Mayor Ward initiates reversal of previous City Commission vote to make public records portal more transparent

Mayor Harvey Ward explains his reasons for asking to reconsider a previous vote of the Commission

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During the evening Commission Comment period of the March 21 Gainesville City Commission meeting, Mayor Harvey Ward brought up two items: making the City’s Equity and Inclusion Office available to UF students who are feeling “adrift” after the University eliminated its DEI office and reconsidering a previous Commission vote to make the City’s public records portal more transparent.

Offering the City’s Office of Equity and Inclusion as a “backstop” for UF students

The first item arose from a recent conversation Ward had with some young men from the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at the University of Florida (UF). Ward said the students “were looking for ways that they and other students might get more involved in local government and voter outreach and that sort of thing.” Ward said he told them the City does not “do voter registration as an organization.”

Before going on, Ward said, “Before I say all this, let me say that in no way am I trying in this discussion to poke anyone in the Governor’s office or any such thing; I’m trying to make sure that people in our community feel heard as I move through this.”

He said the subject of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) came up in the discussion with the young men, “and these young men indicated that they and other students… felt a little adrift at the University of Florida, no longer offering DEI services and support.”

Ward said the University’s DEI office had done “a couple different things,” including “dotting i’s and crossing t’s on grants and things like that. That’s not a thing that we can really be a part of. But another thing that they offered was a safe place for conversation and for general support, particularly for first-generation, diverse groups of students. And that doesn’t exist now. And it is an absolute fact: they’re young people who are residents of our city, who are students at the University of Florida, who feel adrift because of that.”

Ward said he told the students that as Gainesville residents, “We owe you, as a City organization, our support. At the City of Gainesville, decades ago, [we] prioritized equity and inclusion, to the point that we created a Charter office, put it in our City Charter, our foundational document. So it’s not going to go away at the stroke of a pen…  That continues to exist for our residents in the city of Gainesville, and that includes students.” He said he had previously offered the City as a “backstop to some level for those services” if DEI was ended at the University.

Ward said he had spoken with the City’s Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Zeriah Folston, and “I’m going to reach out to the various diverse student unions at the University of Florida, as well as to Student Government, and offer to hold a listening session with our Office of Equity and Inclusion… I don’t know what they need; we don’t know what they need. But these young people can come tell us what they need. And it may be that we can’t give them what they need, but they’re residents of our city, and we owe it to them to at least hear it.” He said that once the meeting is set, it will be publicly noticed so multiple commissioners can attend.

Reconsidering the vote on “flipping the switch” in JustFOIA

Ward then said that although he had voted on February 22 to support Commissioner Ed Book’s proposal to improve transparency by making all completed public records requests searchable by the public, “Frankly, I did not completely understand what I was voting on. I voted yes on it. I’m not sure that I completely understood the ramifications of it.”

The City’s public records request portal, JustFOIA, has a “switch” that can be set by the administrator. Under the current setting (which was not changed after the previous vote), only the person who requested the public record has access to that information. However, if the “switch” is flipped, those records become part of a searchable database that can be accessed by any member of the public.

Ward said that “several Charter officers” had spoken with him after the vote and said that “what we voted to do… is to open up all investigations, through the Equity Office, through HR – that not only include City workers, but community residents as well. I don’t feel comfortable with it… Even if someone has been exonerated, that would put all that information out there to go into public conversation… If someone has a question or concern, they can certainly go get it, and they can ask for it. But to just do a big data dump, for folks in our community who have been exonerated, I don’t feel comfortable with that. If someone wanted to make a motion to reconsider that, I would change my vote on it. And if not, that’s okay, too.”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said he had voted no on February 22, partially because “I didn’t feel like I had a very good understanding around it. I could see some potential downsides after speaking with some of the Charter officers.” 

Eastman made a motion to “maintain the current public records request structure” (i.e., continue the practice of making records available only to the requestor). Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut seconded the motion.

Book said the way Ward had “couched it is not quite accurate” and also pointed out that Ward had brought this up at the end of the evening session of the meeting and two Commissioners were absent. Book said the intent of “flipping the switch” to make completed requests available to anyone was that once a records request is fulfilled, “anybody else could simply access that same information… in the [JustFOIA] portal.” He pointed out that there are many exemptions in statutes to protect the information of public safety personnel and others. 

Clerk Kristen Bryan said that her understanding of Ward’s point was that “there’s an uncomfortableness of that [information] living in the portal, accessible, as you state.”

Book responded, “That’s kind of the natural inclination when you’re talking about transparency and governmental and bureaucratic types of records. Our colleagues [in County government] actually do that very thing. And then there’s many other municipalities and governmental-type organizations that… once a public record is available, it’s available to anybody else. And it does have some efficiencies… that directly benefit the Clerk’s office, and [the Clerk] spoke to this before.”

Ward reiterated that anybody can request a record, but he was uncomfortable with having the information “just there to be browsed through… It’s not public officials that I’m uncomfortable about; I’m uncomfortable with members of the community and City workers who are at a very different level.”

Bryant clarified that her understanding of “flipping the switch” was that once a public records request is fulfilled, “that request lives in a public portal, freely accessible to the community… Subsequent people would not then have to file public records requests because they would be able to just search a database… The system is built for that. There are a handful of jurisdictions that do flip the switch. I would say that the majority of jurisdictions in the state of Florida do not have that repository available.”

There was no public comment on the motion.

Ward said again that having fulfilled public records requests “out there for the entire world, particularly for somebody who has been exonerated – that just seems rife with ill intent to me, or the potential of ill intent… That doesn’t make it bad, it just got a little cynical on how some people approach stuff, and I hate to be jaded, but that’s where I am.”

Book said that the topic had not been on the agenda, like three previous motions passed during the meeting (a ballot referendum on GRU governance, exploring options on reverting Lynch Park to the donor’s heirs, and hiring homeless people as downtown Ambassadors), “so we have not gotten the opportunity to have the public input that ordinarily we would have… So my biggest concern is actually not with whether the motion’s made; it’s the fact that it’s come up at the end game for the nighttime, with nobody knowing it’s going to come up… I think we’re better served, as a group, when items are [placed on the agenda] so it gives people the opportunity to weigh in, look at it, research it, and then come back. And if we still made that decision, we made that decision.”

Ward responded, “That’s fair enough, but we did have a conversation about it, a very public conversation, the other day, and I would say I misunderstood. It’s as simple as that… This has been a day of instant motions, but that is where we are at this moment.” 

The motion to reverse the previous vote to “flip the switch” in JustFOIA passed, 3-2, with Commissioners Book and Casey Willits in dissent and Duncan-Walker and Saco absent.

  • Our local politicians and activists are so unprepared for the uncalled for culture war that they launched on us years ago. Ridiculous actions have consequences and they are now freaked out that publicly available records will expose the bad actors and expose the inner workings

    • The City of Gainesville is not worried about having to exonerate anyone, its constant lies and cover ups have been effective to accomplish that. The City of Gainesville’s leadership is more concerned by the fact it has consistently failed to conduct due diligence investigations for a multitude of employee discrimination complaints and grievances which have resulted in wrongful terminations and ruined the professional reputations of many good people. Should the City of Gainesville actually allow the “sunshine” in on its public records request, it would have to contend with its history of poor employment decisions, discriminatory workplace practices, accepted workplace incivility, and and culture of retaliation. Opening public records to the general public may actually help to exonerate he truly innocent.

  • I mean I asked for commissioner emails for February 6-8th and recieved a bill for 3600 dollars… lol I’ve seen several of their emails there is no way in hell they got that many emails that is would take 110 hours to complete the request. Shadier than a tree!

    • I’ve put in several FOIA requests on a local and state level. If your request relates to one of many unmentionable issues they’ll stonewall till they die. My Covid related FOIA requests, and the lack of any proper response, proved to me that our governments and their sunshine and FOIA laws all completely full of sh!t. I’ve tried the proper redress channels and that absolutely does not work in our current environment. Whatever you do..do not stop the pressure!

  • Not a serious nation, not a serious city. At least our state knows what time it is.

  • What’s “adrift” is Ward’s brain and the rest of the Commissions’ understanding of what’s needed for most in the community.

    I’m still waiting for that sack of dung to offer to let a couple homeless ambassadors watch his daughter during some of his circle jerk meetings.

    • Prediction: the closure of uf die offices will generate additional funding lines in the city budget for the same purpose with the justifications mentioned in this meeting. Hope I’m wrong.

  • Everything should be public especially with the demise of news media. Everything should be as easy as possible for the public to see what’s going on.

    • True that! I’m surprised they can even spell D E I.
      Next thing you know, that trough sloppin’ Ward will be offering for the City to pay off those young men’s student loans for a couple favors.

  • According to Ward: “..But another thing that they offered was a safe place for conversation and for general support..” So, wait a minute…he was JUST describing talking to members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity on campus. If they aren’t allowed to talk freely in their own fraternity, then that should be reported immediately to UF. However, something tells me Ward was just using them to further his liberal agenda. His honesty and accountability has been proven suspect for years.

    • Put the word out never to hire anyone who was in Alpha Phi Alpha. Unless you want weak little victim-people who require a safe space and are prone to delusional frivolous complaints and lawsuits, etc.

  • Can someone out there please help me? I’m just an ordinary citizen but I have no idea what they mean when they say the city will offer “DEI services” to students.
    What the heck are “DEI services”?
    And how are these students being underserved with no DEI office available?
    I mean human civilization has been around perhaps 100,000 years and SOMEHOW managed to exist for the first 99,998 years without there being a DEI Office, yet now we cannot get along without one? Or are humans devolving into wimps?

    • Not all humans, just those overly needy ones who need pampering – or is it Pampers.

  • Why would you vote for something you do not fully understand? Ward is as stupid as Simple Joe. Why is the city commission so afraid of what the public might see? Humm.. shady deal, good Ole boy politics, pad your own pockets with city coffers.

  • No on counseling UF students – not the city’s business.

    Yes on not exposing personal records of city employees or subs.

  • After having observed Harvey Ward over the past several years, it’s easy to understand who wears the pants in his family as well as who’s the most intelligent…it’s NOT him.

  • Ward: “I’m trying to make sure that people in our community feel heard as I move through this.”

    Ward:…”they’re residents of our city, and we owe it to them to at least hear it.”

    Unless you are a white, non-liberal. If you check those boxes, then you have no voice and anything you say will be seen as conjecture or argumentative. It’s amazing to watch how much grace is extended to all our community members, regardless if we like them or not 🙄.

    I’m a huge fan of a mayor that will vote on something he doesn’t fully understand. That makes me feel very confident in his skills as a leader. Maybe, just maybe, the Mayor didn’t realize he could table the issue to gather more information before voting. He’s only been with the Commission since 2017.

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