GAINESVILLE –– On November 4, the city of Gainesville is having a referendum to place the Gainesville City Commission back in control of Gainesville Regional Utilities. In 2024, a similar referendum passed with a 73% vote.
Bobby Mermer is the president of Gainesville Residents United, a community organization campaigning to return control of Gainesville’s utility back to the City Commission.
WUFT’s Austyn Bolig sat down with Mermer to find out why this referendum matters, and why it’s on the ballot again.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity. Listen above or read it below.
Bolig: Gainesville Residents United is campaigning for the referendum on November 4th for Gainesville Regional Utilities to go back to the control of the city commission. So what's at stake here?
Mermer: What's at stake is home rule overall, the ability for us to determine what we do, how we generate and how we deliver our power and our water.
Bolig: So what would it look like if the commission did gain control of GRU again?
Mermer: We will be able to have accountability once again in our utility.
Bolig: So the theory being if it goes back to the commission, the people will have more say in what the utility does and what they support with their money?
Mermer: Absolutely, yes. Because I don't think it's too controversial to say that it is much easier to get the ear of a local city commissioner than it is Governor Ron DeSantis, especially if you're a [Gainesville resident].
Bolig: So what happens if after November 4th the vote is no and it doesn't get returned to commission power? What do you foresee happening?
Mermer: In that extremely unlikely event that the no side prevails, I think what would happen is people of Gainesville will accept the result. I mean, the whole point of a referendum is to let the voters decide, let the people who own this utility decide who should govern the utility. If no wins, you know, the people spoke. Period.
But I don't think that's going to happen. Last year we had almost 73% of the vote.
Bolig: I think that kind of leans into a different point, this probably feels like déjà vu for some people. Some people may feel like they voted on this before. Why is there another referendum?
Why is it happening again?
Mermer: So the GRU authority sued the city commission last year to try to keep the referendum last year off the ballot, or if they couldn't keep it off the ballot, to at least invalidate the results.
Went to trial and the judge said that the city does have a right to amend its charter and the voters of the city have a right to decide what to do with their utility and how it's governed. But he said the ballot language was a little misleading. So the ballot language said in one part, “should control be returned to the elected city commission and charter officer,” the city commission is legislative, and charter officers are executive.
The judge had said that it should have read, “should control be given back to the elected city commission and its appointed charter officer?” So the referendum was invalidated because of what Judge George Wright called misleading language. So we're doing this again because we needed to correct the language.
Bolig: So if control of GRU goes back to the city commission, what does that mean for residents that are outside of the city of Gainesville city limits?
Mermer: I don't think anything will change. So right now there is a representative of customers who are outside the city limits on the GRU authority. But the people outside the city don't get to vote for that representative.
The governor appoints that representative. But they're not elected, and they don't have to listen to unincorporated GRU customers.
We have county people on our side, and that's because the GRU authority doesn't listen to them either. So nothing will change.
Bolig: Okay. And so to kind of go back, I know we touched on it a little bit. If GRU does get returned to city commission control, what can residents expect to happen to their utility bill?
What do you think would happen to rates and just long-term?
Mermer: I'm not sure exactly, nor do I think I should be sure. The whole point of returning control to the elected city commission is to restore democracy at the utility. I'm just one person.
Nobody elected me to decide what to do with the utility. So, I'm not sure what's going to happen. And if I was, I shouldn't be doing this work, right, because it'd be undemocratic.
Bolig: So, of course, you're involved in all these different local organizations. What put this vote specifically on your radar, and what made Gainesville Residents United a big campaigner of voting yes on November 4th?
Mermer: So, we've been beating this back since 2014. The reason Gainesville Residents United formed, the reason it became an organization, is because of the law that passed in 2023 that mandated a state takeover of our utility.
So that's sort of our whole reason for being.
This interview was transcribed using AI tools and reviewed for accuracy.
