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Talks All But Dead Between Gainesville, GREC; No Future Meetings

Although the negotiation period does not end until Nov. 20, Gainesville Renewable Energy Center and the Gainesville City Commission haven’t reached an agreement with the commission’s offer to purchase the biomass plant at $400 million.

At the city commission meeting on Thursday, David Richardson, interim chief financial officer at Gainesville Regional Utilities and lead negotiator, said both the city commission and GREC agreed at this time no further meetings would be beneficial. Therefore, no future meetings have been scheduled.

“There would be nothing that would keep us from making offers separate from that at any time,” he said.

GREC should not sell to someone else who offers at a lower price at a later time, Commissioner Randy Wells said.

“Now, for a year, this plant can not be sold at terms at a lower price that we’ve offered or conditions that are more onerous,” Wells said. “That has value, because if you are in a negotiation with someone and they turn out to need to sell the plant in the next year, you would want them to sell it to you if it’s at terms that you would find of value.”

The city submitted an offer to GREC on Oct. 21.

Although Wells said GREC does not want to take the city’s offer, he said, “If that were to change, we would have he opportunity to review any offer that they did choose to accept to insure us that it was greater than what we had offered. That’s a contractual right.”

Caitlin is a reporter for WUFT News and can be contacted by calling 352-392-6397 or emailing news@wuft.org.