- The Gainesville City Commission unanimously approved $150 million in new debt and over $350 million in refinancing for GRU infrastructure projects and debt reduction.
- GRU’s 2024 Integrated Resource Plan is incomplete, causing concern among commissioners about expensive asset refurbishment and long-term costs.
The Gainesville City Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to ratify bond documents from the Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) Authority to allow $150 million in new debt, along with half a billion dollars in total transactions.
The GRU Authority manages the utility, but the city of Gainesville still owns the utility even though the Gainesville City Commission is barred from impacting utility operations by a section of its own City Charter added by the Florida Legislature in 2023 and rebuffed by the city’s voters in 2024 and 2025 but not yet repealed as legal appeals take place before the Florida First District Court of Appeal.
The overall result of the above politicking: a joint custody battle for the utility that forces both the city of Gainesville and the GRU Authority to sign loan documents in order to garner the trust of the banks about to loan hundreds of millions of dollars…