The Gainesville City Commission approved its legislative priorities at Thursday’s General Policy Committee and also discussed a minority business study and legal notices. 

For the upcoming session of the Florida Legislature, the city listed five funding requests: the extension of SW 47th Road to decrease congestion on Williston Road and SW 34th Street, a Southwest Public Safety Services Center, a law enforcement property and evidence building and a Training, Entrepreneurship and Community Center.  

The city also wants its lobbyists to support home rule by opposing unnecessary state-wide preemptions, affordable housing by making more dollars available for these projects and homelessness by continuing the Homeless Staffing Grant and Challenge Grant. 

The city also discussed a minority business study conducted by Griffin & Strong. The study found that Gainesville “has a factual basis for establishing race and gender-conscious program elements in addition to race and gender-neutral efforts.” 

The study findings would allow the city to set parameters in order to purchase goods and services from an array of demographic business owners. The study found that disparities by race, ethnicity or gender status remained after factoring in capacity and other neutral factors. 

City staff will return with recommendations for commission to review. The study included 10 recommendations, including setting internal benchmarks for the percentage of participation expected on an annual basis.  

The City Commission also discussed potential changes to its legal notice policy.  

Commissioners leaned toward moving legal notices online while still using the traditional newspaper model in some way.  

Commissioner Ed Book made a motion directing staff to research public advertisements, notices and ordinances that may need changed to implement the online system. The motion also has staff use data to inform the recommended ways that the city accesses its community. 

“We don’t want to be at the low bar of what the state has set, which is merely online,” Book said.   

Florida requires cities and counties to post notices about certain meetings, projects, requests for proposal and other city work. Historically, those notices were required to be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the area.  

In 2022, the Florida Legislature allowed for cities and counties to post these notices on a publicly accessible website instead. Last year, Alachua County decided to move in that direction and began implementing its online notice system in late March 2024.  

County commissioners originally opted for the online structure while stating they wanted to use savings to run advertisements, including in newspapers, letting citizens know where to find all legal notices. So far, it has only published on its own platforms. 

Andrew Persons, Gainesville’s chief operating officer, said statutes require the city to use Alachua County’s website instead of placing the notices on the city site. He said Alachua County reached out to offer its website for Gainesville, along with other cities in the county.  

Currently, Alachua County, the Children’s Trust of Alachua County and the City of Micanopy use the county’s online public notice system, Persons said.  

Gainesville has spent an average of $83,000 per year over the past three years on public notices, most of which was in the Gainesville Sun.  

However, commissioners, particularly Book, said it’s not primarily a monetary issue. They said the crux is getting information to citizens, allowing for community engagement and also managing staff time. 

While other commissioners agreed, the dais split on how to move forward.  

Commissioners Reina Saco and Casey Willits put forward a motion that directed the city attorney and staff to begin drafting the ordinance needed to switch to online public notices. In the coming months, the commissioners could discuss what types of public notices could continue in newspapers.  

Saco said she’d prefer most all of the community-oriented notices remain in a print format, noting that the city never knows what will tip the scales of engagement. 

However, the motion was pulled after a recommendation from the city attorney and city manager to allow staff more time to research questions posed by the commissioners and bring back a set of recommendations based on the discussion.  

Then, the commissioners could craft its policy based on tangible ordinances and recommendations. 

Those questions included how much it would cost to mail public notices to citizens—a requirement at citizen request—along with demographic numbers and the breakdown of where the city had been publishing most of its notices.  

Mayor Harvey Ward said the city needed a central source where all public notices could reside—an archive that has everything past and present. In the past, he said newspapers were that source. As the media landscape has shifted, it’s no longer so clear, he said.  

He said the county website could provide that primary spot for public notices while the city supplements with other notices.  

City Attorney Dan Nee mentioned that it’s currently confusing since sometimes the city publishes public notices in the Gainesville Sun and other times in Mainstreet Daily News.    

All legal notices currently published in the Gainesville Sun, Mainstreet Daily News or Alachua County Today are recorded and kept at floridapublicnotices.com. The website is maintained by the Florida Press Association and lists all legal notices published in papers across Florida, searchable by county or newspaper.  

Persons also said that the city typically does give more notice for important items like zoning and land use changes. Mailing information to residents within a certain distance and posting signs on the property.

The City Commission will return the issue once staff return with its recommendations—likely in the new year. Staff said there’s no rush to make the change, but it wanted to bring the item forward for discussion since online public notices are now possible.