Letter: Why Gainesville and Alachua County need a collaborative civic engagement technology tool

Letter to the editor

After I shared my opinion column, Why Gainesville needs a youth civic liaison program, published on May 17, Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward responded and invited me to discuss the proposal. In that column, I proposed a Youth Civic Liaison Program (YCLP), which would empower youth to become active citizens using the City of Gainesville’s myGNV app as a civic engagement tool.  

During my meeting with Mayor Ward, I learned that the myGNV app, which allows city residents to report physical issues such as potholes, fallen trees, and abandoned garbage, only operates within the city boundary. Immediately after that, I came up with this question: what happens to residents who reside outside the city boundary but still see Gainesville as their home?

If those unincorporated residents submit a pothole issue outside the city boundary using the myGNV app, I also learned that city staff may not fix it. Instead, they will usually forward the request via email to the Alachua County Public Works team. Alachua County currently does not have an app like myGNV, although they have launched the My Alachua County app, a real-time push notification tool that alerts county residents about county road projects, weather, commission meetings, job openings, and updates on adoptable shelter animals. Thus, if you are an unincorporated county resident and find an issue outside the city limits, you must submit it directly to the responsible department managing that issue.

According to the City of Gainesville, there are 151,275 residents living within the city limits as of 2025, representing approximately half of the total population of Alachua County. According to Alachua County, there are also 114,207 residents living in the county’s unincorporated areas, as of 2024. The vast majority of these unincorporated residents use “Gainesville, FL” on their mailing addresses — I am one of them as well. Out of the more than 20 issues I have reported through myGNV app, several were located outside the City of Gainesville’s jurisdiction. Nevertheless, they have been addressed so far. However, the question is whether the current reporting process is the most efficient. It might be an unnecessary administrative burden for the City of Gainesville staff. Equally importantly, unincorporated county residents may encounter similar inefficiencies when they send service requests to Alachua County.

Here is my proposal. It calls for a collaborative civic technology tool jointly developed by the City of Gainesville and Alachua County. I believe this is a highly practical and much-needed initiative that would solve a major governance challenge faced by local residents. While the proposed “Youth Civic Liaison Program” focuses on training students to monitor neighborhoods and report issues through the myGNV app, this collaborative civic technology initiative addresses a broader structural problem: infrastructure issues do not stop at municipal boundaries. A unified or deeply integrated reporting platform—tentatively named myGNV-Alachua—would enable residents to submit service requests through a single app, creating several major benefits for both local governments.

First, a unified and integrated civic technology tool, myGNV-Alachua, could address the issue of “boundary confusion” for both unincorporated and incorporated residents. As mentioned earlier, over 114,000 unincorporated Alachua County residents still use a “Gainesville, FL” mailing address. As a result, residents are keen to use the myGNV app to report neighborhood and community issues such as potholes, illegal dumping, or broken streetlights that may be located just outside city limits. An integrated platform would eliminate the frustration of a user being told, “Sorry, this isn’t our jurisdiction,” and having their service requests closed out without resolution.

Second, myGNV-Alachua could streamline the “feedback loops” between the two local governments. Currently, if an unincorporated issue is submitted to myGNV, the data is manually forwarded to the County via email, which requires City staff’s additional time and effort. A shared platform or automated back-end system would allow a single citizen report to automatically route to either the Gainesville Public Works Department or the Alachua County Road & Bridge Office. This automated routing would reduce unnecessary administrative burdens while improving efficient and effective communication processes.

Third, myGNV-Alachua can facilitate a proactive civic engagement program. An integrated app makes the City-backed, youth-led Youth Civic Liaison Program (YCLP) much easier to operate throughout the community. For instance, a large number of students who attend Eastside High School reside in unincorporated areas but use Gainesville as their postal address. If these Eastside High School students or volunteer groups report community issues before they cause accidents, they would not have to stop reporting the moment they cross an invisible city or county boundary.

This proposed civic tool may face some realistic barriers. Initiating a collaborative civic tech tool may not require a substantial budget because it would build upon the existing technological infrastructure and systems. However, the primary roadblock might come from funding and data alignment. As far as I understand, the City of Gainesville and Alachua County operate on completely separate budgets, software licenses, and maintenance dispatch systems. Merging these systems or funding for a joint enterprise license would require interlocal agreements and political commitment from both the City and County Commissions. Nevertheless, my proposed collaborative civic tool could serve as a valuable first step for the two local governments to consider developing a more convenient, integrated, and citizen-centered civic technology platform.

Justice Nah, Senior at Eastside High School

Justice Nah, a senior at Eastside High School, Gainesville, Florida, is the Founder and Director of YouCAN (Youth Civic Action Network: www.youcanproject.org) and has served as a volunteer juror, attorney, and clerk in Teen Court programs in Eugene, Oregon, and Gainesville, Florida for six years. Through extensive volunteer service, he has led donation drives collecting significant amounts of clothing, shoes, and household items for homeless shelters, as well as large quantities of food for local food banks. He is passionate about juvenile justice, youth civic engagement, and public policy.

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