Real Solutions

Our environment is our greatest asset in Gainesville. From Paynes Prairie to Itchetucknee Springs we live in a remarkable environmental area. Yet it has never been under threat more than it is today. As our climate warms and our population grows, Bryan believes we must make real strides to combat global warming, protect our green spaces, and reduce our waste. He has been a stalwart advocate for clean energy, land protection, and moving towards zero waste, and will continue to fight for a cleaner, greener future on our Gainesville City Commission.

Bryan will work to ensure our community is powered by renewable energy by 2045 by focusing on integrating solar energy into our system. In 2031 GRU's coal plant Deerhaven 2 will retire, which means our next commission must plan today to offset that energy production with clean energy. That will require thoughtful investments and innovative energy storage options. Bryan will work to scale up distributed storage by utilizing batteries like electric car batteries in our net metering program, allowing residents to take part in the clean energy revolution and giving our city more resources to distribute energy. Bryan believes we can move to 100% renewable energy by 2045 in a way that is both sustainable and does not burden our residents with exorbitant GRU rates. GRU's 2019 Integrated Resource Plan shows that we can create up to 75% of our energy from renewable sources by 2028 with little impact to the overall cost of the utility compared to relying on fossil fuels.

However, Transitioning to clean energy isn't enough to fight global warming. We need to commit to reducing our carbon footprint through committing to zero waste goals, eliminating natural gas in new developments, and creating a more walkable/bikeable city that allows us to move without energy. 

Bryan will work to protect our environmental land, committing our city to 30% of protected land, up from 21% today. This means we need to work with the county to halt suburban sprawl and invest more money into permanently protected land through land purchases and land easements. 

Gainesville is a remarkable city for many, but a stifling one for others. We must commit to being a more equitable community, one that ensures that every Gainesvillian has access to the basic needs of a home health, connectivity, and safety. In the end, it's about ensuring that our resources are going to those who need it the most. Our community rises and falls together, and it is our responsibility as a city to ensure every child and resident has what they need to live.

Bryan has been a longtime advocate for homeless Gainesvillians, serving as a board member for Grace Marketplace and is committed to ending homelessness in our community. While this may seem idealistic the answer is actually simple: ensure everyone has a home. Bryan is an advocate of a "housing first" model of reducing homelessness that has shown to be effective in cities all over the United States and is being implemented at Grace Marketplace.

Gainesville is currently paying some of the highest prices in the United States for broadband, and many residents are going without connectivity as a result. Bryan founded Connected Gainesville in 2017 that has led the conversation on municipal broadband locally. Now he will work to make municipal broadband a reality so every resident has access to affordable, high-speed broadband in their homes.

Bryan has been a long-time advocate for implementing a racial equity toolkit. This "toolkit" is meant to bring scrutiny to policies that appear race-neutral but harm minority communities disproportionately. This policy was passed by the City Commission in 2017, but the rollout has been slow and the original intent of the policy has been lost over successive charter officers in that role. It is time to refocus our department on assessing and understanding the impact our policies have on our BIPOC communities.

Gainesville has always been a beacon of nature, culture, and arts in the southeast. For a small city, Gainesville has a remarkable amount of world-class music, food, and culture, a fact that we should all be proud of. However, this doesn't happen by accident. Hundreds of artists, restauranteurs, community advocates, and small-business owners put their lives into making this culture a reality, and for them this pandemic has been devastating.  As we emerge from the last two years Bryan is committed to investing and rebuilding our cultural assets. 

A vibrant Gainesville starts with a vibrant downtown, which is Gainesville's showcase to the world. Bryan will work to activate our downtown again through events, concerts, and support for local businesses. This means creating more events such as "Free Fridays" or the night market to help make downtown the destination it was prior to the pandemic. 

Bryan is a musician and has played in venues across Gainesville. Music and arts are a priority for him, and he will work to create more opportunities and support to get the arts back up after the pandemic slump. He is in support of the "Public Performance" Program being piloted at the City of Gainesville and will push for more space for venues and city-ran events to give more space to local artists.

Vibrancy goes beyond destinations, it goes to our homes. Our historic neighborhoods are the jewel of Gainesville, with their pre-World War 2 vibrancy, walkability, and historic charm. Bryan will work to support neighborhoods by creating better outreach and constituent services and work to protect and enhance their sense of place. He will work to defend our status as a tree city by expanding our urban tree canopy. Our neighborhoods need to be safe, walkable, and close to amenities such as parks and public transportation. Every neighborhood is unique and every neighborhood deserves to be treated as the unique communities they are.

A walkable city is a sustainable city, it's a lively city, it's a city you can feel safe to let your children explore. Multiple studies have shown that more pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit riders helps a city to dramatically reduce their CO2 emissions, grows the local economy, and improves our health. Bryan will work to create streets that work for everyone, creating world-class pedestrian experiences and safety in high pedestrian areas, an interconnected bicycle network, and invest in the Hogtown Creek and Sweetwater Branch Greenways.

Bryan is committed to making our streets safe for pedestrians. The deaths of Sabrina Obrado, DJ Washington, and many more have shown that our streets must better protect and support pedestrians and cyclists. Gainesville has a large number of pedestrians thanks to our walkable historic grid layout and proximity to the University of Florida, but we lag in many of street features that allow that walking to be safe and enjoyable. Bryan will work to expand pedestrian infrastructure, use 21st-century solutions such as smarter traffic signals, and will work to make our pedestrian core near UF and downtown a pleasure to walk.

Gainesville has always been a cyclist town, but now the pandemic has led to a further boom in bicycles on our streets. The time is now to create better bicycle infrastructure such as protected bike lanes and an integrated cycling network. This means going street by street, crosswalk by crosswalk to determine how we can create better flow of cyclists along our heavy cycling corridors and bicycle boulevards. 

Bryan will also fight to expand our paved trail system by advocating for the Hogtown Creek Greenway and Sweetwater Branch Greenway. These two trails have been the dreams of trail advocates for decades and, thanks to a charter amendment advocated and passed by Bryan, can now become a reality.

Affordability must be central to everything we do in our city. Our city is seeing some of the largest rent increases ever recorded, higher utility rates, expensive internet, and wages that are barely keeping pace with the cost of living. This has been devastating to so many, but the loss of affordability hurts all our community regardless of your income. What has always made Gainesville a unique, diverse place is that people from all walks of life can afford to live here. As that becomes less and less true we lose the soul of what has made Gainesville such a vibrant city. We must remain a city that is open to all, and that means a city that is affordable to all.

Tackling the affordability issue must start with tackling our housing crisis. Housing takes up the largest share of a person's income, and even small changes can have enormous impacts on families. In the past few years, we have seen massive increases in rent and housing costs, putting incredible strain on working families. To fix this issue we need to be building more affordable housing, protecting the affordable housing we have, and protecting our tenants.

Working families like Bryan's are frequently locked out of the housing market, and Housing and Urban Development foresees increasing shortages of homes suitable for a small family over the next few years. Bryan is in favor of implementing innovative solutions to give families more options for homes such as smaller homes that grow the supply of housing in a way that protects the character of our neighborhoods while allowing more families to take part in homeownership.

Bryan also believes we need to tackle the high cost of internet connectivity. Bryan has been a leader in advocating for municipal broadband and will continue to do so on the Gainesville City Commission. A report by Magellan Advisors shows that families could save over $400 per year through municipal broadband while bringing in over $39 million in profit to the city every year.

Bryan is committed to renewable energy, but in doing so in a way that we can afford and doesn't burden those most in need. We must keep GRU rates affordable while moving our utility into the 21st century. Thankfully it doesn't need to be a tradeoff, as GRU's Integrated Resource Plan shows we can move to 75 percent renewable energy by the end of Bryan's 2nd term with only minimal increased costs. To do this, however, we need to begin planning now and doing it in a way that is financially responsible and truly committed to a green energy future.

Gainesville must begin rebuilding trust with our citizens, and that starts with efficient, people-centered governance. As the statewide program manager for Startup Quest, a $12 million Obama Administration unemployment program, Bryan has seen how important good government can be in regular people's lives. That means committing to transparency, evidence-based policymaking, and real community engagement.

Bryan is committed to recruiting world-class staff and making Gainesville a destination for forward-thinking municipal workers. That means giving staff the flexibility to innovate within their departments and letting staffers know that their ideas and time are valued at the City. It also means creating stability within our city government, and creating a work culture that lets people thrive both in work and at home.

Bryan is a data guy, he believes that our decision-making must be led by evidence, data, and best practices. Currently, there is only a small staff that analyzes the impact of the policies the city passes, and the result is either stagnation towards progress or ill-considered policy. Bryan will work to expand the city's public policy department and begin regular updates on important metrics to better inform our long-term strategic planning.

Data is critical but data isn't enough. We need to be better engaging our community at key steps in the process, and truly bringing community members in on the decision-making of our city. Bryan believes it is time for better investment in constituent services, allowing commissioners to hire staffers that can better engage with the community and bring professionalism to decision-making in our city. We must also move off of a "check box" mentality of community engagement.  There needs to be a genuine back-and-forth between decision-makers and residents of our city.

Bryan will also work to implement real ethics reform to ensure our local government officials and key staff are accountable and transparency is upheld. This means a county-wide ethics oversight organization that can investigate and review any malfeasance in our government bodies.