Gainesville's church subsidy, Dooley returns to print
Hello from Gainesville, Florida. It's Monday, April 13, and you're listening to StreetSmart. I'm Seth Johnson. StreetSmart is a weekly podcast from Mainstreet Daily News, where we cover local news that informs, engages, and inspires listeners like you.
Seth:A big thanks to our sponsor, Forest Meadows Funeral Home, where compassion meets experience. Check out their beautiful gardens, funeral home, and tribute center. Cremations, funerals, and memorials all in one trusted place. With exceptional care and personal attention, Forest Meadows is here to honor every life with care.
Seth:Here's the top headlines we're rounding up.
Seth:Santa Fe College started site work on its downtown Gainesville campus. The college will build a $16,000,000 automotive technology training center to replace the former Malden's Auto Glass. The facility is expected to open in the 2027.
Seth:Alachua County is trying to negotiate with Gainesville Regional Utilities to save five live oak trees in the path of a new county roadway, but GRU officials say the county construction may have already damaged the trees beyond survivability.
Seth:The nonprofit Alachua Conservation Trust bought 20 acres in Gilchrist County. The purchase conserves a 2,000 foot frontage along the Santa Fe River.
Seth:The city of Newberry opened a new park last week to lots of tail wags and head scratches. The dog park, called Central Bark, has been one of the most frequent asks from the public, according to the city manager.
Seth:A former High Springs firefighter is suing the city for discrimination and policy violations. Depositions are scheduled to start this week.
Seth:As always, visit mainstreetdailynews.com for more details on our stories. Thanks to our generous members, this news saves free for the whole community with no paywall.
Seth:Thanks again for listening to StreetSmart. I'm Seth Johnson, and I am with cohost Lillian Hammond today. And, Lillian, you were out dodging bullets at the Battles of Lexington and Concord reenactment in Newbury this past weekend, and I've got a question. Who fired the shot heard around the world?
Lillian:Seth, I can confidently say after Saturday, nobody still knows. But it was a good time to see all the actors dressed up and the city come together and celebrate.
Seth:Yeah. Was a fun time. We got to see Betsy Ross there and all the reenactors in uniform and part of a series of events going on to celebrate America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, the semi quincentennial, and Mainstreet's getting involved too. We mentioned it at the last episode, but we will be holding our Forgotten Front event next week. It's gonna be Tuesday, April 21.
Seth:It's free. You can go to our website and find tickets and just register so we know you're coming. And we're gonna be there. So if you have any questions about StreetSmart or Mainstreet Daily News, why we cover what we do or something that we should cover, just come on in and talk to us and hear about The forgotten front, how Florida was involved in the American revolution.
Lillian:Yeah. All of us are gonna be at the Matheson where it's gonna take place and looking forward to meeting people that are reading our papers, our newsletters, hearing about Mainstreet, but we don't get to interact with every day.
Seth:And Mainstreet is also launching something else new. And we'll tell you about that at the end of this episode, but we think some people in Gainesville are gonna be pretty excited. But before then, let's dive straight into our feature stories. And this week, it's a feature story about Gainesville and its fire assessment.
Lillian:Sounds like a hot topic, Seth.
Seth:A very hot topic, so much so Alachua County was worried with their burn ban going on, it was going to catch fire downtown. They're Sorry. But thankfully, the meeting passed with no incidents. And really, the meeting was about the fire assessment exemption that the city of Gainesville currently has for charitable and religious organizations.
Lillian:Before we get into the exemptions, can you tell us a little bit about what a fire assessment is?
Seth:Right, so a fire assessment is a fee charged to parcels within Gainesville City limits or whatever city you're in to cover potential fire service. It's a very common practice in cities across Florida and counties as well. For the last fiscal year, the city of Gainesville collected about $12,600,000 through its fire assessment. However, cities can't fund the whole fire budget with it, but it is currently covering about 52% of the non EMS fire budget. And the fire assessment isn't able to cover those EMS services, more medical service calls.
Seth:It has to focus on the fire response calls. And that $12,600,000 comes out of a total fire budget of $28,000,000 in the last fiscal year for Gainesville Fire Rescue. And so now for the exemption. Certain people get exempt from having to pay that fire assessment. Currently in the city of Gainesville's resolution, it says charitable and religious organizations are exempt.
Seth:And under state law, there's also scientific and literary exemptions that apply to organizations that fall under those categories that are owned by nonprofits. However, the religious and charitable ones are the bulk of the people within that exemption. And there are about two fifty nine organizations that qualify and don't have to pay that fire assessment each year. And if they did, that'd be about half a million extra that the city of Gainesville would be getting, or half a million that they wouldn't need to fund Gainesville Fire Rescue and they could put towards other projects or even a tax break theoretically. And last week, the city commissioners were saying that exemption is essentially a subsidy of these organizations that the city of Gainesville and therefore Gainesville taxpayers are giving.
Seth:Gainesville does fund, you know, GRACE Marketplace and they do have these grants to nonprofits and other organizations in town, but this half a million dollar subsidy has kind of gone hidden for years. I mean, even Commissioner Casey Willits said when the city was going through some budget crunches in the last couple of years, this half a million dollars was never brought forward as a fiscal lever to pull to save half a million dollars worth of money, which, you know, is not nothing, I would say.
Lillian:Oh, half a million dollars. That's quite a few lunches.
Seth:Especially in some of the rural cities you cover, half a million dollars is a big chunk of their budget. For Gainesville, it's less so, but when you're in a budget crunch and you're counting every cent, that's a big fiscal lever to pull. Commissioner James Ingle brought it up last year saying that the city should look into it and consider if it wants to keep up the exemption. And they've kind of tabled that until this year getting ready for this upcoming budget season.
Seth:But this exemption applies to organizations like Peaceful Paths, St. Francis House, the Matheson History Museum, Operation Catnip, United Way of North Central Florida, and a lot of churches, pretty much every church you can think of within city limits that owns their own property.
Seth:And another side note, something that came up during that meeting, it's not just these exemptions that don't have to pay the fire assessment. Government entities also don't have to pay. So they can be charged the fire assessment, but that government entity can choose whether or not they want to pay it. And Gainesville Fire Rescue Chief Joseph Hillhouse said, you know, they haven't really been sending those fire assessments to those government entities because they know it's really not gonna come back.
Seth:That's another $2,000,000 worth of fire assessment that isn't getting paid. Hill House also told the commission last week that several peer cities don't have a fire assessment exemption. That includes Fort Myers, Lakeland, Ocala, and Alachua County. Now Tallahassee has an exemption, but only for religious organizations, not for those charitable scientific or literary organizations. Willits and Ingle both called Gainesville an outlier, so they didn't really realize that no one else was doing this.
Seth:Ingle said there are a lot of organizations doing good work and they don't want to just pursue them and to get this fire assessment. But there's also lots of organizations who could afford to pay it if they wanted to or if they were forced to. I mean, the largest benefiter of this exemption is UF Health. So, UF Health Shands Hospital doesn't pay because it's a charitable organization and that's $50,000
Lillian:That's a pretty large fire assessment just for UF Health. What are some of the determining factors for that?
Seth:Yeah, I neglected to talk about that earlier, but it's really just based on square footage. So, how big your buildings are multiplied by a certain rate, and that's what your fire assessment's gonna be. So, UF Health's hospitals, obviously, a lot of square footage there, so they're gonna a very large fire assessment. And Commissioner Willits focused in on UF Health noting, you know, he talked to them about funding a budget that'd be a counselor for gun violence. They said, you know, we can't find the money in our budget, but the city of Gainesville wants to fund it.
Seth:You know, we'd be open to it. And Willits said, well, with this $50,000 we kind of are funding the position. If they paid that fire assessment, we could just return the money to fund this counselor position. So it's, I think, gonna be a topic that's simmering in the background, but commissioners didn't seem ready to move forward with any changes for this budget season. Moving forward, I know Commissioner Ingle said he doesn't wanna pull the rug out from anyone.
Seth:He wants to give these organizations a large heads up that, know, hey, we're thinking about it. We're looking at it. Here's how much you would have to cover, for the fire assessment if we took away the exemption. And the commissioners also said they wanna get the word out there more that, hey, we have been funding these organizations at half a million dollars split up between all these churches, all these other charitable organizations, 250 of them, and that the city should get a little bit of credit for that and make it a little more known.
Lillian:What are some options commissioners could look at in the future?
Seth:Obviously, could look at a full repeal, taking away the exemption for all of those organizations. They could also look at just doing a flat discount for all of them. So, hey, if you're a charitable religious organization, you get $1,000 off your fire assessment, you get $2,000 off your fire assessment. That way it's helping them, but then they still chip in towards the city's fire department.
Lillian:Thanks for walking us through that hot topic, Seth. I know I hear a lot about fire assessments in some of the cities I cover, and it's interesting to hear how each one does it differently and what they're able to do and not do and might do. We're gonna take a quick break and hear from our sponsor, Forest Meadows, before bringing you the news forecast and event segment.
Sponsor:At Forest Meadows, our commitment is simple. Exceptional care, personal attention, and respect for every family we serve. Forest Meadows offers every option in one trusted place. Visit our beautiful gardens and glass front niches or plan ahead for cremation, funerals and memorials at our funeral home or tribute center located on our cemetery grounds. Forest Meadows, where compassion meets experience and every life is honored with care.
Lillian:Now for this week's news forecast. The Newberry and Archer City Commissions will both meet tonight. Newberry will make a final vote on eliminating its Board of Adjustment while Archer discusses a report from its finance director. The town of Micanopy will meet on Tuesday to discuss a location agreement with producers filming A Land Remembered. The project will bring the book paying homage to Old Florida to the screen.
Lillian:Tomorrow is election day at Newbury and Alachua with four seats up for grabs. You'll be able to find all the results online as well as any other details on these stories at mainstreetdailynews.com.
Seth:Now for our event segment covering upcoming family friendly events this weekend. Calling all bookworms music enthusiasts and art collectors. The Friends of the Library book sale is gearing up for its five day spring sale starting on Saturday. The sale features thousands of used books, DVDs, CDs, vinyls, games, puzzles, pieces of art, and all for reduced prices.
Seth:Spring is in full bloom with multiple plant sales set for this weekend. Starting Friday, the Florida Museum will set up one of the largest sales of the year at UF's Cultural Plaza, featuring more than 100 plant species. Wilmot Botanical Gardens will also hold a sale Saturday and Sunday with a variety of camellias, azaleas, perennials, grasses, and more.
Seth:The U. F. Harn Museum of Art is presenting a new exhibit called Florida in the Frame: A Century of Artists' reflections on the Sunshine State. The collection displays works of Florida landscapes throughout the state's history.
Seth:UF softball and baseball will take on Auburn this weekend with a three game series. There'll be other UF sporting events happening this weekend, and now you've got a new place to keep up with them at Mainstreet Daily News.
Lillian:That's right. For the last six years since Mainstreet started, we've mostly been focused on prep sports, you know, things going on at the high school scene. Mike Ridaught is our sports director and spends hours and hours and hours writing story after story after story, week after week after week on just all the different games, you know, fall season, spring season.
Seth:But Mainstreet was able to bring in some backup and it's some names that are very familiar for Gainesville's fans. Longtime Gainesville Sun sports columnist, Pat Dooley will be creating a weekly column for Mainstreet Daily News. You can find it online and you'll be able to find it in our print version. In addition, Mike Dame, who covered Gator Sports for the Orlando Sentinel back in the 1990s is gonna be curating a newsletter called Gator Bites that's all about this Gator coverage. It'll include Dooley's column along with other happenings.
Seth:So we were really excited to bring it to Gainesville. It's kind of a unique offering, something that kind of adds to what's already out there instead of just repeating the same old storylines. It'll be a really neat perspective from Dooley, who while he was writing that column, the Gators had a winning record with 329 wins, a 116 losses, and one tie. And that's for Gator football, so maybe we can get back to that winning record now that he's back in print again.
Lillian:Sounds like Mainstreet's got a good luck charm.
Seth:And that's all we've got for this week's StreetSmart podcast brought to you by Mainstreet Daily News and made possible by our generous members. Another special thanks to Forrest Meadows for believing in local news and sponsoring us. We'll be back next week to round up more local news that matters to you. Please share StreetSmart to help us continue the work.
Seth:Our theme music is Sunset Sonata by Gainesville's ska band, Now Leaving Space.
Seth:This episode is a production of MARC Media.
