Newberry City Commission discusses potential stormwater assessments, expands Easton Newberry Sports Complex by 60 acres

BY DAVID LIGHTMAN

NEWBERRY, Fla. – At their November 25 Regular Meeting, the Newberry City Commission heard presentations on the Newberry High School Career Fair and plans for the upcoming Christmas celebration. They discussed possible stormwater assessments, approved an 80-acre neighborhood plat, and agreed to expand Easton Newberry Sports Complex by 60 acres. This was followed by a Board of Adjustment Meeting at which Commissioners approved plans for an orthodontics office. 

Newberry High School Career Fair

Department of Community Development Staff Assistant Missy Claude gave a presentation on the second annual Newberry High School Career Fair. Claude said, “The Career Fair is to inspire pathways beyond a traditional college education… We started last year in October, and we had approximately 28 employers that came… This year, it was a packed house, elbow to elbow…  [The students] ask a lot of good questions. Career pathways beyond a college education: some examples are medical billing, IT support, paralegal, network security. The benefits of that are faster entry into the workforce and affordable programs… At this year’s Career Fair, we hosted over 30 employers, and we have at least six that have emailed us or reached out to Dallas and asked if we could put them on the list for next year. And your impact by participating, City leaders, can inspire students to consider all career options, help students find fulfilling paths suited to their talents and interests, and make a lasting positive impact on our community’s future and workforce.”  

Mayor Jordan Marlowe said, “Everyone’s going to college, and I just think that there are so many other paths and avenues out there, and we really have to do the work of helping young folks understand all the different options that are out there. College is great, I enjoyed it, but I know there’s a lot of other ways to make a really good living.”

Claude pointed out that young people have the option of going to college later if they want to explore other options first.

Newberry’s Christmas plans

Recreation Director Rod Clark gave a presentation on Newberry’s 2024 Christmas celebration and their efforts to maintain their status as “the Christmas Capital of Alachua County.” Clark mentioned that this will be his first year in charge of the festivities. He said, “We’re now wrapping up the preparation phase of the Christmas celebration. We still have a few meetings left with our community partners and our in-house Christmas committee. This week, the pole decorations are scheduled to go up. Those are the decorations that everyone will see as they come into town from north to south and east to west. And then also, starting on the Monday after Thanksgiving, we’ll start the downtown Main Street decorations, including putting up the tree and all the lights… For each weekend, we do have events planned leading up to Christmas.” Clark showed a slide with some of the planned events. (See slide below.)

Marlowe said he likes the fact that people can walk directly from the parade to the gingerbread house contest, on the same day. 

Light Up Newberry

Clark discussed Light Up Newberry, an annual contest that allows residents to rate Christmas light displays at Newberry homes. Clark said it is done through the Christmas Prism smartphone app, and registration opens on December 1. He showed a slide with more information about the contest. (See slide below).

After asking Clark to produce a “how-to” video to help people with the Christmas Prism app, Marlowe said, “Newberry really appreciates everybody stepping up and doing all the work that goes into making all these events happen.”

Budget amendment for FY2024, approvals for Shirt Shack and optometrist/coffee shop

Commissioners accepted an amended City budget for the prior year that was reduced to reflect actual expenditures. Then they approved land use and zoning changes for a Shirt Shack retail store and a combination Optometrist/Coffee shop, both on second readings.   

Stormwater assessments

Assistant City Manager Dallas Lee introduced a Stormwater Capital Assessment Program, which includes notifying the Alachua County Tax Collector that Newberry may wish to collect stormwater fees on next year’s property tax bills.

Lee explained, “This resolution is not setting any sort of assessment, not binding you to any sort of assessment. It’s only telling the Tax Collector that you might have an assessment… It’d be similar to the fire assessment, where you can change it every year, but if you adopt an assessment and then don’t take any action, the current assessment would just roll on. So say you adopted a $20-a-year assessment and you don’t adopt a change in that rate, it would just be $20 a year until you adopted a different rate.”

Commissioner Tim Marden asked, “If we can do it through the utility bill or something like that, why this versus that because we have to pay a processing fee with the Tax Collector, correct?”

Lee answered, “I believe [the fee is] about 2%. This resolution is just giving you the option. We haven’t made those decisions yet. We would make those decisions in the summertime if the Commission decided to adopt the assessment. But the law says you have to give the notice of intent to the Tax Collector by the end of the calendar year. So this is just allowing you the opportunity to make that decision. If you don’t adopt this tonight, you don’t have the option of putting it on the tax bill.”

Lee explained that the fees can be used for operations and capital improvement expenses. He said there are tax advantages and borrowing advantages that tax assessments have over other ways of collecting fees. Responding to a question from Commissioner Mark Clark, Lee said they are mainly focusing on CRA (Community Redevelopment Area) businesses for the stormwater assessments.

Marlowe reminded everyone that they weren’t making any binding decisions. Clark made a motion to accept the resolution. Commissioner Rick Coleman seconded the motion. 

During public comment, Brandy Oldman asked if the assessment will be for commercial businesses only or if it’s possible for it to be charged to residences, like the fire assessment. Marlowe answered, “The intent up here, as we said, is just for it to be on the commercial businesses downtown that receive the benefit.” 

Oldman asked, “It’s a possibility that it could go onto residents, too?” Marlowe said, “I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t tell you the future, but I can tell you that these five people up here voting are all shaking their head at you.” Oldman said she was worried that things don’t always go as intended.

The motion passed unanimously.

Final plat for Magnolia Acres

City Attorney Scott Walker introduced a resolution to approve the final plat for the Magnolia Acres subdivision. Senior Planner Uma Sarmistha gave a short presentation and said the 80-acre plat will consist of 15 single-family homes on large multi-acre lots, and they will have their own septic tanks and will not utilize municipal wastewater. Sarmistha said staff recommended approval.

Marlowe said, “I’m always excited about this one. I like to see all that open space. And I like the fact they’re putting in a paved road.”

Marden made a motion to approve the 80-acre plat. Coleman seconded the motion. It passed unanimously. 

Easton Newberry Sports Complex expansion

Joe Lovelady, Director of Capital Projects & Improvements, introduced a plan to expand the 50-acre Easton Newberry Sports Complex by an additional 60 acres. Lovelady said the Suwannee River Water Management District purchased 60 acres of land adjacent to the park in 2001, and they have decided to gift the land to the City of Newberry since they no longer have any use for it. Lovelady showed the following slide and explained that the City started with 40 acres in 2001 and added about 10 additional acres to the Sports Complex in 2018, marked Parcel A and B. (See slide below.)

Lovelady said staff recommended executing the documents to accept the 60 acres from the Water Management District.    

City Manager Mike New said, “We asked them seven years ago [for the property]. This has been a seven-year negotiation.”

Responding to a question from Coleman, Lovelady said the two areas marked as “Potable Wells” on the slide are City-owned wells that supply the local 500,000-gallon water tower.

Commissioner Tony Mazon made a motion to execute the agreements with the Water Management District, and Clark seconded the motion. It passed unanimously.

New said, “The estimated value of the land is $900,000. So when you see a board member for the Water Management District, please thank them for remembering that small communities don’t have tons of funds to write checks for these types of things. They discussed it quite intensely at their board meeting, but at the end of the day, they decided that it would be best to simply transfer it to the citizens of Newberry.”

December 23 meeting canceled, Newberry Charter School application submitted

Commissioners unanimously agreed to cancel the meeting previously scheduled for December 23. 

Mayor Marlowe said the application for the Newberry Charter School was going in the mail on Tuesday, November 26.

Orthodontics office approved

Following their Regular Meeting, Commissioners held a quasi-judicial Board of Adjustment Meeting. Attorney Walker introduced a development plan for a 1.12-acre commercial site. Sarmistha returned to the podium and said the plan is for a proposed 9,929-square-foot orthodontics office with 33 parking spaces. A representative of the developer said the building will also contain two other medical-related businesses.

After some discussion about the number of parking spaces, Marden made a motion to accept the site plan, and Mazon seconded the motion. It passed 4-1 in a roll call vote, with Commissioner Monty Farnsworth in dissent.