Silva: Ingle has an opportunity to restore trust to the City Commission

An open letter to Gainesville City Commissioner James Ingle

Commissioner Ingle,

Congratulations and good wishes as you begin your term of office on the Gainesville City Commission.

In clearing out emails I ran across your response to a candidate questionnaire in an August “note to self”:

Question: What votes from the current City Commission have you disagreed with, if any, and why?

Ingle: “One of the biggest missteps was how the push for eliminating single-family zoning was handled. The policy had flaws, but the bigger issue was the way it felt pushed through. We need to reassess our zoning and land use to make necessary adjustments. Development in Gainesville isn’t progressing in the best way, and we could manage it better. These discussions require trust and open dialogue, which was undermined by the way this issue was handled. This has made it harder to address widely acknowledged problems, as people are now afraid to engage in these necessary conversations.”

Thank you for recognizing how all that really went down. I’ll spare you the sad nine-year timeline that led to the current much more costly and top down City government’s disarray, disregard for public process, and disrespect toward constituents. Priorities are scattered, and consequential votes are made without public engagement. UF and other corporate entities have gained undue influence in these same years; huge sums are paid to consultants; certain businesses are favored and assets privatized; and city taxpayers are increasingly forced to subsidize UF, developers, investors, and above-median-income individuals.

I’m not alone in recognizing your capacity to see past the rhetoric, as you demonstrated in your response to that question as a candidate. I appreciate the people who have persevered in engaging with the City Commission to mitigate damages. It’s a big ask, but I hope you can work to help restore trust, transparency, and respect to the Commission.

Thank you again. Regards,

Tana Silva, Gainesville

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  • Trust THIS City Commission!?!? 🤣😭🤣

    They’ve proven day after day, week after week, year after year they can’t be trusted.
    Anyone who thinks otherwise is a gullible idiot – there’s lots of those in Gainesville.

  • Send GRU that $68 Million you owe the taxpayers and GRU customers . Quit suing us for your Control Freak agenda about your firing from running GRU. GRU is finally healing form your decisions .Realign your agenda with the majority of America’s wants and needs. Lower taxes, basic roads , safety , and downsizing government. Do that for 10 ten years in a row and maybe we will tolerate you, but the COCC will never be trusted.

  • Dems want more tax revenues no matter what the costs to existing citizens. It’s just more fodder for their local lawyers (campaign donors) when neighborhoods decline.
    If they cared about existing neighborhoods, they could have easily required certain code changes in new developments, from ADUs to high rises. But they WANT tax revenue returns as high as possible.

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