MediaUpdate

​By Cindy Swirko

Staff writer

Guess what road is back in Lane Ranger.

Yes, Northwest 16th Avenue.

The year’s worth of delays and the various lane closures made it the most complained-about road in Gainesville. Then, after it was completed in October, a new controversy boiled up.

Instead of having bike lanes, the county decided to give bicyclists rights to the full outside lanes and erected traffic signs noting that. Typically, such roads will also have sharrows — a depiction of a bicyclist and an arrow — painted across the lane.

But on 16th, the sharrows were painted along the curb as they typically are when bike lanes are present. Both bicyclists and motorists were confused. So the county decided to have bike lanes afterall.

Over a few days last week, the sharrows were covered and the lane stripes moved in to give the outside lane more space. Then the solid white lines for the bike lanes were added. Now, cyclists should stay within the bike lane rather than ride in the middle of the traffic lane.

Meanwhile, another longstanding issue on 16th Avenue continues — the health of the crape myrtle trees.

Frequent travelers on 16th Avenue love the crape myrtles in the medians. But many hate the way they have historically been hacked up in their winter dormancy — crape murder, or cutting the branches to near stub-length. It’s not good for the trees and is unsightly, critics said.

Now, resident Al Alsobrook wrote recently to the Gainesville City and Alachua County commissions — and shared it with The Sun — about the current lack of attention given to crape myrtles. They are scaly and full of moss.

“Three years ago, an attempt was made to prune one island, but that effort was stopped — by some entity — because those pruning were committing crape murder ...” Alsobrook said. “The excuse then was offered that 16th Avenue was going to undergo major repair and the problem would be taken care of when the street repair was completed. What is the excuse now? The problem is particularly bad from 13th Street to 34th Street, but all medians in Gainesville need tending to. Now is the time for the trees to be pruned. How many more years do we wait for something to be done?”

By the way, the Southwest 16th Avenue medians between Main and 13th streets also contain crape myrtles that have typically been over-pruned, but now they look like they could use some work.

If you travel on other streets or roads that need attention, crape myrtles or other trees and shrubs, let me know and they will be listed in a future column.

​The Sun missed the point with its March 10 editorial on the County Commission vote against Envision Alachua.

Yes, the economic forces were all aligned against rejecting the plan, but not because it contributes to east Gainesville residents. It may in fact detract from their well-being. The best solutions lie with development in east Gainesville, not in the distant east county.

The county staff and public speakers clearly rebutted the idea that both east Gainesville and our environment are best benefitted by development in far eastern Alachua County. The Sun knows full well the likely environmental consequences of Envision Alachua, and should know the false hope that this plan raises.

Commissioner Robert Hutchinson should be commended for a compromise, difficult as it may be to achieve, that may end up benefiting all. We will now see how sincere Weyerhaeuser-Plum Creek actually is about investing in east Gainesville.

Jeffrey Shapiro

Gainesville

​By Anthony Clark
Business editor

Wayne Bauman bought one of the first six condos in Grand Preserve at Kanapaha in 2008 and moved in that February with his wife. They loved it at the time, he said, but it wouldn’t be long before they were sorry they ever moved into what became known during the Great Recession as a zombie development.

Dozens of subdivisions developed around Alachua County during the height of the housing bubble later came to a halt — or at least a slow trickle — as the recession hit. New home construction in the Gainesville Metropolitan Statistical Area dropped from a high of over 1,400 in 2004 and 2005 to 278 in 2011. Developers faced foreclosure, sold off land to builders at a loss or just waited for the housing market to rebound, leaving new homes surrounded by hundreds of vacant lots.

Construction activity has picked up in recent years, however, bringing new life to the once dormant developments as the housing market recovers. Metro area home permits were up to 513 in 2013, although the pace of single-family construction dropped to 431 homes last year while multifamily construction returned to 2008 levels of nearly 600 units.

According to information provided by the Alachua County Department of Growth Management at the Sun’s request, there were 29 subdivisions with 10 or more lots platted between 1999 and 2010 that still have 40 percent or more vacant lots. Combined, 881 out of 1,283 total lots in those subdivisions remain vacant, or nearly seven in 10 lots waiting for homes to be built. Six of the subdivisions are in the little town of High Springs, including most of the largest subdivisions, but each municipality and the unincorporated county had their share. Twenty of the 29 were started from 2005 to 2007.

All told, Alachua County has 12,818 vacant lots, including 4,793 within municipalities, 1,711 in the unincorporated county and 6,314 within the urban cluster surrounding municipalities. Another 8,258 are within preliminary developments awaiting final regulatory approval for a possible total of as many as 21,076 vacant lots.

Growth Management Director Steve Lachnicht said there is little concern about vacant projects with roads other than the potential appearance of blight with half-built projects.

“It changes the image of the project when you see half-built units as opposed to starting new,” he said.

Oakmont is perhaps the best known example of a long-dormant development brought back to life. After receiving approval for 999 homes in 2006 and building roads over the 556-acre development at Parker Road and Southwest 20th Avenue, the development sat until 2014. Since then, more than 70 building permits have been issued there for single-family homes.

“Now they’re building and no one would know how long those roads have been there,” Lachnicht said.

Grand Preserve — although currently an unplatted planned development — was an extreme example of a zombie development.

Coral Gables-based Cornerstone Group built a clubhouse with a pool, two single-family homes, a grid of streets and started construction on three townhouse buildings, with plans for 150 total townhomes and 80 houses on the 40-acre development on Archer Road west of Gainesville.

“The place was really nice. It was in a great location,” said condo owner Bauman, 48, who works at an engineering firm.

But with the housing crisis in full swing, Cornerstone walked away from the development. Although condo owners had paid homeowner association fees, with no one to pay the bills the streetlights were turned off, Cox Communications came around to collect on the cable bill and the neighbors took it upon themselves to split the water bill after their water was turned off. Grand Preserve eventually went into foreclosure. The clubhouse is open, but Bauman said the gym equipment is broken, and pool and lawn maintenance have been intermittent.

Bauman said they would have liked to sell and move out, but the property value dropped to half of their original $230,000 purchase price and they are still underwater, owing more than the condo is worth.

“We can’t walk away from here with a loss because we won’t be able to buy anywhere else,” he said. “You can look, but not until prices come up and until they start building here that’s not going to happen.”

The principals of Skobel Homes bought the development out of foreclosure in 2011. The home builder has been working its way through other developments before turning its attention to Grand Preserve. In fact, Skobel’s model of buying distressed lots makes it the owner of all or part of six of the 29 largely vacant subdivisions.

From a makeshift office inside a model home in Grand Preserve, Alex Skobel, president of the company, said the development's time has come. The company is in the process of finishing the three townhome buildings, relandscaping around the condos and plans to start building houses in the next month or two.

Skobel said they have been waiting for the market to improve for the kind of larger homes they have planned for Grand Preserve and the adjacent Brytan development they bought in 2012 and started building in last year.

For Grand Preserve, they are planning 2,800- to 4,000-square-foot homes in the $300,000 to $500,000 price range.

Brytan will have 2,700- to 3,500-square-foot homes ranging from the $300,000s to the $400,000s. Skobel Homes has finished three houses there, has 12 under construction and is about to start three more, Skobel said.

“We’re kind of looking at it like we want to wait to build the right energy-efficient product that will sell at the right price point and the market seems to be getting better and better,” Skobel said. “It’s not quite at the high of where it was. Eventually it’s going to work its way back up to there and it will probably go beyond, just like the rest of the economy.”

For buyers at the lower end of the market who want to be close to Gainesville, Skobel said they will be building three-bed, 2.5-bath townhomes in the $200,000-plus range in Grand Preserve.

For new single-family homes at the lower end of the market, High Springs has a glut of vacant lots, 386 in six subdivisions with 523 total lots platted between 2007 and 2010 in a town with a population of under 6,000.

High Springs-based Innovative Home Builders has been buying a lot of the distressed lots and subdivisions in the area since opening for business in 2007. Co-owner Travis Williams said High Springs developers were responding to a group of builders who were looking on the outskirts of the county because they didn’t think they could compete with deeply rooted builders with deep pockets in fast-growing Gainesville.

Patricia Moser of Horizon Realty said there was a perception that the ease of access to Interstate 75 would draw workers from Lake City to Gainesville along with the lure and popularity of High Springs Community School.

However, a lot of the workers at jobs created in the city of Alachua went the other way to Gainesville and a lack of new jobs in High Springs hurt the market, she said.

Williams said the turmoil and debt in city government at the time also hurt perceptions of the town.

With so many subdivisions in the works at the same time, Moser said she thinks developers miscalculated the number of lots buyers would be able to absorb in High Springs even in the best of times.

The city issued 43 permits for single-family homes in 2007 but by 2009 that number dropped to 15 permits, according to information the Sun requested from the city’s Planning, Development and Codes Department. After five slow years, the number of permits again reached 43 in 2013, 55 in 2014 and 45 in 2015.

If January is any indication, 2016 should shatter the amount of home building activity in all previous years with 21 permits issued, as much or more than all of 2009, 2010 and 2012.

With 198 lots, Bailey Estates near High Springs Community School is the largest of the 29 subdivisions, including 164 vacant lots.

Developer Jack Londono said he was encouraged after selling 30 lots on the west area of the property in 2006, so he started developing the 198 lots with plans to sell at prices starting at just under $170,000. By the time they were ready to build 18 months later, the housing market had crashed. He went ahead and had five spec homes built.

“We had a hell of a time selling those houses,” Londono said. “Most went for $150,000 or less, so we abandoned the enterprise at the end of 2007.”

With the economy starting to improve, Londono spent his own money to build five houses in 2010. They took five to six months to sell at $169,500. Since then, building activity has increased.

At one time, builders were able to pick up $10,000 lots in High Springs and sell houses below market costs, but those lots are out of the system and builders are returning to Bailey Estates to buy lots, Londono said.

“We are going right now like gangbusters,” he said. “We have three builders in here full-time and we expect to build about 30 houses this year.”

Prices have also increased. With the costs of permits and labor up and the city’s moratorium on impact fees expired, Londono said the houses are selling between $179,500 and $229,500.

He said they are still fighting the perception that High Springs is too far from Gainesville, even though The Oaks Mall is a 20-minute drive by interstate.

Moser said developments on the Alachua side of High Springs are an easier sell.

“When everyone’s going back to work in Gainesville or Alachua, anything on the other side of High Springs tends to be out of the drive pattern,” she said.

Williams said last year’s opening of Publix on U.S. 441 in Alachua has helped. He recently bought Phase 2 of Oak Ridge out of foreclosure and had already pre-sold nearly a dozen homes► waitig to hear if that number if still accurate◄ before even finishing roads in the development close to Alachua.

He said the price point helps, too. The development was already engineered and approved, which Williams said saves him anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 in costs that he can pass on to buyers, pricing homes at $135,000 to $200,000.

Moser said homes would sell faster if developers would sell blocks of lots to more builders.

“Now almost every subdivision is an exclusive-builder subdivision,” she said. “Overall, Gainesville and Alachua County have a shortage of lots that are open-builder.”

That has been the case with properties owned by Skobel Homes. The builder owns all or parts of eight subdivisions, working on one or two at a time before moving on to the next one.

Skobel Homes turned its attention to Brytan last year after finishing in Belmont and Willow Oak and now plans to start work in Grand Preserve.

Alex Skobel said they have had offers from other builders, but want consistency in their communities.

“The reason why we’re doing what we’re doing is we want the product to be a certain level, a certain high-end look,” he said. “We don’t want a million-dollar house next to a $200,000 house like some other communities. We want a more consistent appeal and have every house be nice and kind of fit with one another.”

Skobel said they will probably start building in Campo Verde early next year with high-end homes starting at $500,000. The 22-lot subdivision off of Northwest 23rd Avenue was developed with roads in 2007 and Skobel bought it out of foreclosure in 2011.

The county has received code complaints about unmown grass and illegal dumping on the property, including an anonymous complaint that overgrowth provides cover for illicit drug activity. Skobel workers picked up mattresses and carpet rolls dumped on the property, but there is no county ordinance regulating overgrowth.

​It sounds like a wonderful thing: Officials from North Florida’s water management districts are working on a 20-year water supply plan for the region.

Alachua County is split between the Suwannee and St. Johns river districts, so it makes sense for them to work together on plans affecting the area.

As they say, water doesn’t follow political boundaries. In the past, the St. Johns district approved groundwater permits such as a massive one for Jacksonville’s utility without fully weighing how it would diminish springs, water bodies and wells in the Suwannee district.

A stakeholder advisory group is currently discussing the North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan. A draft is expected to be ready for public comment this summer. The plan includes gauging the amount of available groundwater over the next two decades before withdrawals cause unacceptable environmental damage.

But the plan won’t curtail groundwater pumping permits from being issued, according to district officials. At an editorial board meeting this month with The Sun, officials said the plan isn’t a regulatory tool — merely a call to action laying out strategies to supply water when the aquifer is tapped out.

“We know that our supplies don’t meet our demands in that 20-year planning horizon,” said Carlos Herd, water supply division director for the Suwannee district. “So we already know that — that’s why we’re in the process. We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t know we had a problem.”

Having officials acknowledge a problem isn’t the same as doing something about it. While they assure us that behind the scenes they’re working to reduce groundwater pumping, the permits that their boards keep approving tell a different story.

The districts don’t seem to appreciate that the problem has already arrived and they can reverse course, rather than permitting pumping as usual and then spending massive amounts of public money to provide alternate sources.

“This isn’t a California where it’s overextended now and we’re trying to work backwards,” said Noah Valenstein, executive director of the Suwannee district. “This is a state where we’re looking 20 years out. It’s a wonderful thing.”

The lowered flows and increased pollution in the springs and waterways of North Florida show groundwater supplies are already overextended. It’s hardly a badge of pride that the problem isn’t as bad as it is in California — yet.

District officials are rightly promoting conservation and using reclaimed water as needed first steps. But even these measures only slow the rate of the aquifer’s decline rather than restoring it and the springs it feeds.

The plan will likely outline expensive engineering fixes intended to keep the water flowing. They include desalination plants, reservoirs and projects to capture surface water to recharge groundwater.

After the draft is released, there will be a public comment period before it is finished. But district officials say they want input even before the draft is done. The stakeholder group meets in Lake City, information on which can be found at northfloridawater.com, and public workshops are planned.

It’s hard to believe much will change without a massive public outcry. And the districts alone can’t be blamed. They’ve been drained of resources and purged of experienced staff by the governor’s office and Legislature, where the solution to the water problem was legislation this session that maintained the status quo.

It’s a wonderful thing to take a regional approach to water-supply planning for the decades ahead. But a document that does nothing about the pumping that caused the problems with the water supply in the first place sounds like business as usual.

​By Cindy Swirko
Staff writer

From beer bottles to car bumpers, hundreds of volunteers armed with pointed poles and gloves found plenty of trash to spear and collect along Gainesville roads and in homeless camps Saturday as part of the Great American Cleanup.

Several volunteers said beer waste — bottles and cans — and cigarette butts were the most common trash they picked up.

“A lot of beer bottles and a lot of cigarette butts,” said Nicole Tanner, who was cleaning Southwest Sixth Street with her husband Jared Tanner. “I’m taking an ecology class at Santa Fe (College) and this links directly into it — how trash affects different species of animals.”

Sure enough, Jared Tanner said he bagged plastic six-pack rings, which are known to be deadly to birds and animals on land in addition to aquatic life.

The cleanup was sponsored by Keep Alachua County Beautiful, an anti-litter and community beautification organization. Executive Director Gina Hawkins said about 725 volunteers hit the streets Saturday morning, many of them University of Florida students.

Some walked along roads while others went to abandoned homeless camps. Hawkins said police asked that the camps be cleaned to make it easier to determine when people try to resettle them.

“We didn’t want to throw anybody out of anywhere but we have places for people to go that have sanitation, that have places to throw your litter and places for hygiene,” Hawkins said. “We didn’t displace anyone today in that sense. Once (the camps) are cleaned up, (police) can see if people come in and establish a new home. When there is already trash there, it is really tough for them.”

One of those camps was just off the Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail extension along Southwest Sixth Street just south of Depot Avenue. A crew of volunteers cleared the area of, yes, beer cans and bottles, along with clothing and other trash.

A garbage truck was parked just off the trail to take the refuse.

The event was based at Westside Park on Northwest 34th Street. Alachua County staffers were on hand so residents could drop off hazardous waste and tires.

“We collected all kinds of hazardous waste. We also had a shred truck collecting shred,” said Shelley Samec of the Alachua County Public Works Department. “We had cleanup crews going all over the county, as well.”

Littered land was the target Saturday but fouled creeks will get the treatment next Saturday. Hawkins said the second annual Clean Creek Revival will be from 1 to 4 p.m.

​In a community that is robust with dialogue and exchanges of opinion, we continue to be a great place to live. Open discourse can and does work here.

Thank you to Charlie Lane for his March 28 column on "big ideas” and an equally valued thanks to Kim Tanzer for her March 6 response, complemented by the editorial "Transforming UF and Gainesville.” All are to be applauded as each accurately comments, with the greater community's interests in the forefront.

Tanzer's acknowledgement of President Charles Young's step forward with UF's East Campus, President Bernie Machen's implementation of Innovation Square and the evolving Power District helps lay the groundwork for a solid step forward under President Kent Fuchs for the betterment of all of Gainesville and Alachua County.

Alachua County, Gainesville and UF are in a perfect position to put our community on its best forward direction. Support each of them in their efforts and kudos to all that care.

Michael Blachly

Gainesville

​Condescending reprimands by governmental authorities in public meetings are unacceptable practices. The meeting involving the transmittal of the Plum Creek plan’s modifications of the Alachua County comprehensive plan to Tallahassee was held March 1 at the Alachua County Senior Recreational Center. Regardless of the outcome of this meeting, the audience was chastised for being vocally disrespectful during the developer’s presentation.

Any edition of Robert’s Rules of Order clearly delineate the processes and motions for disciplinary procedures. Putting aside this bible, one comment made from the bench was particularly caustic and hurtful to the audience, particularly to seniors. It was a schoolteacher reprimand for acting like children when someone else is speaking.

Although it is the one word, “children,” even an aggressively prudent commissioner would have refrained from alienating an audience that was comprised of veteran Green activists who patiently endured through several meetings and workshops regarding this dramatic plan change.

Wyre “Herb” Platt

Micanopy

​By Albert E. White
Special to The Sun

I am a consultant for Plum Creek/Weyerhaeuser and a third generation, taxpaying citizen of Gainesville. Also, I have owned a business in the Northwest Fifth Avenue area for 35-plus years. I retired after a career with Gainesville Regional Utilities and a five-year stint as a vice president at the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce.

During my careers I attended numerous School Board, City and County Commission meetings. However, the recent meetings held by the County Commission regarding Envision Alachua are perhaps the most hostile meetings I have ever attended. There was absolutely no order or control at these meetings. Over my years of experience working in the public sector, I have been on the receiving end of both yes and no votes and this meeting was no exception. Therefore, the no vote to transmit the Envision Alachua sector plan has nothing to do with my opinion of the lack of civility at the meetings.

County Commission Chairman Robert Hutchinson opened the initial meeting asking the audience to be respectful of citizens coming to the podium to speak. That was where respect began and ended. He constantly pleaded with the audience to refrain from applauding after a citizen’s comments opposing Envision Alachua because it was intimidating to others in the audience. Whenever he used the gavel to get order, it was inaudible and a useless tool.

There were fulminating, profane outbursts by certain persons opposing Envision Alachua that were not addressed. There was constant heckling of speakers who supported Envision Alachua that was also not addressed as well. During the meetings I was approached by several citizens who supported Envision Alachua and they shared with me that they were afraid to go to the podium to speak. One has to believe that this is nothing but planned intimidation to discourage citizens from speaking on behalf of the plan.

During the final meeting, on March 1, before the vote to transmit or deny the plan, each commissioner was asked to share his thoughts. During Commissioner Mike Byerly’s comments he encouraged the audience to applaud on one instance, going against the chairman’s request and the chairman said nothing. I applaud commissioners Charles Chestnut IV and Lee Pinkoson who challenged the citizens who rudely attempted to interrupt their commitments. Again, the chairman did not say a word but simply looked straight ahead.

As the chairman of the commission and the moderator of the meeting, it is Commissioner Hutchinson’s responsibility to control the meeting. Over three meetings, he did not do this. He ostensibly had no control over the meetings which, in some instances, precluded taxpaying citizens from exercising their right to speak due to intimidation from a group of individuals who had no respect for others.

From my perspective, this reminded me of a period in my life when certain people had no say in the democratic process and were treated as if they did not even exist. I never want to see those times again. I hope that in the future, the County Commission will allow all citizens to speak freely without intimidation and ridicule.

Two thoughts come to my mind regarding this: “with liberty and justice for all” and” inalienable rights”. Something is drastically missing in Alachua County.

— Albert E. White lives in Gainesville.

​The Alachua County Animals Services released its dog kennels Thursday from a quarantine imposed after Feb. 24 when six dogs were found to have bacterial infections.

The agency said that under the direction of Dr. Cynda Crawford, Maddie's Clinical Assistant Professor of Shelter Medicine at the University of Florida, it treated all potentially exposed dogs with antibiotics and continued rigid disinfecting cleaning protocols.

The dogs were retested, and the shelter at 3400 NE 53rd Ave. has been cleared to re-open.

For more information, contact Alachua County Animal Services Shelter Supervisor Jane Grantman at (352) 264-6870.

​By Nicole Wiesenthal
Correspondent

The Alachua County Employee Health and Wellness Center, with services that include primary care, X-ray services and immunizations, opened Jan. 4 under some scrutiny.

A few months later, it has met all of its goals and had more than 1,050 visits.

Dr. Steven Bernstein, the medical director, said he has been overwhelmed by how well the center has been received.

“I think it's been successful because of the climate and the whole way everything's gone in health care over the past year,” Bernstein said. “Then you add a great staff, and we're working for the right goal: Take care of the patients.”

The center, at 4340 W. Newberry Road, eliminates a lot of barriers to health care because it offers a lot of different services in one place, he said.

Sheriff Sadie Darnell remembers attending an open house for the center in its first week and being impressed with the facility and staff.

“As we all know, coming out of the recent recession, having good-paying jobs is a priority, and after that is health benefits and keeping those costs as low as possible,” she said. “If we utilize the center, rather than an emergency room, as our doctor's visit or wellness check, it will drive our health care costs as a county down over time.”

One of the benefits, said Ray Gulhar, Alachua County risk manager, is that there are no co-pays for visits, X-rays, the pharmacy and other services. He said there are short waits for appointments and patients get quality time with medical providers.

Bernstein said he tries to work through patients' problems, and if they're sick, he'll do whatever it takes to make sure they feel better, encouraging follow-up appointments and listening to their problems.

“Most doctors say if you have ten complaints, we only want to hear one of them,” he said, “but we want to hear all of them, work on your health, your lungs, improving your lifestyle, improving the mental, physical, spiritual selves.”

He said he doesn't like to take notes while with patients because he wants to make sure they feel someone is listening.

Gulhar said the center started out with a $500,000 budget, including start-up costs. The remaining money will come from the health claims budget, and visits to the health center will reduce future health care costs, he said.

County officials pushed to create the employee clinic as a way to stem the tide of rising health care costs. Employees are not obligated to use it, however.

Gulhar said the center's ultimate goal is to be self-sufficient and generate savings by encouraging county employees to use the clinic for more preventative care, rather than wait until a health condition is dire — and expensive.

“It is not going to be a burden on the taxpayers' money,” he said. “It will generate savings to support the facility and operations and reduce the health care costs.”

Bernstein said the center hit 1,050 visits in just seven weeks' time, and it now averages 150 visits each week.

They've seen more than 500 new patients, including Darnell, who said she recommends the clinic because it's affordable and accessible.

The center is open six days a week and until 7 p.m. most days so employees can visit around their work schedule.
The only problem they've experienced, Bernstein said, is with the appointment-scheduling software, but they're transitioning away from it.

“It is a win-win situation,” Gulhar said. “Employees get the quality care and employers get the cost savings. In turn, these cost savings will help the employers and employees to control their insurance premiums.”

​Alachua County commissioners should stop blaming everyone but themselves for the lack of development in east Gainesville.
 
Given that they just rejected a major project near the area, they should recognize their own role in creating economic disparities in the community.

Last week, the commission voted 3-2 against sending the Envision Alachua sector plan to the state for review. The proposal by the Plum Creek Timber Company, now merged with the Weyerhaeuser company, was a master-planned development that offered the prospect of first bringing jobs and then housing east of Gainesville.

It offered a better alternative than the piecemeal housing development allowed there under current regulations. While there were certainly environmental concerns, the company pledged to protect the vast majority of its land in that area from development and made improvements to the plan over the past months.

The commission’s rejection of the plan was hardly a surprise given that a sitting commissioner, Mike Byerly, was a driving force behind the opposition. County staff took a combative approach with the applicant rather that seeking common ground, leaving negotiations to swing vote Robert Hutchinson.

In the end, Hutchinson joined Byerly and Ken Cornell in opposing the plan. Hutchinson is instead proposing a complicated land swap that would result in Weyerhaeuser land being bought for a state forest and the development of Tacachale, a state-owned site for developmentally disabled individuals off Waldo Road in Gainesville.

In their meeting Tuesday, commissioners discussed the next steps in considering that plan as well as east Gainesville development in general. Byerly rebuffed the notion that government has failed to encourage development there. He instead said market forces were responsible for better housing and businesses such as restaurants not being built in the area.

His assessment ignores the county’s role in driving development west of Interstate 75. Commissioners said national chains seek proximity to higher-income residents and well-used roads, but didn’t acknowledge they had just turned down an opportunity to bring those conditions to the eastern county.

As infrastructure becomes overburdened west of the interstate, Envision Alachua would have shifted development toward underutilized streets and schools on the county’s east side. It was hardly a perfect plan and could have been further improved, but shouldn’t have been greeted with such hostility from some commissioners and community members.

Now Weyerhaeuser will weigh other options that will be even less desirable to opponents, such as working toward electing commissioners uninterested in making any changes to the plan. Hutchinson suggested the commission should help avoid this prospect by pursuing his Tacachale proposal. Cornell said the county should work to reduce delays in developing the fairgrounds, set to be part of another land swap involving Weyerhaeuser land.

Both of those ideas should be considered, although a greater focus on the fate of Tacachale’s residents and the University of Florida’s possible involvement with that site must be part of the process. Discussions should also be held about whether the portion of the Envision Alachua project next to U.S. 301, which even Byerly suggested he might support, could be advanced apart from the rest of the proposal.

But accomplishing these things requires county officials who negotiate in good faith. It requires community activists who put as much energy into addressing economic inequality as they do bashing a company that at least brought attention to the problem.

If commissioners want to spread economic opportunity throughout our county, they can’t reject a plan to do so and then blame the private sector for being the problem. Government and business interests should be able to work together for the benefit of the community.

​By Ryan Summers
Correspondent

The opportunity to get rid of unwanted household hazardous materials, tires and “clean your block” is coming to Alachua County Saturday as a part of the 2016 Great American Cleanup.

Keep Alachua County Beautiful and over 10 local sponsors are holding the 24th annual Great American Cleanup at Westside Park, 1001 NW 34th St., from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday.

Community members can volunteer to be a part of the event giving their time to help remove invasive plant species, paint over graffiti and pick up litter from streets, parks and other public areas.

Gina Hawkins, executive director of Keep Alachua County Beautiful, said she is excited to get the area's youth involved in this year's event.

“We're expecting between 700 and 900 people,” Hawkins said. “This year we will involve more young people and more school-aged people.”

Hawkins said getting the youth involved is vital to the event and the environment's success because if they didn't reach out to young people, the people already involved would be picking up trash and litter for years to come.

Besides cleaning up the public areas, the event will allow residents to dispose of unwanted household items.

Residents can dispose of unwanted, expired and damaged over-the-counter medications and unwanted pharmaceuticals including pills, gel caps and capsules and liquids at the event.

Residents can also dispose up to four passenger tires to be recycled into rubber mulch that can be used for playgrounds and other neighborhood improvements.

The Alachua County Environmental Protection Department will be at the event accepting paints, batteries, fluorescent lamps, motor oils, cooking oils, pesticides and pool chemicals.

Recycling Services of America will provide free confidential paper shredding of home and office papers and will accept corrugated cardboard as a part of the cleanup event.

No registration is necessary to drop off unwanted materials.

Hawkins said supplies will be available Saturday for anyone who wants to participate. If residents can not make it to the event Saturday they can pre-register for a date of their choosing through Keep Alachua County Beautiful's website, http://www.kacb.org.

​Everyone deserves a second chance, even dogs.

Inspired by public outcry in support of a furry friend named Padi that faced euthanasia after biting off a part of a 4-year-old boy’s ear, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, sponsored the bill aimed at giving dogs and their owners a fighting chance to appeal the once automatic death sentence.

The bill, which requires all cases involving dogs causing serious injury to humans to be resolved in accordance to a “dangerous dog classification,” passed both the Florida House and the Senate unanimously and was signed by Gov. Rick Scott.

“We don’t just euthanize an animal right away,” said Vernon Sawyer, Alachua County Animal Services director. “There’s a process to it and there’s an appeal process.”

Alachua County currently has one pending “dangerous dog” case.

Click to watch this story.

​By Jenny Wilson
Correspondent

County commissioners on Tuesday gave unanimous approval to a minimum wage ordinance that could increase wages for scores of local workers, but commissioners postponed final action on the measure after a strong lobbying push from labor activists led them to consider broadening it to cover more residents.

The Board of County Commissioners is scheduled to discuss the minimum wage ordinance again at a meeting April 12. The measure would extend the existing $12 minimum wage for county employees to public contractors and subcontractors, affecting an estimated 150 or 200 local workers, according to statistics from the Alachua County Labor Coalition. Existing law requires Alachua County to pay its employees $12 an hour, but allows public contractors and subcontractors to pay the state minimum wage of $8.05. Supporters of the new ordinance argue that the loophole defeats the purpose of the higher county rate because the county can save money simply by contracting with outside companies.

Local labor activists, who for months have been campaigning for higher wages in Alachua County, showed up in full force Tuesday night, over 70 of them packing the second-floor meeting room in the county office building downtown. Those who spoke during the public comments section of the meeting asked the board to eliminate some exemptions that were included in the initial draft of the ordinance - exemptions that would exclude student employees, temporary workers, people in job training programs and other groups from the wage increase. Commissioners signaled that they were prepared to make those changes when they revisit the proposal next month.

“The value of a person’s labor does not change if that person happens to be a student, if that person happens to be working for only three months,” said Fred Byrd, a graduate student at the University of Florida, in his statement to the board. Byrd urged commissioners to eliminate all exemptions that they could without breaking state or federal law for a simple reason: “Every person who contributes…value to a job is entitled to receive full compensation for that.”

Students, members of the United Church of Gainesville, the president of the local branch of the NAACP and Gainesville mayoral candidate Lauren Poe were among others who addressed the board.

At times during the three-hour debate, public comments reflected a broader endorsement of an increased minimum wage than they did address the specific proposal before the commission. The county is limited in what it can do on this issue, as state law prohibits municipalities from setting a traditional minimum wage that also would apply to the private sector.

“I don’t want my tax dollars going to pay a poverty wage. I want to know that my tax dollars are investing in the people in our community and are fully providing the remuneration for the hard work that we do here,” said Poe.

Labor activists had asked the board to raise the county’s minimum rate to 125 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, or $14.60 an hour, but commissioners signaled that they will not open that up for debate until they enter budget negotiations later this year.

One young man implored commissioners to take action in an emotional plea to the board, during which he spoke very quickly and rarely paused for breath.

“I’m really hopped up on caffeine and I’m really emotional and passionate about this issue,” he said. “I’m not really educated about the specifics…[but]…my mother has been living here all her life. She’s a widow, and she has me and her sister.”

He told commissioners that when he filled out financial aid information for school, he learned that his mother earns less than $20,000 a year.

“I think that’s unacceptable,” he said. “I don’t know if she fits into this ordinance, but I do know there are people in this county who do fit into this ordinance.”

Robert Hutchinson, who chairs the board, suggested that the ordinance be referred to as a minimum wage ordinance, rather than a living wage ordinance as labor activists have framed it. Some who spoke during the meeting expressed concern that $12 an hour was still not enough to live on, especially for a single parent.

“My concern is that living wage is a much more amorphous term,” Hutchinson said. “It’s clearly what we’re striving for, but what we’ve created here is a minimum wage for county employees and contractors.”

Commissioner Ken Cornell, the vice-chair of the board, said he expects that some of the exemptions will be eliminated, and that over the next several weeks, commissioners would “have some discussions with staff to see if we need them or not.”

“If we don’t need them, we shouldn’t have them,” Cornell said.

Labor activists were declaring a victory after the meeting. Jeremiah Tattersall, lead organizer for the Alachua County Labor Coalition, gave a five-minute debriefing to the handful of activists who stayed through to the end.

“What we did is we made our argument for less exemptions,” Tattersall said. “We’re going to make it even better…they’re going to come back with an ordinance with less exemptions.”

Tattersall said Tuesday’s progress was significant because the city of Gainesville, the University of Florida and other large employers in the area look to the county for direction.

“We should be really excited about this because workers deserve a living wage, and Alachua County is making that demand, and they’re responding to it,” he said.

​Bicyclists and motorists will no longer have to share Northwest 16th Avenue.

Alachua County started work on Monday to change its bike lane project that began in July 2011.

On Monday night, work started to remove markings on the road that indicate that bicyclists and cars have a shared lane. Because of many complaints by the public, those markings were removed after the Board of Commissioners voted to implement dedicated bike lanes instead.

The project was originally approved in 2011 but it took until 2013 for it to actually come into effect. A comprehensive repaving, line replacement and widening for the road was completed in 2013, but the project was not finished until late last year because of drainage and utility issues as well as legal problems.

Brian Singleton, transportation engineering manager for Alachua County Public Works, said that the dedicated bike lane construction will cost about $100,000.

The project was already $500,000 over the original $7 million budget before this additional money was allotted.

Once the road project was finished, drivers and cyclists soon complained about a confusing network of “sharrows,” markings used to designate the road as one that can be used by both bicycles and motor vehicles. In response to these complaints, Alachua County officials voted to again restripe the roads and add 4-foot wide bike lanes on either side of the road.

“When the shared lanes went down there was confusion with motorist and the bicyclist of where the vehicles were allowed, and the board decided to remark the roadway with the dedicated bike lane in the street,” Singleton said.

Signs along the street say that bikers may use the full lane, although biker markings were put down on the right hand side of the lane.

Sharrow markings can be placed in either the center of the road or on the side of the lane. Singleton said that the county voted on placing the markings on the right hand side, as they believed that would be the safest place for bicyclist to ride.

Roger Pierce, chief of staff of Gainesville Cycling Club disagrees. He claims that the county should have voted to mark them in the center of the street in the first place.

“The markings were supposed to be in the center of the lane,” Pierce said. “Everybody I talked to doesn’t like them. I prefer bike lanes because sharrows are not well understood by the public.”

Lee Pinkoson, an Alachua County commissioner, said that Florida Statute laws changed between when they initiated the contract in 2011 and when it was finally completed.

“Sharrows under contract state statute said that the markings should be more centrally located in the lane,” Pinkoson said. “The board tried to accommodate both cars and bicyclists by changing it.”

By adding a specific bike lane, the vehicle lane will be reduced to a 10-foot-wide lane, which is the absolute minimum. This means that buses, trucks and other large vehicles may experience some trouble going down that road.

This is not the preferred width for larger vehicles, as the lane was three feet wider when the sharrows were still there.

“My only concern is for the larger trucks that might be on the road,” Pinkoson said. “We want everyone to be safe. Not only just a safe road, but a road that is much more hospitable to all.”

​By Christopher Curry
Staff writer

There are no classes taught at the University of Florida's East Campus along Waldo Road. Instead, the majority of the 450 or so employees working in the complex of brick buildings behind a wrought iron fence handle mostly administrative duties.

Departments such as payroll, Web and data services were moved here to free up room at the congested main campus.

Now, the eastside campus is facing its own space constraints, as the packed parking lot on most weekdays shows. An application to the city of Gainesville seeks to use a small parcel of land the university already owns for overflow parking.

The application notes the possibility of a different use as the site continues to “evolve and redevelop over time,” an indication that while the site has not yet been a driver of redevelopment along the Waldo Road corridor, university officials are not giving up hope.

“We don't have any specific plans but we are going to build up that area more,” UF President Kent Fuchs said during a meeting with the Sun editorial board last week.

During that interview, Fuchs said the university officials have talked among themselves about potentially acquiring the nearby Tacachale property, the oldest and largest community for Floridians with developmental disabilities, if state government makes it available at some point.

“It's not available right now, but if it became available, I think we would seize upon it,” he said.

Other local officials, including County Commissioner Robert “Hutch'' Hutchinson, are suggesting possible land swaps involving the under-used Tacachale property now that the Plum Creek development proposals are in flux.

Like those advocates, UF officials are looking at some of these changes to become catalysts for redevelopment and an economic boost for east Gainesville area restaurants and shops.

So far, such redevelopment has not followed UF's east side campus. A vendor opened a lunch counter on the campus, but it eventually closed down. Fred Rowe, the project manager for the eastside campus, just started getting food trucks to visit the campus during lunch hour.

Still, the campus plays an integral role in research work, and that could make it a model as Fuchs eyes growing UF's presence in urban areas across the state - including in major cities like Orlando and Tampa - with graduate-level programs and research.

The campus already is something of a magnet for those looking to work with some of the most powerful supercomputers in the country.

The site is the home of the UF Data Center, a $14 million, 25,000-square-foot brick facade bunker where two superfast computers - HiPerGator and HiPerGator 2.0 - allow researchers from UF and other universities and countries to perform highest-level computations.

For example, the $8 million HiPerGator 2.0 - which came online in late 2015 - is capable of 1.1 trillion computations per second.

A small sampling of the research conducted with it includes DNA sequencing of beetles and Swiss scientists' work on particle physics. Damon Woodard, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the director of the UF Biometrics and Machine Learning Lab, is using the computer on research to into iris, facial and hand recognition to identify individuals.
UF officials say the computer is the most powerful university supercomputer in the South and the third fastest in the country.

The HiperGator system now has the capacity to store 20 billion photographs, all the books in the Library of Congress and the nation's 25 largest public libraries and 86 million additional books and 21 million times more data than the computer program for the Apollo 11 moon mission.

Keeping the powerful computer equipment cool is high-tech, complex process itself, said John Toner Jr., the data center manager. A chilled water system cools air that runs into the computer room through vents in a three-foot high raised floor. A raised roof gives warm air space to rise and leave the room. Toner said it takes the equivalent of 120 household air conditioning units to cool two rooms in the building.

Toward the back of the east side campus stands one of the first UF tenants on site, the Powell Family Structures and Materials Laboratory.

Inside a large warehouse-like complex of buildings with high roofs, researchers study the effects of natural disasters such as tornadoes, earthquakes and hurricanes on homes and other buildings.

Walk through the lab and steel roof shingles and wood walls stand in various research areas. Ongoing research is also looking at the ability of high-performance concrete to withstand high force impacts in a lab test trying to simulate the power of an explosion in a terrorist attack.

A hurricane simulator inside a long wind tunnel features a “terraformer,” a system that is able to mimic the terrain of a neighborhood with hundreds of small, computer controlled cylinder devices that rise out of the floor.

The hurricane simulator is out of service right now as the roaring diesel engines that once powered its wind tunnel are being replaced by electric engines, said Jon Sinnreich, the lab's research services coordinator.

Sinnreich also acknowledged another sign of the growing campus: The lab can't run as loudly as it once did. There are more departments and employees on campus than ever before, with more on the way.

​By Jenny Wilson
Correspondent

County commissioners will vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would require companies that contract with Alachua County to pay employees at least $12 an hour, a measure that reflects a broader effort by organized labor to increase the hourly wage for public employees.

County employees already must earn $12 an hour, nearly $4 more than the state minimum wage of $8.05, under a measure passed recently in Alachua County.

But a gaping loophole in that law means that the county can save money simply by contracting with outside companies that pay their workers the state's minimum hourly rate.

The ordinance that the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners is scheduled to vote on Tuesday has been billed as a living wage increase, but what it in fact would do is extend the existing minimum hourly rate requirement to companies that contract with the county.

“A few custodial staff who work at the county make a decent wage of $12 an hour, but the people that [the county] contracts with to clean, they don’t make $12. They make $8.05 an hour, maybe $9 if they’re lucky,” said Jeremiah Tattersall, the Alachua County Labor Coalition Organizer for the local branch of the state’s largest labor union.

Tattersall, as well as other supporters of an increased hourly rate, is hopeful that through amendments to the ordinance, the vote could also raise Alachua County’s living wage to $14.60 an hour – 125 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. That, in turn, could raise the amount that contractors would have to pay, if the measure passes.

Tattersall said he is optimistic that the ordinance will pass, but “the devil is in the details.” Organized labor is fighting against exemptions that may be included in the text of the ordinance that would risk rendering it ineffectual.

“Does this apply for students doing internships? Does this apply for non-profits? All these little details, we’re going back and forth about,” said Tattersall, who said that labor advocates want “the kitchen sink and everything else in one ordinance.”

He anticipated that at least 50 people who support the rate increase could show up to the meeting.

The union started the living wage campaign roughly nine months ago in Alachua County, with the goal of getting the top 10 largest employers – almost all of which are in the public sector – to pay a living wage by 2020. Last year, the University of Florida agreed to pay all employees at least $12 an hour.

Unlike other cities throughout the country that have passed minimum wage ordinance, municipalities here are limited in what they can do, thanks to a state statute that says counties and cities can’t increase the minimum wage. The living wage coalition’s goal, Tattersall said, is to target enough employers to pay a living wage “with the hope that we will saturate the job market.”