MediaUpdate

​Recently Wendy Wilber left the position of Alachua County extension agent. This was after many years of enthusiastic service. On behalf of the residents of Gainesville and Alachua County, it my pleasure to express our heartfelt thanks.

Over the years I have attended a number of classes presented at the county extension office by Wendy. These classes ranged from growing mushrooms to installing drip irrigation in my yard. Her presentations were always lively and informative.

Her presence was also felt in the Gainesville Sun. On a regular basis she provided timely and useful articles about raising plants and related issues.

We wish her much success in her new position and want to let her know that she will be missed.

Larry Schwandes, President emeritus,
UF Organic Garden Co-op

​By Arek Sarkissian
Staff writer

If someone calls for an ambulance in Alachua County, there’s an increasing chance one may not be available.
 
The county has a limited number of units to respond, and one of them may be taking a patient to a medical facility in Atlanta, Nashville or beyond.

Alachua County Fire Rescue for years has been in the lucrative business of patient transportation, and the involvement has grown as officials have come to rely more on this revenue stream.

As the number of transfers grows, it is putting a strain on ACFR’s core mission of transporting people during emergencies. Rescue officials have been using a system they call move-up — one official called it “leapfrog” — shifting ambulances from outlying areas closer to Gainesville to cover emergency calls the city.

But that complicated waltz of equipment sometimes falls apart. On 28 occasions over the past six months, ACFR had no ambulances available to respond to calls. All the units were tied up on calls or out of Alachua County.

Some officials have wondered why the ACFR doesn’t just stop doing transfers and handle the increasing 911 caseload.

“If they can’t keep up with the work here, why would they expand those transports?” asked Hawthorne City Manager Ellen Vause. “This is a core function of the services they should provide.”

The answer may well be in the numbers.

Revenue from out-of-county transfers has more than doubled over the past five years. In 2010, the transfers yielded $210,000 profit for the county, and in 2014, they brought in $561,000.

In one recent trip to Nashville, ACFR charged a patient’s insurer $7,000, and $3,000 of that was profit.

■ ■ ■

Recently appointed ACFR Chief Bill Northcutt said his agency struggles to keep up with the growing needs of the community and the two major hospitals it serves.

The county has not added an ambulance in 10 years, and with officials reluctant to expand the ambulance service, new revenue streams such as out-of-county transports have become vital, Northcutt said.

Calls for service over that time have increased, as have requests from North Florida Regional Medical Center and UF Health Shands Hospital to transport patients to smaller facilities across Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.

“We consider those hospitals as customers as much as the people who call for help,” Northcutt said. “We’ve got to make sure people get the help they need as much as we need to make sure hospital beds are freed up so more patients can be treated.”

ACFR data also show the ambulance service has seen more 911 calls over the past five fiscal years. In fiscal year 2010, the agency fielded 30,661 calls, and in fiscal year 2014, it saw 33,255.

The roughly 8 percent increase in calls only bolstered Alachua County’s unenviable standing as the busiest of 12 Florida counties with similar populations, per numbers from fiscal year 2013.

Each of ACFR’s 12 ambulances runs an average of 3,007 calls per year, which is far more than the average of 2,073 calls run by each of neighboring Marion County’s 27 ambulances.
Meanwhile, Leon County, which is slightly larger than Alachua County, operated 16 ambulances that handled a total of 33,166 calls, averaging a call load of 2,250 per truck.

“It’s finding that balance,” Northcutt said. “Run too many trucks and you have to cut elsewhere, but not enough and it could lead to trouble.”

The county began to provide ambulance service to its residents in 1974, and with that came transporting patients on nonemergency calls. In those days, calls for patient transfers were occasional and not governed by medical standards that quickly evolved over the past two decades.

Shands and NFRMC increasingly became destinations for Floridians with a specific ailment, or dealing with trauma that required an orchestra of specialists. Those patients treated here usually are sent to facilities closer to home to continue their treatment. Typically, they get there via specialized transportation so there is a seamless level of care, Northcutt said.

“The hospitals wanted to transfer patients so they could free up bed space,” he said. “With more bed space upstairs, the emergency room downstairs can take in more patients.”

But ACFR wasn’t always part of that arrangement.

“It came to the point where hospitals like Shands weren’t even calling us,” ACFR’s Harold Theus said. “I called them and started to rebuild that relationship.”

To meet the rising demand for patient transfers, typically paid for by the patient’s insurer, UF Health created ShandsCair, which offers critical care transportation both by land and air.

But even that service is limited, and outside agencies are sometimes brought in to help, said Shands CEO Ed Jimenez.

“ACFR came to us and we came up with a plan so that their crew could be trained with what we needed,” Jimenez said. “Not that they weren’t already well-trained, but with Chief Theus we came up with some standards that worked for the needs of our patients.”

With that agreement, ACFR’s Critical Care 1 unit was born in May 2014.

“It’s much more than just a general transport,” Jimenez said. “Part of our philosophy is that we want to be a resource for the people of this county and everyone in the state of Florida.”

ACFR and the county’s two hospitals will still call on private ambulance companies from Jacksonville and Lake City to help, but in most cases, the hospitals will recommend that patients use ACFR’s critical care service.

Private ambulance companies are seeing plenty of business, too.

“We have a very good working relationship with ACFR and we do get called, from time to time, to conduct out-of-county transfers,” said Ray Bailey, operations director for Century Ambulance Service, which operates in Live Oak, Lake City and Jacksonville. “We are always willing to help if we have the available manpower.”

As the number of transfer requests grew, ACFR began to assign one of its 12 rescue units — when available — to supplement Critical Care 1 in handling out-of-county transfers. That meant the 11 remaining trucks had to pick up the call load under a term coined by the agency as a “move-up.”

ACFR went into move-up mode 175 times over the past six months, according to department-provided data.

“It’s all we can do to keep up,” Theus said.

■ ■ ■

Alachua County has not added an ambulance since 2005, and plans had originally called for four new crews by 2012.

More crews, however, mean more money.

An entirely new unit will add $600,000 to ACFR’s budget, Northcutt said. Unlike its fire service, which is partly supported by revenue sources such as the Municipal Services Tax Unit, the county’s ambulance service is partly supported by the general fund. Other revenue streams include payments collected by private and public insurers.

Northcutt’s proposed solution is to add a shift to the Critical Care 1 Unit, which would double its hours of operation from 40 hours a week to 80. Also, he would add an ambulance to create Critical Care 2 and run it 80 hours a week, too.

The additions would be partially paid for by the additional income these transports could generate.

This step would also help with emergency calls, Northcutt said, because it would free up the unit that was taken off the emergency call rotation to provide patients transport.

Northcutt said he, Theus and the County Commission are aware of the need to improve ambulance service — particularly to residents in the northwest corner of Alachua County, from High Springs to Lacrosse.

Data show the only ambulance currently stationed in that area covers 154 square miles, and last year, it was only available for service 70 percent of the time — the rest of the time it was on move-up, supporting busier areas of the county or on out-of-county assignments.

Its response time for over 86 percent of its calls was about 12 minutes, about 4 minutes more than units stationed in Gainesville, but there have been many occasions when wait times have extended to a half-hour.

The County Commission discussed the issue of improving service during an April 7 meeting, and it will make a decision in the coming weeks.

Alachua County Manager Lee Niblock said there have been talks of a more agile, demand-driven model where ambulance services adjust to the needs of the day. For instance, ACFR ambulance call loads tend to peak toward the middle of the day.

“We’ll just continue to move our resources,” Niblock said. “We want to continuously reposition our rescue units so that they are close and we can keep our response times down.”

Niblock said his demand-driven model plan could also mean the addition of equipment. “But you have to be smart about it and make sure it’s properly placed,” he said.

Commissioner Mike Byerly said he recognizes ACFR’s calls for ambulance service are on the rise, but he wants to see what response times are now.

“Really, what we need to know is how long it takes for us to pick people up, and take them to the hospital — that’s what we need to know,” Byerly said.

Northcutt said the difficulty behind response times is that they can be misleading. An ambulance assigned to an area within Gainesville will likely arrive at a call faster than one assigned to a less-populated area such as the western side of the county.

Byerly had asked Northcutt during the April 7 meeting to explore whether ACFR could shift resources from the fire side of the agency to the ambulance service. Byerly said he recognized that the two sides of the agency are tightly integrated, but the decline in fires could mean firefighters, who are usually cross-trained as paramedics and emergency medical technicians, could be reassigned toward rescue operations.

County Commissioner Ken Cornell said he recognized residents in northwest Alachua County have faced unusually long wait times.

“We have to work on how we can improve response times and how we can get to the folks who need advanced life support,” Cornell said, adding he was willing to entertain Northcutt’s request to add a sister to Critical Care 1. “I think we definitely need to look at that in this budget cycle.”

​By Arek Sarkissian
Staff writer

Although the High Springs Fire Department is staffed by a crew of firefighters who also are trained as paramedics and emergency medical technicians, there may not always be an ambulance to back them up.

The agency that runs the ambulance service, Alachua County Fire Rescue, does not have enough units to go around, and areas such as the northwest portion of the county are left waiting the longest.

High Springs Fire Chief Bruce Gillingham's crew will arrive on a scene in minutes and promptly ready a patient for transport, but the ambulance may not always be there in a prudent amount of time.

"There's only so long we can treat a patient that we've done everything for and they need to get to the hospital," Gillingham said. "All we can do is wait."

Gillingham said that recently, that wait time has stretched to an hour.

The wait can depend on where the ambulance assigned to their area has been shifted to help make up coverage gaps in more populated areas of the county.

Leaders of Alachua County communities east of Gainesville are concerned that the steady increase in calls, the almost daily decisions to move ambulances toward more populated areas and the increasing number of the out-of-county transfers could lead to trouble.

While officials in Alachua and Waldo said they have heard no complaints of lag times in ambulance service, Hawthorne remains concerned.

Last month, ACFR opened a new station in Hawthorne's former fire department, which included moving an ambulance from another station about 11 miles away. The move improved response times, but that's only if the ambulance has not been reassigned to cover calls in Gainesville.

"When they're there, the response times have greatly improved," Hawthorne City Manager Ellen Vause said. "But when they're not there, we're back to square one."

Vause said her residents stood to benefit from having a fire and ambulance station, which occupied the former city department that closed years ago due to budget constraints. In exchange for a building the city could have repurposed or sold, Hawthorne homeowners stood to see faster response times and lower homeowner's insurance premiums.

"But it looks like we're waiting like everyone else when things get busy," Vause said.

Vause wondered why ACFR expanded its out-of-county transport service with call loads on the rise.

"If they can't keep up with the work here, why would they expand those transports?" Vause asked. "This is a core function of the services they should provide."

Communities west of Interstate 75 already are experiencing the problems.

Newberry Mayor Bill Conrad recalled the day in spring 2013 that an 11-year-old boy had been bitten by a rattlesnake. The boy waited at the city's fire station for 45 minutes until an ACFR ambulance arrived. His parents drove to Shands from Trenton the moment they heard the news.

"What surprised me is his parents beat the ambulance to the hospital," Conrad said. "I know our firefighters are cross-trained — they're also paramedics and EMTs.

"But there's not much you can do when you've been bitten by a snake." The boy survived the ordeal.

The ACFR station that provides ambulance service for Newberry is about two miles away in the unincorporated Jonesville, and county plans show the growing city was on a list to receive its own station. But so far, those plans have not been acted upon by the Alachua County Commission.

"We've even put in a bid to add a bay to our fire station," Conrad said, later echoing Gillingham's concerns in High Springs. "We can get the person ready to go and treat them the best we can, but then we're waiting with them while they bleed to death."

​Drivers will have plenty of time to ponder problems with our local transportation system while stuck in traffic in the months ahead.

The Florida Department of Transportation has started to mill and repave 34th Street from Archer Road to around Northwest Fifth Avenue. The project, expected to last at least 160 days, began with work on sidewalks last week and will progress to work on traffic lanes this summer.

This fall, Newberry Road will get its turn for milling, repaving and lane closures. With other road and development projects happening at the same time, finding alternate routes will be a challenge.

It’s no wonder that the headline of a recent Sun story announced, “Carmageddon is upon us.” Given the inability of Alachua County residents to address the inadequacies of our transportation system, it’s more like karmageddon.

Voters have repeatedly turned down ballot initiatives to fund transportation projects that would ease congestion and improve the quality of local roadways. It’s karma that months after the last defeat, we’re all getting a healthy dose of how bad local roads can be.

Last week, Alachua County Manager Lee Niblock outlined a plan to address a $550 million backlog in road repairs. It would require adjusting standards to lower costs and creating or hiking fees — so residents will likely end up paying for road repairs after all.

But fixing existing roads won’t address congestion. If we’re going to prevent traffic from becoming unbearable as new developments open, we must consider how to best address our long-term transportation needs.

Part of that involves how we approve development. Gainesville must continue efforts, such as an update of the land development code, that encourage density. The closer that people that live near where they work, eat and shop, the more likely that they’ll use the bus, walk or ride bikes to get there.

We also need to keep improving our Regional Transit System. Bus routes must run at times and frequencies that match the schedules of lower-income workers. But we must make bigger changes, such as express routes and fare-free zones, to expand bus ridership beyond those workers and college students.

Projects that encourage cycling and improve pedestrian safety are also needed. But we shouldn’t waste time and money on vanity projects that have minimal impact on those issues and cause division, such as the Northwest Eighth Avenue narrowing.

If local officials are going to garner enough support to pass a transportation initiative one day, they must give similar attention to projects that benefit drivers. Widening and extending roadways should be considered in some cases, but also different ideas such as more bus cut-outs and pedestrian bridges above campus-area roads to improve traffic flow and safety.

Call it carmageddon or just plain karma, but local traffic is about to get worse. Channel your anger when stuck in your car to something productive: figuring out how to keep congestion from becoming unbearable in the future.

​By Arek Sarkissian
Staff writer

On a recent morning, crew members of Alachua County Fire Rescue ambulance No. 3 finally got a break and returned to their Waldo Road station after three consecutive calls for service.
 
However, Rescue Lt. David Torsell did not dare tell the driver to silence the metallic growl of the glimmering red box on wheels.

"If history proves me right, this break — this lull — won't last long," Torsell said. "It's only 1 p.m. and we've already burned a half tank of gas, and if we don't get (gas) now, we'll be in real trouble."

A day riding on Torsell's ambulance showed the workload of Alachua County's fire rescue service to be constant, confusing and miraculous.

Only three hours into the 24-hour shift that started at 8 a.m., the fleet of 12 ACFR ambulances already had gone into move-up mode. That meant the number of calls for help coming in through the city-county Combined Communications Center was so high that ambulances in less-populated areas such as Waldo, High Springs and Hawthorne had to move closer to Gainesville to provide coverage.

That left those rural areas unprotected. As the city-based units that needed the backup became available, they, in turn, were dispatched to calls in the outlying areas, picking up for those who had moved into the city to help them in the first place.

To further complicate things, by late morning, one of the ambulances was assigned a patient transfer call that would take it to Naples, hours away in southwest Florida.

This countywide waltz of ambulances happens so often it has earned the term rescue move-up.

"I don't know what's more concerning, whether we run out of ambulances or that we have a name for it," Torsell said.

"It's not if it will happen, it's how many times."

ACFR went into move-up mode 175 times over the past six months, most frequently in January, when it occurred 41 times. February saw the next highest number of 31 move-ups, followed by 28 in October, according to data provided by the agency.

ACFR had not tracked move-ups until about six months ago, and the switch-around of ambulances was not even necessary a decade ago. The number of responses has since increased by 33 percent, and the out-of-county runs has increased to the point where one ambulance regularly is taken off the 911 call rotation, leaving the 11 remaining units to bear the weight.

On paper, it means each unit would take an extra call for service, but that does not account for Alachua County's size.

For instance, the Gainesville Fire Rescue station where ACFR parks its Rescue 3 unit is about six miles away from UF Health Shands Hospital. Meanwhile, ACFR's Rescue 20 ambulance, which covers 154 square miles in the northwest corner of Alachua County, is more than 20 miles away from Shands.

"Now just think, they just ask that crew to come into town and back one of us up, and then we get a call in High Springs, which has and will happen," Torsell said. "That means there's no way for anyone to get out there in anything less than a half hour."

Indeed, during Torsell's Friday morning shift, Rescue 20 was temporarily reassigned into town.

"And that's how you play leapfrog," he said, after he dropped off another patient at Shands. "We do it all day long."
Shortly after Torsell and his crew returned to the station for the first time in three hours, ACFR was flooded with calls. There were so many patients, ACFR district chiefs — the supervisors normally assigned to command major incidents such as fires and vehicle crashes — were called to hospital emergency rooms to help crews arriving with patients.

That Friday afternoon, Torsell's crew picked up another three calls in three hours, which amounted to six calls in seven hours. He estimated seeing an average of 12 calls per 24-hour shift.

"You can pretty much bet on how busy it is, every day," he said.

​By Mickie Anderson
Staff writer

Planners hoping to make University Avenue more friendly for bus riders, walkers, cyclists and drivers had a meeting Thursday evening to gauge public sentiment, but few people showed up.
 
Transportation planners from the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization and a couple consulting firms hosted the meeting at Gainesville Regional Utilities' downtown headquarters.

The slow trickle from the public meant that those who did attend got plenty of one-on-one time and thorough explanations of about why particular fixes were being suggested.

The suggested changes are part of the MTPO's look at University Avenue from Gale Lemerand Drive (where drivers turn in to park at the O'Connell Center) east to Waldo Road.

The changes are among a number that could win funding from the Department of Transportation and are intended to be relatively simple, meaning that they could be engineered, approved and put into place within a five-year period, officials said.

Among the changes planners sought public input on:

Adding at least nine shelters and five benches at existing RTS bus stops, as well as enhanced lighting along the way.

Separate, continuous bike and pedestrian paths along University Avenue from Gale Lemerand Drive to Northwest 13th Street. Bike and pedestrian paths exist in that area now, but they are often broken up by parking lots. Also, a 32-inch-high "stem wall" 30 inches from the road would separate pedestrians from cars on University Avenue. That wall would also serve to discourage what planners call "mid-block crossings" — or what non-engineers call "jaywalking."

The large intersection at Waldo Road could see larger curb areas, which planners say would slow drivers as they make their turns and shorten the distance pedestrians have to cover to get across the road;

Between Northeast 7th Street and Northeast 10th Street, raised medians would give pedestrians a midway stopping point as they cross University Avenue.

From Gale Lemerand Drive to 13th Street, as well as a crossing at Northeast Boulevard, pedestrian crossings would be enhanced with more-visible devices that more effectively stop traffic, said Peyton McLeod, project planner with Sprinkle Consulting.

Retired University of Florida mathematics faculty member Dave Wilson and his friend, Bob Mounts, a retired attorney, attended the workshop, hoping to see how engineers and planners intend to handle what they expect to be a glut of traffic and people, if and when the University Corners project and its accompanying multi-story parking garage come to fruition.

"I've lived here since 1980, and I'm worried about the future traffic," Wilson said. "I just think it's going to be a humongous mess."

​By Mickie Anderson
Staff writer

A local developer and some elected officials sorely want $37 million in federal funds to complete the missing mile of Southwest 62nd Boulevard.

But to get it, they need to make their way to the top of the local transportation needs list, U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, told them during a brief Friday afternoon stop in Gainesville.

Local officials and Butler Enterprises developer Deborah Butler visited Mica and federal transportation officials earlier this week on their quest for funding, and Mica told them he'd like to come take a look at the project.

Friday, he did. And while he seemed to approve of the effort, he made no promises.

"If you guys can't get it to the top of the list, you'll fall behind," he told them.

Between land and construction, Butler's company has already kicked in about $50 million for a one-mile section of Southwest 62nd Boulevard that opened earlier this month, called "Clark Butler Boulevard." The roadway runs through Butler's under-construction 167-acre expansion of Butler Plaza.

Taxpayers paid for the 1.7-mile, four-lane stretch that runs past The Oaks Mall off Newberry Road to Southwest 20th Avenue.

The missing chunk of road would connect the two segments, starting near the Cabana Beach apartment complex off 20th Avenue and ending at the expanded shopping complex.

The road's proponents argued they have public and private investment in the project, that the completed road would reduce Interstate 75 traffic by about 10 percent, that it would help route traffic to North Florida Regional Medical Center without having to go by interstate, and that it would create jobs and boost tourism.

Alachua County Commissioner Lee Pinkoson and Gainesville City Commissioner Craig Carter, both members of the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization, which exists to take a long-into-the-future look at transportation needs, seemed gung-ho about nudging their fellow MTPO board commissioners to push the road to the top of the needs list.

But doing that would mean leapfrogging a number of projects already on the Year 2035 "cost feasible" list, which include adding turn lanes on Northwest 34th Street, a slew of improvements that would help boost pedestrian safety on University Avenue and 13th Street, and changes to Waldo Road, Archer Road and Williston Road, according to MTPO documents.

Drawings displayed Friday showed a giant Wal-Mart north of Southwest 30th Avenue and west of Southwest 42nd Street, a Sam's Club just north of Southwest 33rd Place behind the existing Target and a Lowe's north of Windmeadows Boulevard.

Late last month, opponents of the Butler Plaza expansion took to social media to complain that an endangered gopher tortoise had been found on the construction site and that the project hadn't gotten the required approvals.

But wildlife officials said they saw no evidence of tortoises during a March 25 inspection, and engineers connected to the project provided proof of permits from the city, state and water district.

On Friday, as the news conference with Mica broke up and he left quickly to catch a flight, resident Marsha Voight began peppering no one in particular with questions about the development's impact on the tortoise.

​By Mickie Anderson
Staff writer

When Alachua County leaders hired Lee Niblock as county manager last year, a top item on his to-do list was finding a way to shrink the county's road-maintenance backlog.
 
He announced two ways county officials might attack that $550 million backlog Wednesday, during his first “Looking Forward” speech to county commissioners.

The first: By switching to a “resurfacing only” standard for maintenance of eligible roads, which would cut the cost from about $750,000 per mile of two-lane road to $300,000 or less. The lower-standard work would keep roads smooth for a shorter period.

The second: Encouraging county commissioners to consider a number of new fees and fee hikes that would help offset the costs of road resurfacing. Since 2004, Alachua County voters have three times said no to taxing themselves more to pay for roads.

Repairs lagged when the state turned over 200 miles of roads to the county in the 1980s. Costs for rural road projects, according to state transportation department estimates, leaped 52 percent from 2000 to 2005. And by 2005, county roads had deteriorated much faster than county leaders had projected.

“I'm not going to stand here and tell you I have a silver bullet,” Niblock said. “Our roads situation didn't happen overnight and it won't be fixed overnight.”

Among the ways he told commissioners they might find money to pay for road work:

• Adopting a clean water/stormwater Municipal Services Benefit Unit similar to the county's solid waste assessment. If stormwater maintenance could be paid through the MSBU assessment — Niblock suggested a $35 stormwater fee would generate $1.1 million a year — it would free other revenue sources to help pay for roads;

• Increasing the millage for the unincorporated Municipal Services Taxing Unit from the current 0.5038 mils by an additional 0.0659 mils, which would generate about $342,000. The current millage raises about $2.28 million;

• Creating MSBUs, where residents within an area pay an assessment to pay for roads and infrastructure that benefits the area. About 16 percent of the county's road work backlog is for non-thoroughfare streets within such areas;

• Asking that new developments create MSBUs to pay for future infrastructure upkeep;

• Moving more than $800,000 in Regional Transit System spending from gas tax proceeds to the MSTU, which would free up gas tax money for road work.

Besides roads, Niblock also outlined a number of other priorities for county government, including a rebranding campaign, investing in solar energy projects for some county buildings, having every government department create a business plan, and finding ways to prepare for an expected leadership gap caused by Baby Boomer retirements.

​By Mickie Anderson
Staff writer

From more enthusiastic recycling to switching to light bulbs that burn brighter using less energy, area public agencies say they are taking steps to become more green.

With Earth Day on the calendar today, they say they are making strides.

Alachua County commissioners voted last month to phase out any use of potable water for landscape irrigation — saying they would prefer to live with crispy lawns than to deplete valuable water resources.

In light of that news, other public agencies may not have gone that far, but say they are trying to throttle back on their use of water and energy.

Alachua County Public Schools have made big gains in waste recycling across the board, and energy conservation specialist Theresa Spurling-Wood says she needs parents' and students' help encouraging recycling at heavily attended sporting events.

All the district's 42 schools now have large recycling bins on campus as well as smaller containers in classrooms, she said, and she needs the public's help encouraging their use.

School system officials have installed low-flow water sprayers in school kitchens, she said, and some schools use rain barrels to collect rainwater, but irrigation on some sports fields remains a concern.

“There is a lot of water used on fields for sports,” she said.

Spurling-Wood says school system officials are always on the hunt for grants to help pay for tools that can help conserve water and energy, and she said if she could ever land a grant to pay for moisture sensors on school ball field irrigation systems, she'd be elated.

Bill Reese, associate vice president for facilities at Santa Fe College, said the college has probably 150 acres, but only a small portion of that ever gets irrigated. There are a few areas with St. Augustinegrass, which requires water, but there's also a good bit of drought-tolerant landscaping.

The irrigation that does happen comes from irrigation wells, so while it does use groundwater, it is not tapping into the drinking water supply, he said.

Reese said he's most excited about the college's soon-to-open Solar REAL (Renewable Energy Accessible) laboratory, which opens in a matter of days, and will be home to students studying solar energy.

The college has also pursued a number of projects around campus that have helped curb energy use, he said, such as swapping out traditional exterior lights for LED lighting.

“It's given us a progressive downward trend for our energy consumption,” he said.

Steve Phillips, head of the city of Gainesville’s department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, said city officials have a keen interest in the county’s plans to turn off its irrigation, and have met recently to discuss those plans.

The city has some ball fields and recreational facilities that must be watered, he said, but the city uses energy-conserving timers for watering systems and any landscaping is specifically chosen with drought tolerance in mind, he said.

​By Mickie Anderson
Staff writer

Alachua County officials are going to make their lawns green — by turning them brown.

At least temporarily.

County commissioners decided in late March to stop irrigating lawns at about a dozen county-owned buildings — a move meant to help promote the idea that using potable water to irrigate grass is no longer reasonable.

At 12 sites where county buildings have bahia grass lawns, county officials have ceased any irrigation at all, said Charlie Jackson, the county's facilities director.

Bahia, a grass used as a cattle forage, takes no maintenance or water, though it doesn't necessarily make for a conventionally pretty lawn.

At four other county sites that have St. Augustine grass — including fire station 17 in Jonesville, the criminal courthouse, the county administration building and the animal services shelter — county officials intend to soon cease irrigation, but possibly will sprig those lawns with centipede grass, another hardy, drought-friendly variety.

The centipede sprigs, combined with Florida's rainy spring, should result in reasonable looking lawns eventually, Jackson said. There is some soil testing being done to ensure that the grass will be a good fit.

“We feel confident, if we get (sprigs) in the dirt during that rainy season, it'll take off,” he said.

But all the sites are likely to look a little ragged, at least temporarily, he said.

“Absolutely. We're going to have to go through a mind change in regards to how lawns will look over this time period,” he said. “And we're going to need to be able to communicate to the general public every way we can, that we're transitioning to low-maintenance-type grass to conserve water.”

County fire stations 12, 15 and 18 have centipede grass, so officials plan to just stop irrigating and let it weather the hot summers.

Bahia, a common grass that needs no encouragement, now grows at fire stations 10, 16, 25 and 27, the civil courthouse downtown, the Leveda Brown transfer station, the county's agricultural center on 39th Avenue, the health department on Waldo Road, the Supervisor of Elections' warehouse off Depot Avenue, the Kanapaha Freedom Center, the tax collector's office on 34th Street and the sheriff's complex on Hawthorne Road.

The County Commission's stance against overly manicured lawns is part of an overall move by the county to push for sustainable government practices. In most cases, they cause little grief, although Commissioner Charles Chestnut has complained loud and long about the smell from the waterless urinals in the men's rooms in the county administration building.

Sacrifices must be made to make water consumption a priority, Jackson said, even if it means dusty lawns.

“This water issue is going to become so critical,” he said. “It is now, but even more so in the future. I think it's a move in the right direction.”

​By Mickie Anderson
Staff writer

Promising not to “toss this pebble around” any longer, Alachua County School Board members said Monday they mean to come up with some kind of plan to keep sworn officers in schools.

What that plan might be, however, is anyone’s guess.

“We are people of action,” School Board Chairwoman Leanetta McNealy told Alachua County commissioners as the two elected bodies met Monday. “I believe we all leave with the sense that we’ve laid our feelings on the table. But as far as where we’re going next … we don’t know that yet.”

What appears to be a slim majority of county commissioners has begun to balk at the funding for school resource officers, which they say should be more fully borne by the school system.

In recent years, the County Commission has paid more than half of the cost of keeping deputies in schools, with the School Board paying about 42 percent of the $2.8 million tab, which covers salaries and operating costs.

But school district officials counter that they keep having to pay more for school resource officers, spending $1.08 million in 2013-2014 — roughly $472,000 more than the year before.

In the wake of 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, Sheriff Sadie Darnell disbanded a 12-deputy traffic enforcement unit and staffed county elementaries with deputies.

While Darnell’s office has a deputy in every county elementary school, Gainesville Police provide seven officers who float and cover 12 city elementary schools.

The county’s high schools and middle schools have had officers present for decades. Having elementary schools staffed with officers is relatively unusual. Just eight Florida school districts, including Alachua County, have school resource officers in all elementary schools.

And while the funding for school resource officers and deputies may not be clear, parents’ feelings about them certainly are.

The lone dissenter, parent Akil Khalfani of Archer, said teachers have abdicated their responsibility for forging bonds with students.

But others were solidly behind the idea of having officers in schools — for reasons related to security and children’s emotional well-being.

Mike Doerr talked of an officer who helped save his son, then in third grade, from choking on a piece of chicken.

Marty Goodkind, father of a 9-year-old at Chiles Elementary, implored the School Board to come up with a way for parents to donate to the cause beyond paying local property taxes.

Holding his checkbook aloft, he said many parents would happily donate $100, maybe $200, and perhaps in doing so, inspire deep-pocketed parents to donate even more.

Marty Anderson, an active parent-teacher association member at Alachua Elementary, said school resource officers are key to helping students who may not have the best family foundation.

And Carrie Warring, a parent who described herself as a reluctant public speaker, reminded elected officials that the Sandy Hook shootings happened in just a five-minute span.

She reminded them that school shootings have been on the rise, and pleaded with board members not to be lured into playing political games with the budget.

“None of that matters,” Warring said. “Nothing is more important than the safety of children.”

On-campus officers have had plenty of opportunities to enforce laws: From July 2014 through February 2015, there were 261 campus incidents that required law enforcement attention and led to 60 arrests, 29 sworn complaints and four notices to appear. The crimes included offenses such as battery, burglary or theft and six weapons infractions, including knives and at least one gun.

There were 18 Baker Act cases, in which students as young as 8 years old were held involuntarily because they were believed to be a potential harm to themselves or others.

Karen McCann, president of the Alachua County Education Association, said having an officer on campus may give a false sense of security, because schools are so easy to enter.

School Board officials say they’ve been working to improve schools’ physical security, installing swipe cards for staff at many schools and fences around many elementary schools.

Carla Vianna, Alligator Staff Writer 

Most Gainesville residents don’t worry about reaching the closest grocery store.
 
But for residents in Linton Oaks who depend on public transit, it’s about a 25-minute bus ride — or a 50-minute walk — to the nearest grocery store.
 
Linton Oaks is one of seven low-income neighborhoods that create a pocket of food deserts in Alachua County. Located west of Interstate 75 and east of Tower Road, the area is classified as a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for its limited access to fresh, healthy and affordable food. Now, the USDA is replacing the term food desert with “low access and low income” areas.

The Southwest Advocacy Group Family Resource Center, a nonprofit center located inside Linton Oaks, works to bridge that gap by providing healthy food options to the seven neighborhoods: Linton Oaks, Majestic Oaks Apartments, Tower Oaks Glen, Holly Heights, Gordon Manor, Hidden Oaks and Harbor Cove Apartments.

In 2014, the Alachua County Commission approved a project to build a road that will connect the four neighborhoods directly west of Linton Oaks to its facilities, which include the resource center and a new, full-service health clinic.

That road, however, won’t be built for another two to three years, said Ruth Findley, the project manager.

And without a change in bus routes, the nearest grocery store will continue to be a 25-minute bus ride or a 50-minute walk away.

* * *

Across the I-75 overpass, within a mile east of Linton Oaks, are Canopy Apartments and Cabana Beach.

“It is right here in our backyard,” said Tony Delisle, a UF health education and behavior adjunct professor and SWAG Board chairman since 2013.

The housing units around Linton Oaks were built at a time when the county was more lenient toward code enforcements, he said.

Buildings were built with cheap material, County Commissioner Robert Hutchinson said, adding that the duplexes and quadruplexes were originally meant to house students. But as better options moved closer to the university campus, so did the students.

“It’s a symphony of different factors,” Delisle said.

Hutchinson said lower-income residents replaced the students. Crime rose, and property values dropped.

So the pocket of neighborhoods west of I-75 was left with its cheaply built buildings and roads without sidewalks.

And there they remained — disconnected from the city on the other side of the overpass.

* * *

In Linton Oaks, tricycles sit on bare driveways.

Cars can be seen driving up and down Southwest 61st Street, a half-mile-long road that winds from Southwest 20th Avenue to an abrupt dead-end stop at the back of the neighborhood. But still, more people can be seen walking around.

“There’s a lot of people out here without cars,” said Leslie Stewart, a Linton Oaks resident.

It’s a neighborhood where people sit on their front porches, kids play outside, neighbors know each other’s names and teenagers ride their bikes in and out of the cul-de-sacs.

The nearest food source is the Maa & Paa Grocery Store, a gas-station-like convenience store located within the neighborhood.

But the store does little more than satisfy ice cream cravings and supply basic items like soap.

“It’s there and meets emergency needs, but it’s not a solution,” said Jenn Petion, the director of community and government relations for Partnership for Strong Families, the organization that operates the SWAG Center.

The store’s back shelf holds a colorful array of sodas. Next to it, a variety of meat is cased in a small freezer. For $5.99, one could buy almost two pounds of chicken nuggets, and for $17.99, a bag of shrimp.

The Winn-Dixie on Southwest 34th Street is only two and a half miles away, but no direct bus route goes there. Many take the 25-minute bus ride to Publix at Butler Plaza, which is about 3 miles away.

Those who rely on the bus have one option: route 75.

It runs every 35 to 53 minutes on weekdays starting at 6 a.m., and makes its last trip from Butler Plaza to Linton Oaks at 6:30 p.m.

“Monday through Friday, it’s not that bad,” said resident Raymond Grable. “On the weekends, forget about it.”

On Saturdays, the 29-and-a-half-mile route runs every 105 minutes.

It doesn’t run on Sundays.

“With no car, it’s really hard,” Stewart said.

Stewart makes a trip to Walmart once a month. She gets the basics: meats, vegetables and potatoes, but she’s restricted to foods that won’t rot too quickly.

She said she wishes she could make it to the downtown farmers market and back before the buses stopped running.

“You talk about food desert,” she said. “It’s just kind of a desert — for everything.”

* * *

The Southwest Eighth Avenue Connector will enhance access to the SWAG Center for the surrounding neighborhoods.

A road to connect Southwest 61st Street — the street that runs through Linton Oaks — to Southwest Eighth Avenue will be built. The project includes adding sidewalks, gutters and bike lanes on Southwest 61st Street as well as a new intersection to be built at the entrance of the neighborhood at Southwest 20th Avenue, according to project documents from the Engineering and Operations Division of the Alachua County Department of Public Works.

The project was approved in May 2014, Findley said. This portion of the project, including the connector, road improvements and new intersection, will cost about $13.4 million.

Construction will start in fall 2016.

But until then, residents from Holly Heights, Gordon Manor, Hidden Oaks and Harbor Cove will have to make the 3- to 4-mile walk to the SWAG Center.

While residents from Majestic Oaks and Tower Oaks Glen can walk to the SWAG building in 20 minutes or less, residents from the other four neighborhoods face an hourlong walk on busy roads.

There’s a shorter route, about a 15-minute walk, but the path runs through the Cornerstone mobile home park directly behind Linton Oaks, and that area is private property.

“People are scared because the police messes with them,” said Marie Curtis, the mother of two Linton Oaks residents.

Alachua County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Sherry French said three people have been stopped for trespassing while walking through since March 1, but none were charged. She said police officers use discretion when responding to a trespassing call in the area.

“Some woman walking through with her children shouldn’t have to walk all the way around,” she said.

Antwoin Vinson takes the shortcut.

He lives in Harbor Cove, a neighborhood about a mile away from Linton Oaks.

If caught by an officer, Vinson could get by with a trespassing warning. If caught a second time, he could be arrested.

But — like others who live on the other end of the trash-littered trail that stems from the back of Linton Oaks, Vinson is just trying to get to the bus.

“It’s easier to catch here,” he said.

Other days, he comes over to see his aunt.

“They block the fence,” Vinson said. “They put grease on it, so you slip if you climb the fence.”

* * *

Delisle said zoning regulations can hinder a supermarket from opening in the area, which is predominantly residential.

An increase in bus routes is also unlikely for now, Hutchinson said.

Because Linton Oaks sits outside of Gainesville city limits, route 75 is primarily funded by the county, said Chip Skinner, the marketing and communications supervisor for the Regional Transit System.

“We would love to fund three or four times as many buses as we do,” Comm. Hutchinson said, adding that the county’s budget constrains them from doing so.

The SWAG Center works to bring change from within.

“It will always require good people to step up, be generous and understand the larger problem it creates if we ignore the smaller problems,” Hutchinson said.

Pioneered by nine women who wanted to help their community, the center was formed through a triple partnership between SWAG, Partnership for Strong Families and the county.

Since it’s opening in 2012, the center has started various food-centered initiatives, including a Wednesday food pantry, a community garden and free breakfast and lunch for children during the summer months.

The center also partnered with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences to offer a free, six-week cooking class, starting Thursday, where residents will be taught how to plan and make healthy meals and will be given a bag of groceries to take home during each class.

The more community members become involved, the more educated they’ll become about healthy food options.

And the more outside members advocate for change, the more it will come, Delisle said.

“It’s doable,” he said. “We’ve had our own successes.”

A few of those include the advocacy center, an after school program for students, the summer program for children and, most recently, the SW Health Clinic.

“It’s an ongoing issue,” he said, “and it’s a work in progress.”

​GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- County Commisioners and Alachua County Sherriff's Deputies are pleading to the school board that they increase their portion of the funding for the Resource Deputy program.

Since 2005, the school board's share of the $2.8 million program has been at 42%. They're now being asked to pay 50% of the total program cost.

School Board Chair Leanette McNealy says the 42% is all they can pay for right now, unless they get more money from the state towards the program.

Although the schools aren't in jeopardy yet of losing their resource deputies, Superintendent Owen Roberts says he wants less discussion and more action from the school board.

In a few weeks Commisioners and School Board members will send a letter to the State Legislature requesting more money be allocated towards the School Resource Deputy program.

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