President Joe Biden s infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs Plan, would spend $100 billion on extending affordable, high-speed broadband service throughout the country. The plan has sparked excitement among local elected officials.
At a recent joint meeting of the Alachua County Commission, Gainesville City Commission and county School Board, members of those bodies voted unanimously in support of extending affordable, quality internet service throughout the county. Officials suggested Gainesville is better poised than most communities to quickly use any federal funds made available for the effort.
City-owned Gainesville Regional Utilities already provides fiber-optic internet service through GRUCom, which currently serves county libraries and schools along with some businesses and large apartment complexes. Expanding that service to other residents has long been a priority among some city commissioners.
Three Gainesville charter officers who are among the city s highest-paid employees will get hefty raises as part of the city’s efforts to compensate women and minorities fairly.
But critics say the city has gone too far, arguing that singling out higher-paid employees for raises is hardly fair to those at the lower end of the pay scale.
The raises followed a heated City Commission discussion last week. The pay increases were approved 4-2, with Commissioners Reina Saco and Adrian Hayes-Santos dissenting. Commissioner Gigi Simmons was absent.
The three female charter officers will receive the pay increases retroactive to Jan. 1 when commissioner Gail Johnson raised the issue.
Commissioner Harvey Ward earlier this month shared the good news of water usage in Gainesville.
Gainesville’s Residential Water Usage Two-Thirds Of What It Was 25 Years Ago, Despite Population Growth
By Zhe Zhang
April 26, 2021
Gainesville City Commissioner Harvey Ward recently made an eye-catching and hopeful claim on his Facebook page.
“Despite growing our population by about 50% over the past 25 years,” he wrote, “our community uses less total water than we did then.”
The figure doesn’t quite show the full picture, though, according to Jenn McElroy, the supervising engineer utility designer at Gainesville Regional Utilities. The figure Ward posted on social media may refer to residential water use only.
Letters to the editor for April 25, 2021
The Gainesville Sun
Seniors need purpose
The top concerns for Gainesville seniors listed by Star Bradbury in her April 11 column, Gainesville on the map as age friendly, were housing, transportation, respect and inclusion.
She omitted purpose a reason to live! Old folks need to know they are not a burden but are contributing. Volunteering opportunities exist everywhere, but many are difficult physically for seniors.
But they can write. What seniors have is memories of what life used to be like, along with the adventures (and misadventures) they ve experienced. They can benefit young folks by recording the past and lessons learned.
A solar array project near Archer that would feed power to Gainesville Regional Utilities is one step closer to seeing the light of day following approval by the Alachua County Planning Commission despite opposition from residents in the area.
The planning commission reheard presentations on the Sand Bluff Solar array in a six-hour meeting Wednesday evening, after it previously approved the project in February. Another meeting had to be scheduled following the February one because additional nearby property owners had to be notified of the public hearing and workshops.
Planning board members voted 4-3 on a motion to recommend to county commissioners that the solar project be approved after the applicant, Miami-based Origis Energy discussed the project’s merits and several community members spoke out against it. The local chapter of the NAACP and the Sierra Club also have submitted statements opposing the project.