Duck
Pond opposition spurs Plan Board to reject probation office's
move
“Stalled out for years at a prior location, the city's longstanding plans for a homeless shelter and assistance center east of Gainesville may have hit another stumbling block.
“Stalled out for years at a prior location, the city's longstanding plans for a homeless shelter and assistance center east of Gainesville may have hit another stumbling block.
After
hearing hours of opposition from dozens of residents of the Historic Duck Pond
neighborhood Thursday night, the city's Plan Board denied a permit application
to relocate the state's downtown probation office to a building along Northeast
First Street just west of the neighborhood.
The state
was to take ownership of the building, a former law office just north of City
Hall that more recently housed the police department's detective division, in a
land swap that was part of the agreement for the city to get the shuttered
Gainesville Correctional Institution on Northeast 39th Avenue for the homeless
assistance facility...”
-Christopher Curry/Gainesville Sun/8/22
The probation office has been located
downtown, a few blocks from the Duckpond Neighborhood, for at least the past 30
years. For the past several years it has been located two blocks away from my
home in the Southeast Historic District, one of the lowest crime rate
neighborhoods in the city. In all that time there has not, to the best of my
knowledge, been a single incident of criminal behavior connected to the comings
and goings from that office.
This decision of the Planning Board will
not go before the City Commission. It will stand unless it is appealed, through
a process I’m not familiar with, and that appeal will also go before the
Planning Board.
A book called A Course in
Miracles makes a statement to this effect: All human behavior comes from
either fear or love. I have analyzed my own actions and the actions going on
around me and I’m convinced that this statement is absolute truth. We now have
an instance of a decision based on fear. Decisions based on fear tend to have
very bad results. In this instance, help for the sick, elderly and disabled
people who make up a substantial portion of the homeless community has met
another major stumbling block.
I have not, in my almost 70 years, seen
anything like the suffering that is going on in the homeless community. Some
nights there are so many people with canes, crutches, in wheelchairs, bent over,
lined up at the Home Van that I feel like I’m looking at a line into a faith
healers tent. There has been a sense that we are all hanging on by our
fingernails waiting for the One Stop Center to open.
I am not going to demonize the people of
the Duckpond Community or their allies for this decision. I have struggled with
irrational fear for all of my life and I know how powerful it is. Wise beings
have said that there is only one force in the universe that is more powerful
than fear, and that is love. After some contemplation, I have decided that I’m
going to hold a candelight prayer vigil on the banks of the Duckpond every
Sunday night from 7 to 8 p.m., beginning Sunday, September 1. I am inviting the
entire community, housed and unhoused, rich and poor, to join me. People of all
faiths and no faith. Atheists and secular humanists are invited to join me.
Their belief that love and grace and creativity lie within the human spirit I
hold as sacred as any belief held by me or anyone else. We are all one.
That the human family may come together,
that we may love and care for one another, that we will stop being afraid of one
another and shooting at each other and shutting each other out – that will be
our prayer and our affirmation.
Please join me on the banks of the
Duckpond on Sunday, September 1 at 7 p.m. or any Sunday after that. Please
invite others.
Peace and love to everyone,
arupa
