Letter: Vote for Evan Moon for Gainesville Mayor

Letter to the editor

My name is Evan Moon. I am running for Mayor in Gainesville, Florida.

We must plan for a future that we build together, that we can all be proud of.  

The City must follow through with its commitments. This shows respect to our constituents. Community is our very epicenter. When the pandemic was announced over, our children were supposed to go back to school so they could improve their learning. We were supposed to come out of our echo chambers. The data shows this did not happen. So, let’s catch some people up, serve the underserved, and fill in the metaphorical potholes in our community while we fill in some actual potholes. Forget fighting; this is about solidarity. Going forward, Gainesville shall be a hard target for disruption, internally and externally.  

People are hurting, fiscally. Wherever you find yourself, don’t lose the plot on this one. We must take that into account, as well as a possible homestead exemption expansion in 2027. We have no additional American Rescue Plan funds coming in and are looking forward to the 21st Century Road to Housing. I can give you vigilance, not promises, but I have three focuses going forward, not in a particular order, that I think would bolster our working poor.

1) We require a fairground year-round. Gainesville does not have to be a C market. The University of Florida brings in students each year. Families have come to grow up here. Music, craft, hobbies, culture, and art should be better facilitated. If we could keep a fairground going year-round, we could speed up the slow season, which puts a damper on business and causes those already squeezed to cut open a dried-up bottle of toothpaste. Not just for Hoggetowne (which should go on a lot longer, there is appetite for it), but music festivals and cultural events, etc. We must give the people something back, to show for their tax dollars. Paved roads are a start. This, though, would be something we can all be proud of.

2) We should rely on public transportation that is frequent, reliable, and accessible. If we are going to interconnect our community, we must have transportation. New developments merging residential with commercial help with sprawl, but we still have sprawl. If you can’t afford to take off work on Sunday, you can’t afford to Uber. We need to rethink the crucial nature of public transportation. I talk about work here, but people have other needs. We don’t live to work. We work so we can live.    

3) When we say affordable housing, we mean ACTUALLY affordable. When I see another luxury apartment shoot up, my heart sinks. The purpose of the majority of new housing should be to provide a place for the people who have worked here and that do work here, to live, too. We must keep a close eye on our natural environment, like the state of our springs, and our infrastructure, like sewage and waste management, with the other eye affixed to our housing needs 10 years down the road, which may double. We must reward good stewardship, so we don’t have only new housing, which can be expensive to build. That being said, we will implement multi-use plots. With zoning, the courts to keep Live Local accountable, and Community Betterment Binding agreements, as well a slew of grants, I will seek out arrangements to build housing that is ACTUALLY affordable. What number is that, a month? Take average income in your area, multiply that by .8, that gives you 80% AMI. If that number was annual, divide by 12. Since your mortgage (rent, these days) is not supposed to exceed a third of that, divide by 3 again. That’s considered affordable. The goal set by the state was that 40% of new homes should fit this standard. In the business world, this is what’s called an opportunity.

Please, remember, we owe our liberty to the person to our right, left, flank, the person before you.  We have community, because we trust our very neighbors.

Evan Moon, Candidate for Gainesville Mayor

The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Assertions of facts in letters are similarly the responsibility of the author. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.