Gainesville Regional Utilities is on a misguided mission to promote natural gas. On its website you can read what at first sounds like a joke: “With natural gas, water heats up twice as fast and stays hot longer! Clothing dries more quickly and with fewer wrinkles! Food tastes better when prepared using natural gas!” This would be funny if it weren’t so costly and wrong.
So desperate is GRU to push natural gas over electricity that our local utility company is now offering rebates (up to $1,600 per location!) to convert electric hot water heaters, furnaces, ranges and dryers to natural gas.
The Gainesville Sun Editorial Board
While 2021 brings the promise of moving beyond the worst parts of the past year, many problems await us in the year ahead.
Challenges involving such issues as education, health care and housing might even become more daunting. We need to confront these problems in a way that provides immediate relief while making our community more resilient over the long term.
The Sun has an annual tradition of presenting a local agenda for progress on New Year s Day, providing recommendations for the coming year. Here are a few changes that we would like to see happen in 2021:
A consistent message I have heard from every constituent, regardless of ideology or geography, is that you expect our local governments to work together, and efficiently so. Whether a service is the responsibility of the city or the county usually isn’t relevant to the person who needs it.
The good news is that in most cases, the city of Gainesville and Alachua County work together very well. One of the examples of city/county collaboration I have most enjoyed during my time on the commission is the Joint Water and Climate Policy Board, which I have chaired for the past year.