, and Director David Haslam brought up a new lawsuit “that mirrors the original lawsuit, and… I’m going to read just some of it… ‘Historically, GRU and its operations have played an outsized role within the City, and particularly, the City has regularly withdrawn revenues from GRU, deposited into the City’s General Transfer Fund. It’s universally understood that Gainesville cannot serve its current level of services without a significant transfer contribution from GRU. In short, Gainesville would not be the cultural and educational jewel that it is without political control over GRU and its revenues.'”

Haslam said he had been asking what everybody wants, and “there are certainly people who’ve said they want political control over GRU and its revenues. Ok, so now I know what you want. Having said that, when the politicians were in charge of GRU – because we’re not politicians; we’re a board – … it just quickly kind of became communism. They just sort of did what they want and they took what they want.” He referred to the amounts that various people have claimed were taken by the City above GRU’s profits, ranging from $30 million to $68 million: “Even if it was only $30 million, that’s still irresponsible… I want to keep the customers first… We are still a business here.” 

Haslam said that with “a lot of nonsense in the air – political this, steal money, take money,” it’s hard to hire and keep good employees at GRU. He said he wants to produce “affordable and eco-friendly power… We’re not anti-solar. We’re not anti-healthy electric, I think we all want that, but it’s got to be economically friendly… I want to lower the debt… I would like to lower the bills to the customers… We’re local guys. You still have local control, and we still give to the Transfer Fund.” 

Haslam said the board has public meetings and listens to public comments and added, “Are we gonna give you everything? Probably not.” He said it would be nice to make enough profit to give the City the large transfer they want, but his priority is to reduce bills. 

Haslam concluded, “But we’ve got to stop wasting time. We’ve got to stop talking about the same thing every meeting… There’s been a lawsuit ever since the… last board started,… the same old stuff… We’re all volunteers up here… We’re all doing this for the betterment, hopefully, of the community.”

Fluoride is again a topic during public comment

During general public comment, four people again asked the board to put removing fluoride from the drinking water on a future agenda. Chris Russell said, “What I’m asking here tonight is not… to stop fluoridating the water. I’m asking you to do the research, do your due diligence.”

After public comment, Director Craig Carter said he was “listening to everybody – and I’m actually reading, and I’m doing my homework, trust me, and I do think this is something we’re going to be talking about relatively soon, but we’re not hitting [the limit for fluoride] on a consistent basis.”

Lawsuit updates

During Attorney Comments, GRUA Attorney Scott Walker said that both the Authority and the City of Gainesville have filed motions for summary judgment in the Authority’s lawsuit challenging the City Commission’s ballot referendum to regain governance of the utility. Judge George Wright has entered a temporary injunction preserving the status quo, and a hearing will be held on April 2. 

Walker said the new lawsuit, filed by Jason Bellamy-Fults and Bobby Mermer against the Authority and each individual director, asks for a Writ of Quo Warranto that would order the directors to disband the board and restore control of the utility to the City Commission. Walker said his firm would be “vigorously defending” the Authority and the directors in that lawsuit. Both cases are assigned to the same judge. 

Chair Eric Lawson said, “I believe that all these lawsuits are harming GRU, and they’re also harming our customers… I think we need to be explaining who’s suing us and the cost that our customers are having to pay for this.”

GRU’s financial position

In a presentation on the utility’s financial position, Director of Accounting & Finance Mark Benton said the utility was running very close to its budget after the first quarter of FY2025. The utility is also continuing to pay off debt at an accelerated pace, with $30 million in debt reduction projected for FY2025; Benton said the reason FY2024 was higher was that the utility sold its trunk radio system for $8 million and put all of that toward debt reduction.

Bielarski said, “I just want you all to remember: that’s where the GFT (General Fund Transfer) reduction is going… When you hear folks talk about how they want the GFT to go back to the City, well, at the previous levels, we wouldn’t be able to do this.”

Carter agreed, “I don’t think most people understand how important it is that we get our debt down, what it means to our bond ratings and everything else… We’re making a better utility, a better business, by reducing debt… You might not see it today in your electric bill, but you will see it years from now.”

Benton said that reducing the debt also helps the utility’s liquidity metrics, which gives them financial flexibility to respond to a financial crisis. He continued, “You’ve all read all the rating agency reports, and each and every rating agency report, that’s the first thing they talk about. It’s the fact that GRU is highly leveraged, and we need to address that if we want to look at a potential rating increase in the future.”

Audit had no findings

In between agenda items, Bielarski told the board that an outside audit had just been completed, and there were no findings. 

Operational update

During a presentation on the State of the Utility for December 2024, Chief Operating Officer Tom Brown said the Deerhaven Renewable Generating Station returned to service on January 29 following an extended outage that included the unplanned replacement of turbine blades. He added that the plant now ramps up more smoothly than it did before the outage, and the peak output is now 105 MW, compared to the previous 102 MW. The Kelly plant will begin a planned outage on February 23 and will be out of service for several months.

The report included a chart (shown below) that was removed from the operational reports under previous General Manager Tony Cunningham; the chart provides data that allows for calculations of CO2 emissions per megawatt by plant and shows that Deerhaven Renewable, which was built to move the City toward its goal of zero emissions by 2045, has roughly twice the CO2 emissions per megawatt of the other plants; in fact, Deerhaven Renewable emits almost three times as much CO2 per megawatt as the Kelly plant.

As we wrote in 2023, “GRU has in the past stated that biomass can be considered carbon-neutral because the federal Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to Congress supporting that view in 2018, ‘provided the use of forest biomass does not cause conversion of forests to non-forest use.’ The U.S. Energy Information Administration adds, ‘the plants that are the source of biomass for energy capture almost the same amount of CO₂ through photosynthesis while growing as is released when biomass is burned.'” However, a Scientific American article published in 2018 questions the conclusion that biomass plants are carbon-neutral.

Natural gas supply agreement

The board unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing participation in natural gas supply agreements with the Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia. Annual savings from the agreement are projected to be between $1.1 million and $1.8 million. 

Skinner: Critics are “blindly ignoring the past two decades of City Commission practices”

During Director Comments, Director Chip Skinner said that comments claiming the Authority is “robbing the City of funds” are “blindly ignoring the past two decades of City Commission practices through which the City took GRU profits, they left us with a $2.5 billion biomass PPA, and they forced GRU customers to cover the costs, resulting in our highest electric rates. And then we hear also that this streetlight agreement, that we’re robbing money out of the GFT for streetlights – this is an agreement that was in place and signed by the City Commission,… so we’re just holding their feet to the fire on that.”

Regarding accusations of “groupthink,” Skinner said the directors are not allowed to discuss GRU issues outside of meetings: “Thankfully, we all have good common sense… We have a great organization here with the professionals, and we are not going to sit idly by, no matter what organization wants us to resign. We have to continue to do this work… We understand people aren’t happy with all of our decisions. It’s impossible to make everyone happy, so we pick and choose what we can do to benefit the most amount of people at any given time.”

Carter: “Please bear with us as we figure out how to bring the rates down”

Carter thanked GRU employees for “making our jobs so much easier.” He said that although “rates are a little high,… we have great service… Please bear with us as we figure out how to bring the rates down for our employees and our ratepayers.”

Haslam on fluoride: “I don’t know enough, and some of the people speaking don’t know enough.”

Haslam said, “The fluoride, the water thing, keeps getting brought up. I don’t know enough about it to speak directly on it. I made a joke last month. It didn’t go well on social media. I don’t know enough to really speak on it, but some of the information that was given tonight – while they were talking, I pulled out my phone, and they’re wrong, and then you corrected one of them too; they’re wrong. So I don’t know enough, and some of the people speaking don’t know enough. I don’t want to waste a bunch of GRU time on it yet. I’m gonna do some more personal research, and then, you know, there’s something that needs to be addressed. I think we can, but it’s got to be off of honest input and data.”

Jacobs on fluoride: “As far as I’m concerned, fluoridation was looked at as one of the modern miracles like the polio vaccine or pasteurizing dairy products”

Director Jack Jacobs said, “I’d like to address the fluoridation issue, too. And I look at it this way: every week, I put muriatic acid in my pool, and I certainly don’t want to drink it, and I wouldn’t want to get it on my skin. It burns holes in my clothes when I splash it on me. But I’m not afraid that when I get in the pool that, you know, my kids can’t swim around and swallow some water and it’s going to affect them long term. So although these chemicals may individually have caustic properties to them and stuff like that,… you know, fluoride, we’re talking the miniscule amounts that we’re adding to what’s already naturally occurring in the water. As far as I’m concerned, fluoridation was looked at as one of the modern miracles like the polio vaccine or pasteurizing dairy products. So when you’ve got something like that, you really need some hard evidence to switch.”

Jacobs added, “I relate it to, like, eggs and butter and margarine, like every other year, margarine is bad for you, and then butter is good for you, or eggs are bad, or then they’re good. I just hate for us to go and make a snap decision and take fluoridation out of the water,… and I appreciate Carter having the Harvard dentist come here, who’s not only just from Harvard but he actually did the peer-reviewed research. If you know anything about research, you want to have peer-reviewed research to back up your data if you’re going to start making arguments about whether or not we should do fluoridation. So I appreciate you doing that.”

Carter replied, “He insisted, actually,… but he’s got sharp bits in my mouth, I do whatever he says.”

Jacobs continued, “So I’m not there yet… I may change my mind if other research comes up, but I just don’t see it yet.”

Lawson on fluoride: “I completely concur with how you’re thinking about this”

Lawson closed the meeting by saying, “I completely concur with how you’re thinking about this, and with that, we’re adjourned.”