The Gainesville Sun Editorial Board
East Gainesville has long experienced a lack of access to health care and economic opportunities as compared to the west side of our community. Then the COVID-19 pandemic came along.
The pandemic has shown how long-standing racial and socioeconomic disparities affect the lives as well as livelihoods of too many Gainesville residents. Black residents in particular face higher rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, a problem worsened in east Gainesville by barriers to getting health care.
City Commissioner Gigi Simmons is serving her first term representing District 1, which includes east Gainesville, downtown and the Porters neighborhood where she grew up. Even before she was elected to the job, she was a community advocate who worked on such efforts as bringing GED classes, voter registration drives and an expanded crime watch program to the neighborhood.
The Gainesville City Commission District 1 race pits two people who grew up in the historically African-American east side of town who have ideas for improving the area.
Incumbent Gigi Simmons and challenger Desmon Duncan-Walker both say East Gainesville hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves from city leaders over the years.
Simmons, elected to the commission in 2018, grew up in the Porters community.
Simmons said that area sorely needs health care facilities, affordable housing, new companies that diversify the economy and community policing.
If reelected, she said, she would continue to push the city to provide better infrastructure to East Gainesville including things like wastewater service, road improvements, sidewalks and street lighting.