Kick DeSantis out of town and put the ratepayers back in charge
by Dr. David Hastings, Suwannee St. Johns Sierra Club and Jyoti Parmar, Sierra Club of Florida
It’s impossible to ignore the upcoming election, which may be the most important vote we will ever cast. At the top of our ballots, we are choosing between a Black and South Asian woman who worked for McDonalds as a teen, and a chaotic candidate who has called climate change a “hoax.”
At the bottom of your ballot, the last item on the back page is an important reminder to Think Globally and Act Locally. It is a referendum to remove the DeSantis appointed “GRU Authority” and return decision making to ratepayers in Gainesville.
When the Florida Legislature last year transferred authority over GRU from the City Commission to a board hand-picked by Governor Ron DeSantis, it pulled the rug out from under Gainesville voters. They care about what DeSantis wants, not what you want.
What’s more, this so-called “Authority” is prohibited by law from considering the climate crisis or our neighbors’ energy burdens. Your vote this November will determine how Gainesville manages our response to the rapidly changing climate. Last week, the massive climate impacts from Hurricane Helene reminded us of the enormous costs of continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Dissolving the GRU Authority is a necessary first step toward reversing the implementation of several controversial bad decisions made by the GRU Authority. These include:
firing the Chief Sustainability Officer;
ending net-metering and thus raising electric rates for new solar customers;
reducing ratepayer support for low-income households;
abandoning the process of the Integrated Resource Plan, an industry standard practice for utility planning.
These highly unpopular decisions are both anti-equity and anti-environment in their impact. The so called “Authority” is committed to continuing to burn fossil gas rather than make the smart switch to solar + battery energy storage. Utility-scale solar is about a third cheaper than gas-fired power in the US; in Florida, costs can be even lower.
GRU isn’t perfect. More needs to be done to move to renewable energy. And more needs to be done to address high energy burdens in Gainesville faced by some ratepayers. While some spend 1 or 2 percent of their household income on energy costs, those with low and very low incomes spend more than ten times that portion of their income on energy. High energy burdens force difficult survival decisions: spend money on heat and keep the lights on? … which means cutting back on basic necessities including food, clothing, and medicine.
We have zero chance of making progress on these issues with the state in charge. We need to push the reset button on GRU. We can do that by voting YES to restore local control to our Public Utility.
The Sierra Club position on the Gainesville Charter Amendment is joined by many other community groups including NAACP, Alachua County Labor Coalition, Democrats of Alachua County, League of Women Voters, Community Weatherization Coalition, and North Central Florida AFL-CIO.
To ensure meaningful climate action and meet the City’s resolution to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, we must return control of GRU to the citizens of Gainesville who can prioritize clean, affordable, and equitable energy.
Voting Yes for the GRU referendum is a decisive move towards these goals.
Vote YES for Local Public Utilities in Gainesville. It is the last item on your ballot.