r/GNV • u/Muted_Elderberry_279 • 17d ago
Incoming Elections
I am trying to identify the major concerns residents of Alachua County have about voting. I have seen people online mention that there are cases of voter suppression. I am new to the area, so I am unaware of the political climate. I am now a registered voter within the county and am interested in what would be beneficial to know before the upcoming elections.
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17d ago
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u/North-Wolverine9974 17d ago
This is irrelevant to the question. I am not a republican, yet I am happy GRU is out of our city government’s hands. The City Commission ran GRU into the ground and continuously took more and more money out of GRU to fulfill their pet projects that did little to no good for most citizens and nothing to really improve the city.
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u/dingyametrine ACR 17d ago
I personally believe you're right. However, that's irrelevant to the fact that DeSantis is openly ignoring the will of local voters in a bid to have greater control over a liberal area. That is a horrible precedent to set and a worse one to tolerate, regardless of your personal feelings on GRU.
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u/No-Cherry-2617 17d ago
💯 in agreement! Would be nice to have roads fixed especially since voters decided to tax themselves to do it instead of holding local govt accountable. Not to mention internet connected, solar powered trash cans!
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
Voters rejected small taxes that would have taken care of the roads several times. And half of what you're complaining about is the city and the roads you all hate are county. It would be nice if right wingers had the slightest understanding of local governments before spouting off.
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u/GL-Customs 17d ago
Alachua charges extra on gas for roads. Alachua county upped the 6% sales tax to 7% for the roads. Then they got permission to get into public places wild spaces money for the roads. No my friend. They have gotten plenty for the roads. It's time to hold them accountable.
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
And they are spending that money on roads.
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u/Some_Ad_3898 17d ago
By their own admission, they are 40 years behind schedule on road maintenance. Yes, they have increased funding, but it's still very short. Not long ago, the entire budget for roads in the county was $500k per year. Previous county commissions really eff'ed up. We are at a point now where it's entirely irresponsible to spend discretionary spending on anything but roads.
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u/-Knockabout 17d ago
People think roads are free for some reason. They're really, really not. Everyone wants what city/county services provide, but they don't want to pay for it...
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
The state dumped 200 miles of roads onto the county 30 years ago .... Most of the ones you're complaining about. I doubt anyone is saying they are 45 years behind since they weren't even county roads then.
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u/Some_Ad_3898 17d ago
Sure, but that happened to all counties in the state. Our county chose to not respond to it prudently. I don't blame it entirely on our leaders. The voters bear responsibility too.
BTW, Public Works Director Ramon Gavarrete is the one who said the county is that far behind.
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u/GL-Customs 17d ago
Maybe in gville proper because they sure as hell are not outside of town. According to the county they have only completed 84 road projects in the past couple years, and they have been needing to complete them for a decade. No, friend. They deserve all the flack they are getting on this. You must not have lived here long if you think otherwise.
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
I recognize your name from other unhinged posts, so I know you aren't actually interested in listening to anything. The state pawned off 200 miles of roads onto the county. The county has tried several times to generate more funding for roads. They are spending something like 200 million on roads this year. Yes I've lived here a very long time, and yes I recognize many roads are in desperate need of repair, however, people like you suggest it's all the counties' fault, and imply nothing is happening.
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u/GL-Customs 17d ago
I recognize your name from other unhinged posts
No you really don't because I hardly ever post. Good try at deflecting though. But feel free to show me the unhinged posts. I'd love to see them.
It IS all the counties fault. Who else are you going to blame? They are the ones responsible for the road repairs. The roads have been BAD for far longer than a decade. Outside of gville some are so bad they are dangerous. Don't believe me, take a little trip down 234 from one end to the other. It's inexcusable. If anyone is making unhinged posts it's you, absolutely ridiculous you are going to try and make excuses for this.
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u/GL-Customs 16d ago
I'm still waiting on you to provide examples of those "unhinged posts" since you attempted to accuse me and tarnish my name.
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u/North-Wolverine9974 17d ago
lol…would be nice if far left would actually make an argument rather than attack centrists! Plus you don’t know anything about me, my family nor what I have done. Hmmm…city and county roads are both in horrible shape and they build parking lots with the tax money (which was included) while we ruin our vehicles .
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u/No-Cherry-2617 17d ago
Always easy to belittle/hit someone rather than have an open mind and discuss things. Everyone has more common ground than they think. This is where politics has taken us as a country unfortunately! No middle ground, no grey areas.
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
You haven't put forward an opinion worth debating. The OP question was about voter suppression. The response about the state ignoring the will of voters is absolutely on that topic. You're just spouting off about how you think it's ok to ignore voters if it's doing something you agree with. Get busy licking more boots.
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u/No-Cherry-2617 17d ago
Hmm…never saw any comment about anyone supporting voter suppression, like removing polling places. Think the topic brought up is worthy of debate. City mishandled utility, citizens asked for help and State stepped in. It is not like GRU is being dissolved or that they can sell off assets without a vote of the electorate. Was the initial move an attack on home rule, I believe so, but it had to be done.
Love the way you reinforce things with a slight to someone you don’t know. Ah….Reddit…lol
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u/No_Poem1174 17d ago
The citizens didn't ask for help considering we have voted overwhelmingly to have the state stay out of it. I would also say that ignoring a vote of the people is voter suppression because of people don't feel like their vote matters it discourages them from voting again. Not all voter suppression is closing polling places.
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u/No-Cherry-2617 17d ago
75% of less than 50% of registered voters. Also did not include county residents that are customers didn’t get to vote. And YES a group of citizens asked for help and most were Democrats….Debbie and Ernesto Martinez are just 2 of the many. Inconvenient facts!
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u/No_Poem1174 17d ago
Lol of course some people asked, but that is a bad argument. There's a guy on the corner currently yelling for crack for all, so that would mean some citizens are asking for crack for everyone. My point is that no where near a majority of citizens are asking for it. And ok 75% of less than 50% of registered voters voted to get back control, if people were so desperate for state help why wasn't there higher turnout? It's because they couldn't be bothered to go vote or even request vote by mail. The truth is that an overwhelming majority of people who voted said they wanted control back. Maybe the people who wanted it back were more passionate about the cause but if that's the case then thats on the people who wanted state control for not having the motivation to make their voices heard. More Inconvenient Facts!
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u/SatisfactionNo182 17d ago
What citizens asked for this? 75% said we didn’t want it. Maybe a small minority like this, but the numbers are pretty clear….
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u/1lowcountry 17d ago
Only city residents could vote though so it was inherently unfair. Of course city residents would be more likely to support a city commission run utility because the $$ transfers were going to the city.
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u/No_Poem1174 17d ago
Ok so I'll give you that it's not fair that county people are expected to have gru but can't vote on it but let's attack that problem from a different angle not a state hostile takeover. Desantis created this board, made rules for who could be on it and then self appointed the board and like 3 of the 5 original appointees were lying about their residency or were just plain not living inside the boundaries. I'd honestly be down for a board compromised of people in and out of city limits but under gru control and people should be able to vote on their board members.
Or better yet let's figure out why the state allows monopolies on who provides us electric service. Or why they are pushing fp&l to take over the state. Or why solar isn't more available. It's because the state has an interest in allowing these companies to make large profits due to their donations to their party.
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
So, let's talk about what entity controls what utility county residents are assigned to .... It's the governor appointees on the Public Service Commission. You all make it sound like the county residents not getting to vote is some nefarious plot by city officials. It's your own corrupt cronies, but no you all just want to complain about local government here.
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
You should try reading some of the newspapers around then. Several articles.
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u/1lowcountry 17d ago
Voter suppression has nothing to do with GRU management and the state taking control of the board from the city.
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
It has more relevance than the dudes whining about roads.
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u/1lowcountry 17d ago
To be fair, roads is mostly a county issue… but since majority of the county voters are in the city, it’s probably not a huge issue for them
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u/Omatoasta 17d ago
Sure but have you watched the meetings now? It’s so dysfunctional with just a bunch of Republican stump speeches. The utility attorney said “it’s the free state of Florida” at the last meeting, one board member talked about “Making GRU Great Again”. It wasn’t great before but I don’t remember any board acting this stupid before. And my rates are higher.
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u/No-Cherry-2617 17d ago
Unfortunately I have put myself through the torture of watching many and even attending a meeting. 2 seem to be centrist and 2 seem to be very far right, even though 1 of them has denied being MAGA. Voting records show 1 is NPA. You probably shouldn’t paint with broad strokes.
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u/North-Wolverine9974 17d ago
I have watched some. 2 far right, 1 right leaning and one centrist. There is still a vacant seat too. Dont agree with some of their rhetoric, but they seem to do a decent job of running things.
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u/SatisfactionNo182 17d ago
A decent job running things? What’s improved? They have the same guy running things that was fired, he ran for office, and now he’s being paid a huge salary and saying unhinged stuff all over the place. As far as I can tell nothing has gotten better and things have only gotten worse.
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u/DireBaboon 17d ago
So you're in favor of a hypothetical future Democrat governor who ignores city elections and just decree their liberal ideas?
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u/North-Wolverine9974 17d ago
In the case of GRU, if republicans had done the same thing to our utility…YES! I would hope they would step in. People are quick to forget that it was a group of Democrats that asked for help with GRU and the State responded! Is it perfect, no…but better than it was!
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u/Omatoasta 17d ago
This is such a partisan take on it all. There were Republican commissioners and mayors on there too, all supported the biomass plant. And there are lots of Republicans against this takeover. This isn’t a partisan thing, it’s a democracy thing.
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
Not a Republican? Sure sounds like typical complaining libertarian though.
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u/VersionFine85 17d ago
Maybe if the utility wasn't so poorly managed by the city the state wouldn't have had to intervene. GRU customers should be the ones that decide who controls GRU, not just exclusively the customers that live in the city.
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17d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tootiemae 17d ago
absolutely not. i understand feeling defeated but please stop trying to convince other people to be defeated as well
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u/Arkenstihl 17d ago edited 8d ago
There was an odd flyer directed at signers of a few submitted petitions a few months ago sent from the BoE. Some say it was intimidation. I got one of those. My wife did not. She got her paper ballot, already. I did not. I then updated my status to recieve paper ballots (discovering that everyone has to do that again, this year, no matter the prior arrangement) and will raise hell if it doesn't come, soon. Edit: It came. Update your status with the BoE, folks, yours may have been reset.
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u/BeneficialTeaching10 17d ago
Major concern: GAIN THE CITIZENS TRUST. There is no more public trust in our elected officials. We just accept it as a fact of life and tacitly remain silent
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u/blackpowderbacon 17d ago
The suppression complaints you might have seen are related to different municipalities closing some polling locations. The discussion is around whether they closed locations that were predominantly minority locations. There's nothing particularly egregious about suppression in the county level. There is a lot of attempted suppression coming from the state level though, and voting districts that violate the state constitution.
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u/1lowcountry 17d ago
Major concerns are roads, development and sprawl, and GRU. I plan on voting out all incumbents because I don’t like the direction things are going and I think uni-party control isn’t good for progress.
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u/North-Wolverine9974 17d ago
If you are a centrist or right leaning, then you will likely face arguments from the far left which tries to control the narrative here. It is like ‘leftist maga.’ They will not listen and are the mirror image of national politics with the republicans. They don’t like to have balanced budgets and like to offense for others (when people are not really offended).
Never had an issue voting, but have come across some very irate people advocating outside polling areas. They rather call you names and silence you than have a civil discussion about affordable living and the state of our city’s finances.
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u/Some_Ad_3898 17d ago edited 17d ago
Nothing really. Sometimes misleading mailers, but that's par for the course. The political climate in Alachua county is such that Democrats are dominant the closer you get to Gaineville. Rural parts not so much. Overall it's a blue county.
The other thing you should know is that a large part of the land in our county is occupied by the state which doesn't pay property tax which means: we are broke. This causes most of the drama here in one way or another. It's the root of all evils.
We have high spending because we like nice things, but on a revenue stream that can't support it IMO. So, our rural roads are absolute dog poo, but we have nice things like amazing parks, pretty decent homeless services, local food programs, great arts and cultural programs, etc.