I sit on the North Central Florida Planning Council, we met last night. There are three proposals for massive mixed use developments to go into the area where NW 39th Ave intersects I-75. We were looking at the impact of only one of these developments last night. The Council’s traffic analyst said that in order to handle the traffic from this one development 39th would need to be 6 lanes from 13th Street all the way to the other side of I-75. The road in front of Santa Fe College (83rd ST) would need to be four lanes. And I-75 would need to be 8 lanes. They calculated that it would cost over $100 million to make these improvements.
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On January 24th, 2010 the Gainesville Sun ran my Letter to the Editor (link) about the budgetary deficit and their ideas for how to meet that deficit. I felt the need to post my un-edited version because I felt a lot of valid points were lost:
The Gainesville City Commission recently met to address the 5.6 million dollar revenue deficit now due in 2010.
Gainesville city government has established an interesting cycle of proposing and implementing new programs that yield multi-million dollar spending deficits, year after year. According to the Commission, these deficits can only be remedied by raising taxes and creating new fees. continue reading »
Gainesville City Commissioners like to think of themselves as “environmentally progressive” (i.e.: signed the Kyoto Protocol, initiated a free Bicycle lending service that resulted in most of the bicycles being stolen, and dedicating large amounts of our transportation budget to RTS). However, one of the responsibilities of leadership is to dig a little deeper and consider every ramification of decisions imposed on the public. continue reading »
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Traffic Congestion | Tagged:
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As I outlined in my October 30th, 2009 Letter to the Gainesville Sun(1), Gainesville Regional Utilities(GRU) is owned by the city of Gainesville. If you are a Resident and Taxpayer in the city of Gainesville, whether you know it or not, you are also a part owner. You provide the capitol for this business to exist, and you hire or fire its Board of Directors when you vote in the City Commission and Mayoral Elections.
As a part owner of GRU I feel that I am entitled to have a few additional line items added to my monthly bill/statement. continue reading »
Were not the Commissioners of this city elected to serve the people of our city rather than vehemently resist them while pursuing their own agendas?
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The Gainesville City Commission is sending mixed messages about their plans to develop the east side of our city.
From the beginning, our Commissioners have had no problem saddling taxpayers with the over 3 million dollar tab for Ironwood Golf Course. Citizens clamored for the city to cut its losses and come up with a more fiscally responsible plan. Our Commissioners’ reply was, “Selling isn’t a viable option, show us a better solution and we’ll take it”. continue reading »
Article By Tony Domenech
Originally Written Circa 2003
Thinking back, I suppose my wife and I began to notice the decline of East Gainesville 25 or so years ago. At the time we lived in a beautiful home (circa 1938) on the corner of NE 7th Street and 9th Avenue. Many of our friends lived nearby; Lynn and I were teaching at Howard Bishop Middle School, and we were raising our first child, Joseph. While there continues to be “fits and starts” and isolated improvements as time relentlessly advances, the relatively straight-line decline of east Gainesville continues, for the most part, unabated.
Some examples:
- Lowes – Closed
- Winn Dixie - Closed
- Manaro’s - Closed
- Barnett Bank – Closed
- Southeastern Bank - Closed
- Central Builders – Moved West
- Cedar Grove II: Barely passing; heavily subsidized
- Tackle Box – Moved
- Decreasing school enrollment
- Decreasing residency
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Formerly Unpublished Article By Tony Domenech from before the 2007 Mayoral Election
In Saturday’s Virtual Town Hall Meeting published by the Gainesville Sun, writers Kay the Losen and Terry Martin-Back mentioned a couple of issues which got me to thinking. Mr. Martin-Back wrote “mob rule” was worse than a representative republic and called for the voters to “establish a platform and run against the incumbents” if we weren’t pleased. Ms. the Losen suggested it was “time to resort to common sense.”
While I strongly agree with them, unfortunately neither will happen in our community and I’ll tell you why. There are 68,800 registered voters in the City of Gainesville, of those only about 15%, at best, will turn out for the city election Tuesday, March 6th (I’m betting the percentage will be closer to 12%). continue reading »