Letter: A glimmer of hope at City Hall

Letter to the editor

A glimmer of hope flickered recently that the damage to Gainesville and its city government of the past 10 years might begin to slow in the next 10 years: the Plan Board and City Commission refused to rush a deeply flawed Comprehensive Plan update to the state.

For context, in spring 2016, a radical shift in governance under an unqualified novice City Manager was supposed to make Gainesville’s city government more efficient. The result soon showed up as the opposite — an echo chamber that’s top-heavy, free-spending, unpredictable, unaccountable, averse to public input, and developer-, UF-, and downtown-centric.

The City aligned its strategic plan with UF’s that year to promote a vision of Gainesville attracting “the creative class” (an actual term that was used) and keeping UF graduates to live/work/play in and around a struggling downtown and an Innovation District that has yet to flourish, both after years of public investment. Early hype was expressed this way by a UF official: “We’re going to be the next Silicon Valley, the next Austin!”

A packed meeting in Porters Community Center in 2016 demonstrated the disconnect between words and actions of those in positions of power. Porters residents called the meeting with the Boston consultant on UF’s million-dollar strategic plan. The consultant set up a charrette, but residents said no, we’re not doing that, you are going to listen to us. He started talking about UF’s vision of a future Gainesville but stopped when young people in the back of the room shouted, “We don’t care! We live here now!”  

Ten years and several City Manager and Commission changes later, certain City and UF officials promote the same vision and still don’t get the disconnect. UF’s new interim president reiterated that vision at a City Commission workshop last month. UF has gained influence over City policies, and the previous City Manager embedded a major developer lobbyist in her office.

Invited stakeholders said a 2018 City upzoning plan was replete with opportunities for staff to give final approval for developments; a key person in that plan is now the Interim City Manager. In 2019, a staff member said he was an ombudsman for developers; the City just rehired a former planner to assist in a similar role.

Prime real estate gets taken off local government tax rolls and expands commercial dead zones. Residents with lower incomes are forced to subsidize housing for those with higher incomes. Etc. All along, politicized rhetoric on racial equity, affordable housing, sustainability, and economic development has defied real-world analysis and been used to extract public subsidies and approvals that serve corporate interests.

The City hired a New York consultant in 2020-2021 to focus the Comp Plan update on racial equity; the City also paid a few selected people to post on social media and set up small meetings, and it put up a website that got 30 responses by February 2022. The Comp Plan draft at that point had generic Anytown narrative about racial segregation that was outlawed nationwide 60 years ago. It went to the Plan Board that month, and members said City government doesn’t get to cherry-pick feedback, analysis was lacking, entire sections were untouched, and staff needed to hold public meetings across Gainesville to get knowledgeable insights. Instead, the next week, staff brought back upzoning that consumed the rest of the year and ended up being rejected by the state.

A messy Comp Plan draft resurfaced late last year. At the end of a long Plan Board meeting on other issues in December, a staff member repeatedly instructed the Plan Board, “Now is the time” to submit final comments. Board members said they wouldn’t sign off on it without going through its 200+ pages together in a separate workshop and later discussion. In January, the City Commission agreed that it needed more work and voted to take more time to send a better update to the state for approval by next year. How staff will incorporate hundreds of comments remains to be seen. 

The Plan Board will hear more about the Comp Plan update on Wednesday. For now, the City Commission agreeing with the Plan Board’s and residents’ urging to reshape the City’s guiding document could signal a much-needed change in attitude at City Hall.

Tana Silva, Gainesville

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