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HomeCrimeGainesville City Commission Moves UF Parents’ Recorded Comments to Meeting’s End, Votes...

Gainesville City Commission Moves UF Parents’ Recorded Comments to Meeting’s End, Votes to Eliminate Them

NewsFinale Journal
By NewsFinale Journal
2
At the end of the Sept. 17 Gainesville City Commission meeting, Commissioners (except Cynthia Chestnut, who left) listen to recorded comments from UF parents

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

Before the afternoon General Public Comment session, Mayor Harvey Ward said the city had received 18 voice recordings through a program created during the COVID-19 pandemic but never previously used. The recordings were intended to be played during public comment, so Ward asked commissioners to “make a motion to waive the rules as they pertain to pre-recorded General Comment to play at the end of the meeting.”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman moved to play the recordings at the end of the meeting and extend the regular General Public Comment period beyond 30 minutes. Commissioners approved the motion unanimously.

Click here to read about the 19 people who spoke during General Public Comment in support of ending a Gainesville Police Department policy concerning contact with “suspected unauthorized aliens.”

Mayor Harvey Ward: “GRACE Marketplace is one of the few places in North Florida where someone can register an address if they don’t actually have an address… Just because someone uses GRACE as their mailing address does not mean that they live at GRACE Marketplace.”

One man used the in-person comment period to raise public safety concerns near campus. Ward responded that the issue appeared to involve the statewide criminal justice and court systems, which, he said, do not operate for the city or GRACE Marketplace. “GRACE Marketplace is one of the few places in North Florida where someone can register an address if they don’t actually have an address,” Ward said. “Just because someone uses GRACE as their mailing address does not mean that they live at GRACE Marketplace.”

81 people were enrolled at GRACE from state prisons between Sept. 2025 and Sept. 2026

Mark Bonner, GRACE Marketplace’s interim CEO, addressed concerns that the organization has become a magnet for people released from Florida state prisons. He said nearly 25,000 people were released from state prisons between September 2025 and September 2026, and GRACE identified 81 who were later enrolled in its services. “That is 0.33%, or one in every 306 people,” Bonner said.

Mark Bonner, Interim CEO at GRACE Marketplace: “If GRACE disappeared, the people who need shelter would not disappear with it; they would remain in Gainesville without the help that they need to change their current circumstances.”

Bonner said GRACE welcomes questions about its work and asked that the organization’s responses be considered alongside the concerns. “If GRACE disappeared, the people who need shelter would not disappear with it; they would remain in Gainesville without the help that they need to change their current circumstances,” he said.

After public comment, Ward pointed to changes in downtown homelessness since GRACE opened. He said that before GRACE, more than 100 people slept nightly on Bo Diddley Plaza and more than 1,500 people were identified as unsheltered in the community. In 2026, he said, that number is closer to 500 or 600. “GRACE has had a tremendous positive impact on this community,” Ward said.

Commissioner Ed Book asked Bonner how GRACE assists people who come to North Central Florida and whether the organization works to help them return to places where they can overcome their challenges.

58% of people receiving services at GRACE Marketplace are from Alachua County

Bonner said monthly reports to the city show that most people receiving services at GRACE are from Alachua County, with the latest figure at 58%. Those arriving from elsewhere, he said, generally come from counties included in the Continuum of Care. “We’re not going to turn people away, right?” Bonner said.

Alachua County residents receive priority when there is a waiting list for a bed, Bonner said. He added that GRACE tries to prevent people from entering the homeless response system when they have an opportunity to be housed elsewhere. That can include helping them return to communities with housing support and closer connections to family.

Interim City Manager Andrew Persons referenced a press release announcing that the Gainesville Police Department and University of Florida Police Department were expanding patrols in Midtown.

Commissioner Casey Willits: “I bristle at listening to people who don’t live close to prisons and are upset that maybe someone who’s released from a prison, on their way home, ends up in our community at some point.”

Commissioner Casey Willits noted that many state and federal prisons are located north and west of Gainesville. Only a small number of people leaving the Florida Department of Corrections, he said, end up in the local community with an address registered through GRACE. “I bristle at listening to people who don’t live close to prisons and are upset that maybe someone who’s released from a prison, on their way home, ends up in our community at some point,” Willits said. “Homelessness is a statewide problem.”

Ward called homelessness an international issue and said Florida’s failure to take mental health and substance abuse treatment seriously would allow the problems seen in Gainesville to continue.

Commissioners vote to eliminate voice recordings for comments

At the end of the evening’s business, Ward referred to the 19 voice recordings that had been submitted by callers concerned about the safety of UF students and said the rule about voice recordings was implemented during COVID, “and it has not been used since then… But we do spend staff time, every single meeting, to comb through it and make sure that there are no comments.” 

Ward said Commissioners could amend the rules to omit the “artifact of COVID planning that we just never took out of the rules, and I would like us to direct the Attorney via a motion to amend our Rules Resolution at the next meeting to take that out because it is costing us resources… and has been used exactly once.”

Eastman made a motion to direct the City Attorney to remove the voicemail option for public comment. There was no public comment, and the motion passed unanimously.

Willits: “I do want to encourage people… to keep emailing us and reaching out, having personal conversations and meeting with us, because it does work.”

Willits said, “For people watching at home, we really do read emails… I do want to encourage people… to keep emailing us and reaching out, having personal conversations and meeting with us, because it does work.”

The motion passed 6-1, with Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker in dissent.

Eastman: “One thing I can say is that we, as a City, you can see clearly, have been committed to public safety and continue to be committed to public safety. We’re putting our money where our mouth is.”

Eastman said he wanted to “make a point before we start listening to a lot of these calls… You’re about to hear about 20-30 minutes of parents who are concerned about the safety of their kids. They have different hypotheses as to why they think that is; part of it relates to our homeless shelter, part of it relates to funding for our police. One thing I can say is that we, as a City, you can see clearly, have been committed to public safety and continue to be committed to public safety. We’re putting our money where our mouth is.” He said public safety funding has increased by 25% since 2023, while “everything else has been cut by 3%.”

Ward: “I am very, very proud of the work that our law enforcement does, and I am proud of the way that we fund law enforcement in our community. And it’s important to… tell that story before we go into a few minutes of being told that we don’t, by people who generally don’t live in our community.”

Ward said he wanted to note that there are three police departments operating inside the city limits of Gainesville: the Gainesville Police Department (GPD), the University of Florida Police Department (UFPD), and the Santa Fe College Police Department. He said the combined “360-ish sworn officers [are] a lot for a city of 151,000 people.” He also reiterated the City’s commitment to public safety: “It does not mean we do not have crime,… but I am very, very proud of the work that our law enforcement does, and I am proud of the way that we fund law enforcement in our community. And it’s important to… tell that story before we go into a few minutes of being told that we don’t, by people who generally don’t live in our community.”

Ward told Commissioners that they did not need a quorum, so “I’m not going to pay attention to anybody, you know, easing out the door.”

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut left during the first comment, but the other Commissioners stayed to hear the comments.

Parent: “These are not rumors. These are first-hand experiences.”

In the 18 recordings (one was blank, according to the Clerk), parents of UF students spoke about various incidents experienced by or witnessed by their students:

  • One student “watches drug deals happen all the time” outside her apartment building. This parent called out Campus Walk, a condominium complex that she said was “a halfway house that’s basically on campus.”

  • A parent who lives in New York and has a son who is a UF junior said she was concerned about the “growing issues regarding disturbances, attacks, and concerns with the growing mentally ill homeless population circulating the streets of Gainesville, specifically near and around student off-campus housing and sorority and frat houses.” She said she was afraid there would be “another tragic national news story.”

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  • Another parent of “two Gators” said Gainesville “needs a more effective and compassionate approach to the persistent homelessness around the university and surrounding neighborhoods.” She asked the Commission to prioritize increased police visibility in “areas heavily traveled by students,” better lighting and security, better coordination between GPD and UFPD, and effective services and interventions for people experiencing homelessness.

  • Another parent called for a “serious data-driven review” of local crime data and how students are affected. She said, “Recurring concerns have been raised about individuals involving indecent exposure, trespassing into occupied residences, voyeurism, violence or threatening behavior, and sexual misconduct. What’s being done to protect the students?”

  • Another parent mentioned Campus Walk again, saying, “There have been instances involving individuals… screaming at students [and] students from the sorority house even being chased right out front. Whether these individuals are connected to a particular facility or not, they raise legitimate concerns about whether adequate safeguards, supervision, and law enforcement response are in place.”

  • One parent said her daughter was followed by a man this past spring, and he tried to get into her apartment; six hours later, she said, he was arrested for “brutally beating somebody.” She said he has over 30 criminal convictions and has been released and re-arrested at least twice since then. She added that she and her students “regularly see people doing drugs, outside in public.”

  • A parent said the number of homeless people has “significantly increased since two years ago,” when her daughter entered UF, and “Gainesville has to do something about this because it is becoming a potentially dangerous place for our students.”

  • A father who lives outside Boston said GRACE had 384 dispatch calls for service in the month of July 2026, an average of 12 a day, with 205 of them involving criminal behavior. He said, “These included violent disturbances, sexual assault, rape, and drug overdoses.”

  • A mother of two double Gators said her youngest son had a man “incessantly harassing him” at his house “from an outside window, and then he attempted to open a front door that had just been locked… What happened to Gainesville?… Students deserve to be able to walk safely around campus without being harassed, verbally accosted, followed, stalked, and even assaulted.”

  • The father of two students said, “The University of Florida is one of the nation’s top universities, and students and families should be able to expect a safe environment, both on campus and in the surrounding neighborhoods.”

  • A mother of two students said she was concerned about “incidents of sexual offenders being located around campus [and] aggressive panhandling on the corner of 13th and University.”

  • The mother of a recent graduate said her daughter experienced two home invasions in her apartment near Campus Walk, “and a knife was pulled on her when she was walking home from her sorority house at about 7:00 last fall.” She said that while the police responded quickly to the home invasions, it took 45 minutes to respond to her call about a knife being pulled on her. She said a homeless man also pounded on the windows of her daughter’s car while she was parked in a parking garage. The mother said she has personally “seen homeless people urinating in the streets, I’ve seen people clearly intoxicated on meth and very hard drugs, sitting in the median, moving their hands around.” She said a man once lunged at her eight-year-old son on University Avenue near 13th Street, and she added that all three of the people involved in the incidents with her daughter had GRACE Marketplace as an address.

  • A mother from South Florida with a student who is a junior at UF said “the element that circulates around [University and 13th] is so scary.” She referred to the recent arrest of a man who was living in a common area at The Standard and another man who was living in a bathroom on campus and said, “It shouldn’t be happening… Please make a change.”

  • The founder of the Swamp Watch Facebook group said her son has graduated, but she is “passionate… about protecting the students who are there today and the ones that will come after.” She said GPD’s data shows a 22% increase in violent crime, compared to the same period in 2025, with a 27% increase in reports of rape. She said, “Being homeless is not a crime. This is a public safety conversation. Our concern is criminal behavior, repeat offenders, and whether policies adequately protect the surrounding communities… We have been sounding the alarm for years.”

  • The mother of a female student asked for a stronger police presence on campus and “especially around Sorority Row.”

  • The mother of a UF student said she has seen people sleeping in front of the university gates, and when she was in Gainesville, multiple people approached her and asked for money.

  • The mother of a female freshman student and two students who have graduated said her middle daughter watched a homeless man brutally assault her male friend without provocation, and her daughter’s next-door neighbor faced an armed man who broke into her apartment. She said her daughter was afraid to walk alone and was frequently accosted by homeless individuals. She said, “These are not rumors. These are first-hand experiences.” She said there is no requirement for a background check at GRACE “and no sobriety requirement.” She also questioned whether the number of sworn officers at GPD is sufficient, given that it is lower than it was in 2017, despite the growth in population.

    • Ward: “[Gainesville is] higher than the standard of officers that FDLE recommends.”

    After the recordings were finished, Ward said, “I do not want anyone to think that we don’t take this seriously. Obviously, we do. That’s why we spend more than half our budget on public safety.” He repeated his earlier statement that GPD is not the only agency that serves the community: “It’s also Santa Fe Police and University of Florida Police. That puts us higher than the standard of officers that FDLE recommends.”

    Ward: Campus Walk “is not a halfway house; it is not GRACE Marketplace; it is a place where people live, and sometimes those people are not very savory.”

    Ward said Campus Walk is a condominium development, “so there is not one manager, and they are a set of private apartments. We are not in the business, here in Florida, of regulating who can live in an apartment, and that is something you might want to take up with people at a higher pay grade than ours.” He added that Campus Walk “is not a halfway house; it is not GRACE Marketplace; it is a place where people live, and sometimes those people are not very savory.”

    Ward said his daughter, a senior at UF, walks from campus to downtown for work, “and I am not saying that there are not dangers to be watched out for, but this is a city, it is an urban environment,… and it is important to be aware of your surroundings.”

    Ward also said another daughter just moved into the University of Central Florida in Orlando: “There were homeless people around the outside of campus. I saw them. I have not called the Mayor of Orlando.” He committed to “have those conversations” with the owners of Campus Walk units.

    Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker: “No one on this dais… wants to see any of the students in any unsafe conditions… We’re committed to everyone’s safety here.”

    Duncan-Walker said that recent conversations between the new UF leadership and Commissioners could “present a tremendous opportunity,” and she suggested meeting with UF leadership “as a body, sitting with them and having these conversations about the areas of opportunity, but also the areas of capacity, because… no one on this dais… wants to see any of the students in any unsafe conditions… We’re committed to everyone’s safety here.”

    Eastman said, “This is personal for us here in this community… We want to ensure that we have a safe city. We want to ensure that we have a city that cares for people… I think [public safety] is a very important task, and we need to continue to figure out ways we can improve that, as it relates to GRACE Marketplace.”

    Eastman on GRACE Marketplace: “It’s not that there are no rules or that people that are dangerous are allowed in; it’s just — there’s no blanket rules… They absolutely screen for people that are dangerous to people in there, because we want people to feel safe.”

    Eastman said that in 2014, City officials had no answers for the tent encampments downtown and “all the way down Hawthorne Trail… What we did is, we created a low-barrier shelter, where anyone can come in there. It’s not that there are no rules or that people that are dangerous are allowed in; it’s just — there’s no blanket rules… They absolutely screen for people that are dangerous to people in there, because we want people to feel safe.” He said GRACE is designed for people to stay 30 days at a time, “so that we can get you onto Social Security, we can get you on disability, we can help you find a job so you can get back on your feet.” He said the Point-in-Time count was at 1,516 on the street in 2014, and now it’s 536.

    Eastman continued, “I heard someone say that [the number of homeless people] keeps going up every year, and it feels that way at times, [when] you’re walking around, but that’s not the reality. The reality is that homelessness was cut by 28%, just this past year.” He said there “are no silver bullets” or easy answers, but “in this community, we figure out ways to solve problems. We come together.” He encouraged parents of UF students to “come meet with us and talk with us and figure out ways that we can solve the problem.”

    Commissioner Ed Book: “Money is really not the issue. The question is, are we doing the right initiatives?”

    Commissioner Ed Book said, “I, personally, am never satisfied with the level of crime… For the callers that think we’re not funding — we are funding all of our public safety, and we’re doing it well… Money is really not the issue. The question is, are we doing the right initiatives?… We’ve had a little setback recently, in my opinion, related to some surveillance mechanisms… We’ve had a three-year decrease in crime overall,… and it’s still too high. The last few months… have not been good, and that’s why we’ve just initiated some additional efforts with Gainesville Police and UF.”

    Willits said, “We see a lot of data, so it’s always good… to hear [your concerns]… The recent uptick in some of the crime statistics is concerning… I want all your students to keep on coming to a world-class institution. We are trying and are committed to having a world-class city to go along with it, but… it’s going to take some cooperation between UF and the City to make that happen, as it always has.”

    Ward said there were a few more things he needed to address: “We have never passed any sanctuary city policy… I want to be very, very clear: you will not find, in any of our records, that we have ever claimed to be a sanctuary city. That said, if you want to live in this community, if you want to be a part of Gainesville, I want you to be a part of Gainesville… If you are a student at the University of Florida who lives in the city limits of Gainesville,… we’re glad you’re here… You are our neighbor, as we say in Gainesville.”

    Ward: “This isn’t the issue [students] bring up… The people who live here are the ones I really want to talk to the most.”

    Ward continued, “When I say ‘you,’ I mean students — you’re the ones we’re really talking about in this. I would love to meet you. I’m on campus, probably at least once a week, talking to classes and in a variety of groups. This isn’t the issue they bring up.” He said he knows that parents are frustrated by his focus on residents of Gainesville, “but the people who live here are the ones I really want to talk to the most.” He advised students against responding to “folks asking for money on the street corner… It’s dangerous to be out there.”

    Ward said again that he would “be in touch with all of the owners of the Campus Walk condo apartments” and adjourned the meeting.