Gainesville transit, development group releases election endorsements

Gainesville is for People and Gainesville Citizens for Active Transportation hosted city and county candidates on July 13 to analyze their views on developments and transit issues before the Aug. 18 elections.  

The forum was held at LifeSouth Community Blood Centers and featured 12 candidates from the Gainesville city commission and mayoral races along with the two open county seats.  

Gainesville is for People, the local chapter of YIMBY Action, announced Monday the following endorsements based on the forum:  

• Gainesville District 2: Nathan Crabbe 

• Gainesville District 3: Casey Willits 

• Gainesville Mayor: Harvey Ward 

• Alachua County Seat 2: Donna Bradbrook 

• Alachua County Seat 4: Ken Cornell 

The questions, coming from both organizations, dealt with RTS routes, planned developments, and updates to the Gainesville zoning map and Alachua County urban cluster boundaries. 

Concerning RTS, Ward said the system had run well before UF cut back on funding. But he noted that the city and university could renegotiate at any time and figure out a way to work together on what he called one of the most important partnerships between the entities.  

He said it’s a topic he planned to address with new UF President Stuart Bell at an upcoming meeting. 

“I want to be careful in not making promises about what we’re going to do with new routes because funding is absolutely the issue,” Ward said. “We have had a tremendous system in the past 30 years until a couple years ago when one of our partners, the University of Florida, pulled out a check of funding.” 

District 2 candidate Nelida Jean-Baptiste Pellot agreed that transportation changes rapidly and transit studies can take years. She said the city needed to learn from the people currently using the system and noted that issues with reliability can cost people jobs, like it did for her in South Florida. 

“I understand how these barriers are also barriers to upward mobility, to lift our people out of poverty,” Pellot said. “So I think the best thing is to go ahead and reach out to residents and ensure that any decisions we make, they are central to it, because they will be.” 

Fellow District 2 candidate Wyatt Zintiz said a minimum standard for RTS is 20 years is for all the buses to be electric and sustainable.  

“Transportation certainly rapidly changes, but people probably change a lot less rapidly,” Zintiz said. “So, despite what the future may hold in terms of changes to transportation, we’re still going to need to offer more traditional methods of transportation like bus rides to our constituents.” 

Crabbe said RTS benefits the city beyond the passengers, reducing traffic and car emissions. He said the city should continue its efforts for last-mile services and paratransit.  

“I’d also like to see the city do more to encourage people to use RTS,” Crabbe said. “Things like transit-oriented development districts along high-frequency RTS routes would be a way to have more dense and mixed-use development along these routes of service.” 

The questions also touched on housing stock, with the Gainesville metro area expected to grow by 140,000 in the next 25 years, according to one projection by the U.S. Bureau of Economic and Business Research. 

Mayoral candidate Evan Moon said the city currently lacks the housing for that growth. He said the city needs to reward proper home maintenance to prevent dilapidated housing while also allowing multi-family housing. 

“We do need more housing, including complexes, specifically inexpensive housing,” Moon said. “Remember, we want to include everyone in our community. The only way to do that is to integrate in this fashion.” 

Every other candidate agreed that Gainesville would need more housing to keep up with demand.  

A couple of Alachua County questions dealt with the urban cluster, areas where the county allows development in unincorporated areas like Jonesville and Tioga, and whether transit could support people coming into Gainesville. 

County seat 2 candidate Tina Certain said she’d like to see mass transit improve and that dense housing would need to come with it for success. She also pointed to road projects coming along Parker Road and potentially Fort Clarke Boulevard. 

“We’re going to have to really look at if we want to get people out of cars,” Certain said. “It’s having more density and more commercial services located where folks may not have to get in a car and drive. But I’m going to tell you folks: for me, if you don’t have a car, it is virtually impossible to access employment opportunities.” 

Bradbrook said it’s hard to bring mass transit far into the rural areas and small cities. But options like park-and-ride could help transportation. Density will also be important in the urban cluster, she said. She said builders currently lack enough incentive to redevelop blighted, infill properties or areas with unused storage tanks from past uses.   

“If we offer them higher density options, it would be financially worth their while to come in and infill some of those vacant properties that are already on our transit lines,” Bradbrook said. 

Fellow candidate Charlie Jackson said the current systems and plans are fragmented. He said residents should know how to navigate the different forms of transit, from walking to buses to airplanes.  

“We do not have a smart master growth plan,” Jackson said. “Voters, we must bring all of the municipalities together to build that plan.” 

County Commissioner Ken Cornell said the commission has a plan for each of the activity centers within the urban cluster and each has an associated transit plan. He also highlighted the expansion of the bicycle and pedestrian master plan to all of Alachua County instead of just Gainesville. 

“It was just adopted this year, and that’s what lays out the highest priority of projects for transit, bicycle and pedestrian,” Cornell said. “That is now also a countywide transportation planning organization.”