Updates

Last night, without any public notice, Authority Member Craig Carter moved to fire GRU General Manager (GM) Tony Cunningham. This comes only two days after chastising disgraced ex-GM and Chair Ed Bielarski and Member David Haslam for doing the same thing!

What's more, Carter also moved to appoint Bielarski as Interim GM!

The worst part? Both motions passed.

Below is an excellent perspective on last night's shameful GRU Authority meeting and request for support sent by Gainesville City Commissioner Bryan Eastman this morning.

Last night the GRU Authority fired GRU General Manager Tony Cunningham, one of the most professional and honest people I’ve ever worked with, and put in his place Ed Bielarski.

I’ve never been more scared for the future of our local utility than I am right now.

Ed Bielarski has been focused on revenge ever since being fired from the utility. He has called to privatize energy generation, sell GRU electric to Florida Power & Light, and slash funds necessary to keep our drinking water safe. He has publicly berated and named-called employees, and made up fiction after fiction to try to get GRU into the hands of the Governor.

This is not the same Ed Bielarski I knew years ago.

If the way Ed treated employees at the last GRU Authority meeting is any indication, there is going to be a lot of damage to this utility and its employees over the next few months.

Now is when this becomes serious. There are five months between now and election day. The people running “Let The Voters Decide” are some of the smartest, most dedicated people I know. They will win this election and bring our local utilities back to local control, but not if they can’t get the word out.

Please consider making a $50 donation today to help the campaign.

It's going to be a hard few months, but together we can save this City and its utility.

- Bryan Eastman
Gainesville City Commissioner, District 4

It’s hard to believe last night’s GRU Authority meeting actually happened.

Calling it “chaotic” is an understatement. For 3.5 hours Gov. DeSantis' appointed GRU Authority members berated GRU staff, interrupted them, called them names, passed budgets with no vetting, ignored warning that their decisions put our community's health at risk, and forced City taxpayers to balance their budgets.

It was shocking.

Here are some highlights from the meeting. You can watch it yourself here.

Bullying and berating GRU staff

The meeting was 3.5 hours of the chair berating and belittling GRU leadership. He called the General Manager, a utility professional who has dedicated 22 years to GRU, names like “arrogant” and spent hours picking at perceived “failures” and “mistakes”. Tony Cunningham, the GRU General Manager, handled himself like a true professional, but when he tried to respond the Chair would interrupt him with more name calling and tell him to “stop, stop, stop”

At one point the former GRU Authority Chair, Craig Carter, began yelling at the GRU Authority Chair saying, “I don’t think the employees deserve to be treated like that and if it continues the Governor can take this and cram it because I don’t want to be here anyhow.”

But it did continue, for another two hours.

Another hour later of non-stop questioning and name calling by the GRU Authority Chair, the General Manager of Utilities, Tony Cunningham, firmly but gently denied the attacks leveled against him and defended his staffs careful budgeting. After he pointed out that cutting certain budget items puts the reliability of the utility at risk the GRU Authority chair lost his cool. He made a motion to terminate the General Manager immediately.

The vote narrowly failed in a 3-2 vote, but the message was clear: don’t ever disagree with the Chair or you’re gone.

Illegal orchestration of votes

Earlier in the meeting the former GRU Authority Chair, Craig Carter, accused fellow board members of illegally orchestrating votes outside of sunshine. He was referring to the first GRU Authority meeting where they came in with pre-prepared motions and pre-planned votes. He then accused them of not being independent of Tallahassee and “fulfilling Tallahassee’s wish list.”

If what the chair says is true, that GRU Authority Members illegally orchestrated votes outside of the sunshine, that is a second degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and removal from office.

Putting Community Health & Water at Risk

Without any notice for the public, or even showing GRU staff the proposal, the GRU Authority Chair brought forward a complete rewrite of the FY25 GRU budget. In response, the head of GRU’s water/wastewater division said the proposed budget changes would risk the health of our city’s drinking water:

“We are at 161 in water/wastewater. We have 15 people operating our water plant. For the health and safety of this community we have to maintain our level of staffing at these facilities.”

The GRU Authority ignored her warnings and passed the budget changes anyway. GRU staff had no ability to review the changes or how they’d impact the budget before the vote. When the GRU General Manager asked if the professional staff could simply review the budget changes and return to the Authority with what the “repercussions” might be, he was denied. They didn’t care about the repercussions or the explicit warnings from utility professionals that these changes would imperil the health and safety of our city’s water.

Cutting the General Services Contribution

In a last minute, chaotic 9-part motion the GRU Authority agreed to cut the General Services Contribution, the payment in lieu of taxes the Authority pays to the City, by $6.8 million. This will mean cuts to our police, firefighters, parks, public works, and more. That's in spite of GRU making $31.5 million in profit this year alone.

Their reasoning? A $68 million number they want to "clawback", ignoring the City of Gainesville finance experts and a 40 year auditor who spoke and said it was a misleading number. They charged forward anyway, and pressed GRU staff to look at those misleading numbers even further to find even more cuts.

To be clear: this is going to mean less services, higher taxes, less public safety, and less maintenance for our City. It's going to mean layoffs and the shutting down of community events and institutions. And worst of all, it won't lower GRU rates at all.

This Can’t Continue

Last night’s meeting makes clear: we need a change.

This DeSantis appointed GRU Authority Board is chaos, pure and simple. Between the name calling, the unvetted budgets, and the complete disregard for this community’s clean water supply, this community can’t continue like this.

In five months we can be rid of this DeSantis appointed Utility Authority. But we need to get the word out. We know there will be big money pouring into this election, and we need community support to win this.

Donate Today to Eliminate the DeSantis GRU Authority

Check out Commissioner Eastman's substack for a good summary of the current state of the Government Services Contribution, which our public utility pays in lieu of taxes and franchise fees paid by private companies to most cities.
The unelected GRU Authority is threatening once again to cut this payment, which would result in painful cuts to jobs and services enjoyed by Gainesville residents. . .

"Out of the 73.2 positions here are the major layoffs for what we’ve reviewed so far:
•22 Police positions eliminated
•10 Public Works positions eliminated
•5 Fire Rescue positions eliminated

Some of these positions are vacant, but many aren’t. These are people, with families that rely on this income to to survive.
And, of course, city taxpayers rely on them as well. The biggest impact of these cuts is in broad services. Cuts to public works mean that sidewalks, roads, and stormwater simply won’t be fixed as quickly or as well. There will be fewer police officers on a shift, so you may not get an officer as quickly and they won’t be patrolling as much. Parks will get less maintenance, and there will be fewer programs.

But there are some specific program cuts as well, particularly to Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs:

•Elimination of Bo Diddley Plaza Events (Free Fridays)
•Shutting down of Ironwood Golf Course
•Enhanced funding for summer programs
•Most of the elimination of the City’s Community Resource Paramedicine Program"

Today we kick off the campaign to restore home rule and democracy to Gainesville’s community-owned utility. We look forward to informing city voters about how our community will abolish the unaccountable governor-appointed GRU Authority and return control over our utilities to officials we elect by voting Yes on the Local Public Utilities ballot referendum this November.

By voting Yes on Local Public Utilities, Gainesville voters will delete Article VII of the city charter, which created the unelected GRU Authority. The Legislature forced Article VII into the charter through House Bill 1645 in the 2023 session. Although it was processed as a local bill, there was no input from local leadership or residents. Notably, the sole Legislator who lives in the city—Yvonne Hayes Hinson—opposed the creation of the Authority.

The Governor’s hand-picked Authority members officially began their reign over our utility on October 1st, 2023, ushering in a period of unabated chaos. The Authority continually threatens to eliminate GRU’s contribution to our local tax base, which would send city workers to the unemployment line and trigger a reduction in city services. They have disincentivized rooftop solar panel adoption over the will of Gainesville’s environmentally conscious residents and against Gainesville’s goal of zero emissions by 2045.

We can undo this and restore home rule over our utility.

By voting Yes on Local Public Utilities this November, the city’s voters will show the Authority the door and keep Gainesville Local!