The Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) Authority officially filed a complaint on Tuesday against the city of Gainesville and Alachua County Supervisors of Elections in the Eighth Judicial Circuit Court.  

The complaint, long anticipated and forecasted at GRU Authority meetings, attempts to stop a referendum placed on November’s general election ballot by the Gainesville City Commission. The referendum asks Gainesville voters whether they want to erase Section 7 from the city’s charter and place management of GRU underneath the City Commission.  

However, the GRU Authority has argued that the city has no power to ask that question of voters and erase Section 7. This section of the charter was approved by the Florida Legislature in 2023 and created the GRU Authority to manage the city’s utility instead of the City Commission.  

Folds Walker, LLC. and Theriaque & Spain filed the complaint on behalf of the GRU Authority. The complaint says that the City Commission is violating the Florida Legislature’s charge to “effectuate an orderly transition” of management to the GRU Authority.  

The complaint also says that the referendum language is vague and misleading because it fails to identify who would manage GRU since the general manager position would be cut under the referendum language.  

Attorneys for Folds Walker, LLC. presented these arguments to the City Commission in May, before the vote to move forward with the referendum. At the time and since then, the city has dismissed the challenges by the authority and its legal counsel.  

Mayor Harvey Ward reiterated in an interview on Friday that the Florida Legislature, by creating Section 7 in the city charter, never prevented the city from amending its city charter in the future, including to remove that same section. 

“The City Commission has not had a conversation about [GRU’s recent resolutions],” Ward said. “We certainly have not voted one way or the other on any of this stuff, but I can tell you right now, my vote will continue to be that the people of Gainesville deserve a right to vote on who is responsible for the utilities that they own.” 

Ward said he’s wanted the question of GRU management to go before the people of Gainesville since the Legislature first proposed the local bill to create the authority.  

A vote by Gainesville in 2018 to create a GRU Authority appointed by the City Commission failed.  

Ed Bielarksi, GRU’s general manager, told Mainstreet last week that he doesn’t expect the city to voluntarily stop the referendum in accordance with the resolution approved by the authority. He said the City Commission is going against the spirit of the law, if not the law itself, by filing the referendum that could eliminate Section 7 and dissolve the authority. 

In the Tuesday complaint, the GRU Authority asks the courts to declare the proposed charter amendment null and void, to prevent the Supervisor of Elections from placing the referendum on the ballot and to keep the city from enforcing the referendum if it is placed on the ballot.  

The GRU Authority points to a Sept. 6 decision by Judge Allen Winsor to dismiss a lawsuit against the city of Gainesville as further backing for its ability to file a complaint—a question of debate between the city and the authority.  

Winsor states in his dismissal order that the GRU Authority and city of Gainesville are different entities with separate legal standing.  

“In short, Doughtie [the plaintiff] has not pointed to anything showing the Authority is not a separate entity capable of suing and being sued,” Winsor states. “And I conclude that, as a matter of law, it is indeed a separate entity.”