County Commissioner Mary Alford asks the board to begin discussing the four-laning of Archer Road going west

BY JENNIFER CABRERA/Alachua Chronicle

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the May 9 Alachua County Commission meeting, the board made some changes to their meeting rules, voted to ask the governor to veto an allocation for research into seasonal fertilizer restrictions, voted to send a Chair letter to the smaller municipalities asking for funding to develop a county-wide literacy plan, and voted to begin discussions that could lead to four-laning Archer Road going west in eight to ten years.

Thumb drives to be prohibited in County meetings

The changes to meeting rules were originally on the consent agenda, and during the adoption of the agenda, Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said she’d had requests to pull the meeting rules from the consent agenda and put them on the regular agenda for discussion, but she thought it could be handled during “citizen comment.” 

During public comment on the adoption of the agenda, Jo Beaty asked that the item be moved to a different meeting, providing more time for citizens to review the changes, which were discussed at a lightly-attended Special Meeting on May 2. Beaty particularly objected to a prohibition on bringing in thumb drives with material to be displayed during public comment. 

Tamara Robbins said she believed that the prohibition on thumb drives arose because Commissioner Mary Alford didn’t want to see a video of a slaughterhouse. Robbins said she had asked County Communications Director Mark Sexton about the policy on bringing in videos that are loaded on portable devices, and she believed that request generated the rule change. Robbins said the County allows developers to bring in presentations on thumb drives and that she thought the rule discriminated against the public. 

Commissioner Ken Cornell said he thought there should be a way to allow the public to bring in material on thumb drives, “the same way we do it for developers,” perhaps by isolating the presentation computer from the network. 

Commissioner Mary Alford agreed that they should be able to come up with a way for members of the public to bring in material and that the reason she’d been concerned about the slaughterhouse video was a concern about “any video that might provide any sort of triggering type of presentation to anyone.” She said that might include “any type of violence or some aspect of racism or something that might be presented to the public at a meeting in a way that might not be appropriate.” She said free speech allows that sort of content, but she asked the public to be aware that whatever they show will be seen by a wide range of people, including children. 

Commissioner Chuck Chestnut thanked the citizens for bringing this to the attention of the board because he said citizens shouldn’t be excluded from bringing thumb drives if developers and other presenters can bring them. 

County Manager Michele Lieberman said that presentations that are part of the agenda come through County staff by email prior to the meeting and also that the computer used during citizen comment is “tied into all the equipment that you’re seeing, that operates your broadcast. So while this computer may be isolated from the network, it is tied into our entire broadcast system. So something introduced improperly into that system could bring down our system.” She said staff would make sure that anyone who is presenting to the board would not put a thumb drive into the system. 

County Attorney Sylvia Torres summarized the changes to the rules:

• If a Board member or County Manager wants to cancel a Special Meeting within 24 hours of that meeting, the meeting they want to cancel will be held, public comment will be taken, then the vote on canceling the meeting will be taken. In emergency situations or if it is clear there will not be a quorum, the Commission Chair or County Manager may cancel a Special Meeting, even if it is scheduled to start within 24 hours.
• Advisory boards and the County Commission may hold “remote workshops” (where no action will be taken) as long as a physical location is provided for the public to attend and the public has the option to attend remotely.
• Some changes were made to the quasi-judicial statement that is read by the County Attorney at quasi-judicial public hearings “because it is cumbersome and legalese.”
• Members of the public are explicitly permitted to use the microphone and overhead projector to present or support comments, but any time needed for setup will count toward that person’s time. 
• Types of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment, such as fighting words, defamation, and obscenity, are prohibited. 

Cornell clarified that developers will not be able to bring a thumb drive, and Lieberman said she would make sure that staff and developers understand that would no longer be permitted and there would no longer be exceptions.

The vote to approve the agenda, including the rules, was unanimous. 

Request to the governor to veto a line item in the budget

During commission comment, Lieberman brought up a letter that Alachua County Water Resources Program Manager Stacie Greco had sent to commissioners the previous evening, asking that the board send a Chair letter to Governor Ron DeSantis, asking him to veto a line item in the budget that would prohibit local governments from adopting or amending urban fertilizer ordinances that include a blackout period and would allocate $250,000 to UF IFAS to study the effectiveness of seasonal fertilizer restrictions. Greco wrote that the Sierra Club is looking for local governments to add their names to a letter asking the governor to veto the prohibition and allocation. 

Greco’s letter to the commission states, “Alachua County has a strong fertilizer ordinance, and it is important for other local governments to be able to do the same and for us to be able to make changes as needed. While [the Environmental Protection Department] is typically supportive of scientific studies, the fate of fertilizer restrictions should not depend on a fast-track study by the very institution that actively spoke out against our fertilizer restrictions in 2019.”

Cornell made a motion to both sign the Sierra Club letter and send a separate letter from Alachua County. The vote to approve the motion was unanimous. 

County-wide literacy plan

Cornell, who is on the board of the Children’s Trust of Alachua County (CTAC), also made a motion to send a Chair letter to the small cities in the county, asking them to join a county-wide literacy program. He said the County will contribute $40,000 to the effort. 

During public comment on the motion, Tamara Robbins asked whether the request was for funding support and said the letter should suggest an amount for municipalities to contribute: “I’d like to see it have more teeth in it so they actually see the importance of it and the relevance of it and the opportunity that comes with it.”

Cornell said the letter could mention the County Commission’s joint meetings with the school board and with CTAC and could suggest a “nominal amount. You know, I think $40,000 from us, if we can get the City to put something in, and the school board to put something in, even $10,000 from the small ones, I think that would be enough to do this project.” He said if each smaller municipality puts in $5,000 or $10,000, they should be able to get to $100,000, and he thought that would cover it. 

Chair Anna Prizzia said they had asked the Library District for $40,000 and had asked the school board to match the County’s $40,000, “so that’s already at $120,000. I think it’s like a $200,000 project.” Cornell suggested that the letter should state a goal of $200,000.

Wheeler asked, “What is the program? What are we funding?” Cornell responded that at the first joint meeting with the school board, the County Commission Chair said we really need a county-wide literacy effort, and through CTAC’s “listening project, it became clear that the whole community is interested in moving literacy forward. I know it’s one of the major priorities of the school board, when they talk about rezoning, shrinking the achievement gap, and their strategic plan–literacy is a big component of that.” He added, “We need to fund some experts to help us put together a plan.”

Prizzia added that the funding is for “all the experts who’ve been at the table, kind of working on literacy programs… to get together and put together a plan to make a roadmap for literacy that would outline the steps we need to take across the board and be sort of a living document that pushes us all in the same direction.” She said they keep hearing “again and again from the experts… that we have a lot of good projects that are very piecemeal and aren’t being worked together in a unified way, and it’s resulting in poor outcomes for our children.”

Wheeler said she thought the problem could be solved by educators, “the people that are actually trying to solve the problem” and that they shouldn’t be “paying money out for experts on the outside to come in and tell them how to do what it is they’re already doing or change what it is they’re doing.”

Prizzia said Wheeler was “misunderstanding,” that they weren’t trying to tell teachers how to do their jobs, but “what we have going on in the school day isn’t being coordinated with what we have in the after-school programs, isn’t being coordinated with what we have in the summer programs, which isn’t being coordinated with resources we’re giving for tutoring, which isn’t being–like, everyone’s using different tools.”

Wheeler asked again what the $200,000 would do, and Prizzia said it would go to “the steering committee of folks from the community, all the folks who’ve been working in literacy to get together and to develop a unified approach to literacy for our community.”

Wheeler responded, “And we’re going to be paying them to do that?” and Prizzia said, “Paying them to do that, yep. Otherwise, the professionals… can’t organize that, and the citizens and the organizations that we expect to just show up–I mean, how are they going to do all that work?”

Wheeler said that if they’re going to ask communities for money, they should tell them how it’s going to be spent, and Prizzia replied, “We have all of that. There’s a lot of it.”

The vote to approve the motion to send a Chair letter to the smaller municipalities was unanimous.

Four-laning Archer Road

Also during commission comment, Alford brought up the “need for the four-laning of Archer Road” and said that it was time to add it to the County’s five-year Transportation Improvement Plan, which is due in June. She said, however, that they had neglected to change the Comprehensive Plan, which only supports four-laning Archer Road to 91st Street. She made a motion to ask staff to come back with language to modify the Comprehensive Plan to include four-laning Archer Road to the county line; she said the four-laning is in the City of Archer’s Comprehensive Plan but not the County’s and added that the work would probably not be done for eight or nine years. 

Alford said the issue is “almost an urgent issue of timing because committees are meeting in the next week or two” and that Scott Koons, Executive Director of the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council, “wants to be able to go to those and say that we have already made a motion to change our Comp Plan.”

During public comment on the motion, both Kristen Young and Tamara Robbins said this was moving too fast, but Alford responded that it’s an eight-to-ten-year process, and “it’s got a long ways to go before we’re ever going to see anything happen.” She said she just wanted a vote to get proposed language from staff so they could have a discussion about what they would want along that corridor. 

Cornell said the motion lined up with the commitment the board had made in their joint meeting with the City Commission of Archer: “It’s not making the decision yet, but it is lining up what our intent is.” Cornell further clarified that the City of Archer wanted to make a legislative request for the Florida Department of Transportation to four-lane the road from 91st Street to Archer, “but the legislature is not going to fund that” unless there is some intention to four-lane the portion of the road inside 91st Street. 

Cornell said he would second “a referral to staff to bring back recommendations about four-laning that segment,” and Prizzia added “other efficiencies or safety upgrades to Archer Road” in the short term to the motion. The vote to approve the motion was unanimous.

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Image courtesy Minde O’Sullivan

BY JENNIFER CABRERA/Alachua Chronicle

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Minde Prince O’Sullivan is relieved that other families will not have to endure media coverage of autopsy reports of their children, now that the Rex and Brody Act has been passed by the legislature.

O’Sullivan’s sons, Rex and Brody, grew up in Gainesville and were killed by their father in a murder-suicide in Dixie County in May 2021; O’Sullivan was forced to relive the trauma of their murders when media outlets acquired the autopsy report later that year and ran stories about the findings.

O’Sullivan said she never wanted to know the details of their final moments, and she was also concerned that Rex and Brody’s friends were able to easily find the details of their murders in media reports because she believes children should be protected from graphic descriptions of violence.

Senator Keith Perry introduced the bill in the 2022 legislative session and Rep. Chuck Clemons introduced a companion bill that passed in the House. The Senate bill was withdrawn a few days before the end of the 2022 session. This year’s bill passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate. When signed by the governor, the bill

will go into effect immediately and will be retroactive.

Senator Keith Perry said, “The Rex and Brody Act is a crucial step in protecting the privacy and dignity of minors who have lost their lives. It is heartbreaking to see families endure additional pain and suffering due to the public release of autopsy reports involving their loved ones. We must do everything in our power to prevent such situations from ever occurring again.”

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HIGH SPRINGS ‒ There’s a new restaurant in town as High Springs welcomes Prohibition Pizza. New to the restaurant business, owners Kelly and David Potter both had successful careers, Kelly in real estate and David as a contractor. Yet they had other career dreams they wanted to pursue.

Fueled by a love of cooking, after moving to High Springs the couple began a plan to open a restaurant. Kelly originally wanted to open a Mexican restaurant, but El Patio opened earlier and they saw no need for two Mexican restaurants in a small town. David’s love for Italian food, especially pizza, pushed them to a pizza culinary school in New York to become specialized chefs known as Pizzaiolos.

“We picked the New York school because we wanted to make traditional New York style, with handmade dough and all natural ingredients,” Kelly said. “But at the same time, while keeping the style authentic, we wanted to create original recipes as far as the toppings and decided to concentrate solely on specialized pizzas.”

After two years of planning and work, Prohibition Pizza held its grand opening on April 20. They restaurant celebration with an official ribbon cutting ceremony with the Potter family accompanied by High Springs Mayor Gloria James, Vice Mayor Ross Ambrose, Commissioners Tristan Grunder and Katherine Weitz and Chamber of Commerce President Sharon Decker. After the ribbon was cut, the large audience of residents and business owners were treated to cake. For people who had brought their dogs to the outdoor ceremony, Kelly had a special treat. Each dog got a large frisbee resembling a pepperoni pizza.

Kelly said they had been planning for over a year. Once they found a location and purchased the building, there was a lot of work to do in addition to building a kitchen from the ground up.

“With David's background in construction, we did much of the work ourselves with help from the family,” said Kelly. Although the building needed a lot of work, the couple liked the location, a block off Main Street and across from the High Springs Brewing Company. “Pizza and beer are a well-known combination, and we are happy to have a working relationship with the Brewery,” said Kelly. “We have applied for a beer and wine license, but we would prefer to keep the relationship as is for the benefit of both businesses.”

“We were amazed by the turnout and warm support of the community for our opening. We were even more amazed by the amount of business we got the first two days,” said Kelly. “Both days we ran out of dough to make pizza because our dough is made fresh daily and takes three days to rise properly.”

They did not expect to have over 1,000 customers the first two days, but have since adjusted for it. “Currently we only offer walk in orders or in house dining but will later do phone orders and possibly delivery,” said Kelly. “While we specialize in pizza, we also offer oven baked wings, salads, appetizers and desserts.”

Prohibition Pizza is located at 18559 N.W. 237^th Street in High Springs They are open six days a week with the exception of Tuesday. More information on hours and a full menu can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/prohibitionpizzaHS/

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School Board Member Sarah Rockwell discusses her evaluation of Interim Superintendent Shane Andrew at the May 2 school board meeting. Image from broadcast of meeting. | Alachua Chronicle

BY JENNIFER CABRERA/Alachua Chronicle

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their May 2 board meeting, the school board voted 3-2 to retain Andrew as superintendent through the end of June 2024 and delay the start date for a new superintendent to that date.

Andrew was appointed as Interim Superintendent on March 15, 2022, and he negotiated a contract through June 30, 2024, at a salary of $175,000; the contract guarantees that he can return to his previous position of Chief of Operations if he is terminated from the Interim Superintendent job.

During the part of the meeting that is set aside for comments from the teachers’ union, ACEA President Carmen Ward said every educator she has spoken to wants the “stability of Shane Andrew” as superintendent. 

During the adoption of the agenda, Member Sarah Rockwell requested that the board table the agenda item about Andrew’s contract, which she had requested. She said, “I don’t think it is fair to discuss the Superintendent’s contract when the board’s evaluations weren’t available to all board members and the public until this afternoon.” The motion failed, 2-3, with only Rockwell and Certain favoring the removal of the item.

Board evaluations of Andrew

The board first discussed their individual evaluations of Andrew. The evaluations were posted just a few hours before the meeting; Rockwell rated Andrew “Unsatisfactory,” Chair Tina Certain rated him “Needs Improvement,” and Members Kay Abbitt, Diyonne McGraw, and Leanetta McNealy rated him “Effective.” The highest rating on the form is “Highly Effective.”

Certain decided to take public comment before the board discussed the evaluations. Twelve people spoke in favor of retaining Andrew as Interim Superintendent, one person spoke against Andrew, and three people spoke about more general issues. Stability was a consistent theme in the comments of those who spoke in favor of keeping Andrew as Superintendent.

Rockwell said her evaluation was “thorough and lengthy” and said the board needs to make “really good decisions for our children.” She said many people are frustrated by the lack of progress in the school district and that Andrew has an opportunity to improve. “I think the way to improve this is through project management documentation… I would like to see [project management documents] for all our major projects” with timelines and updates presented to the board. She said she would be open to creating a position or contracting a position to help with project management and that she wanted Andrew to be successful and wanted the board to “move forward with unity and a plan.”

McGraw said she had hoped to never be at a meeting like this again and that she had thought the board was unified. She emphasized that the “focus always has to be on children” and spoke at length about discipline (her vision is covered here, and there will be another workshop on discipline tomorrow at 10 a.m.). “Mr. Andrew is–just like the rest of us, we all have our challenges, we all have our strengths… You build a team around you that’s able to make you successful.” She said it’s not “time for change” because that “would be disastrous” in preparing for the 2023-24 school year.

Abbitt said Andrew had “inherited a lot of turmoil” and “you can’t expect miracles to happen.” She said that when new leaders come in, they just need to observe at first and that the board had only provided guidance to the superintendent two months ago. She added that Andrew had “brought a sense of calm to the district.”

McNealy said Mr. Andrew has strong ties to the local community and that stability and consistency are important. She concluded, “We need to leave as-is right now and move forward.”

Certain said she was “perplexed” at the uproar around the evaluation because it’s board policy to evaluate the superintendent once a year. She asked Andrew about an incident that was reported in the Gainesville Sun in which unnamed district employees said Andrew brought a Bible into a staff meeting and read Bible quotes about people betraying Jesus.

Andrew said, “The Gainesville Sun article is not accurate. Never happened.” He said the Sun did not name the staff members because they don’t exist; he said he had never opened a Bible and read to employees out of that Bible: “I let my light so shine, but I’ll leave it at that.”

Certain said the board had made their priorities clear in early November “and I don’t believe, and I don’t see evidence of a coordinated strategy of really addressing what’s happening in the school building.” She said the district staff didn’t seem to have the authority to direct school staff to make changes. She said her evaluation was intended to “adjust our practice.”

Shane Andrew responds

After all the school board members had spoken, Andrew said he received the self-evaluation document at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 22, and he was asked to turn it in by April 25, so he only had two workdays to complete it. He added, “But let’s evaluate me on comprehensive rezoning, that wasn’t even approved until April 4th? That’s not even a month ago… I’ll just say the timeline was unrealistic for that self-evaluation… I’m humbled by the kind comments, the support, and the constructive feedback. I hear that. I know we have fallen short as a system. I know we have failed… And I’ve been part of that system… Blame me, but give me some time to change the system.”

Andrew continued, “Our staff has not had time to do the work. And we have these monumental things that we have to do–we’ve been preparing the next slide deck.” He mentioned the large number of meetings and workshops that have been held over the past few months and requested that staff be given time to do the work. He said he had previously run schools, and when he got to the district office he said, “Oh my gosh, yes, that is the problem… It might be that we all need to be cleared out of here, and we start over.” He said they need to focus on “assessment, getting our kids safely through the school year, getting them to their graduations, focus on supporting our teachers as they close out the year, we need to change what we do so we have equitable access and opportunities for all kids.”

Certain asked him what he meant by “systemic change,” pointing out that schools with the largest number of students in poverty usually have the most staff vacancies and the least experienced staff. Andrew responded, “Just like we addressed the hiring, yes. And if you call it out, systemic racism has to be addressed. That’s just the way it’s been… systemic assignments.” He said that the least effective teachers are often sent to the lower-performing schools: “We plan to address that.”

The board voted 5-0 to receive the evaluations. 

The evaluations can be found here. 

Andrew’s contract

Abbitt made a motion to postpone the search for the new superintendent until January 2024 and honor Andrew’s contract through June 2024. McGraw seconded the motion. Abbitt said it would be hard for Andrew to get much done by the original date of November, although she seemed to be talking about a start date for the search compared to the previous target hiring date of November.

Rockwell didn’t want to push it off that far because it wouldn’t leave much time for transition. McGraw said, “We need to regroup, we need a retreat” and said Abbitt’s motion would give Andrew a full school year to implement his plan. McNealy said she would prefer holding to the compromise that had been reached the previous day on the start date for the new superintendent. Certain wanted to go forward with the search as they decided yesterday. Andrew said it made more sense to have the new superintendent come in during the summer instead of in the middle of the school year, and he thought that schedule might attract more candidates.

During public comment on the motion, 12 people spoke in favor of the motion, and nobody spoke against it.

When the discussion came back to the board, Certain clarified that the intent is to start the search in January 2024 with the intent of having the new superintendent start at the end of Andrew’s contract in June 2024. The motion passed 3-2, with Certain and Rockwell in dissent.

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