The Gainesville City Commission voted unanimously to allow city voters to choose whether to keep or remove the city charter section that created the Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) Authority.  

The Thursday vote, which came after the ordinance’s first reading last week, directed the city clerk to place a referendum on November’s general election ballot. It came hours before the new GRU Authority was set to be sworn in Thursday evening.  

“I think that this is obviously about the people and their ability to have a say on GRU,” Commissioner Bryan Eastman said. “But I do think that this is a really important and historic moment in the question of how cities govern themselves, how we move forward.” 

Several citizens attended the meeting to voice their support of the ballot initiative, including Evelyn Foxx, president of the Alachua County branch of the NAACP, Bobby Mermer, Alachua County Labor Coalition coordinator, and Janice Garry, president of the League of Women Voters of Alachua County. 

Garry said the GRU Authority members, put in place by the governor, have no obligation to the community, contrary to the elected City Commission. 

“I’ve attended a lot of city commission meetings,” Garry said. “Many times, numerous residents have stood at this mic and voiced opinions about GRU. Why can they do that? Because GRU was run by local people, and local people have access to leadership. Agree or disagree, local people can communicate with you.” 

At last week’s first reading, GRU Authority attorneys Scott Walker and Kiersten Ballou argued the city charter’s Section 7 prevents its own deletion. They pointed to a line saying if any city charter provision, ordinance or resolution conflicts with Section 7, Section 7 will govern.  

Ballou returned for Thursday’s meeting, speaking during public comment to inform the commission that Folds Walker, a Gainesville law firm, believes the ballot language to be vague. 

When asked by Ward, Ballou said she did not believe her time at the commission meeting to be compensable, but that Folds Walker had been asked to look into the situation before the entire board resigned. 

“We haven’t had a board to give us authority or not, so we wanted to just flag what we saw when we looked into it,” Ballou told Ward.  

Ward said that several legal experts have now weighed in on the topic, most of them saying the city has a right to place the referendum on the ballot. 

The text of the ballot referendum is as follows: 

“SHALL THE CITY OF GAINESVILLE CHARTER BE AMENDED TO DELETE ARTICLE VII, ELIMINATING THE GOVERNOR-APPOINTED GAINESVILLE REGIONAL UTILITIES AUTHORITY AND ITS APPOINTED ADMINISTRATOR THAT MANAGE, OPERATE AND CONTROL THE CITY OF GAINESVILLE’S LOCAL PUBLIC UTILITIES, AND PLACING THAT RESPONSIBILITY WITH THE ELECTED CITY COMMISSION AND CHARTER OFFICER; AND ELIMINATING LIMITATIONS ON THE GOVERNMENT SERVICES CONTRIBUTION AND UTILITY DIRECTIVES, AS PROPOSED BY ORDINANCE NO. 2024-352?” 

The referendum will appear on the Nov. 5 general election ballot for Gainesville residents. 

One of the primary reasons supporters cited for creation of the GRU Authority was that a significant number of GRU customers fall outside of Gainesville city limits and thus do not have a voice in its governance through the City Commission.  

At Thursday’s meeting, Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker asked if there was any way to expand the ballot so GRU customers outside city limits could also vote. 

“I think we have heard this rousing chorus of individuals who live inside [city limits] who are paying, but I also think in the interest of being able to honor all voices of individuals who pay GRU rates, that to be able to have their voices or their votes included in this is something that we ought to always be mindful of,” Duncan-Walker said. 

City attorney Dan Nee said there is no mechanism in Gainesville’s charter that allows non-residents to vote, but he said the Legislature might be able to accomplish that, if it so chose.