ALACHUA – The City of Alachua’s newly elected leaders took their seats Monday night, April 21, 2025, in a Commission meeting that celebrated new beginnings even as it spotlighted familiar tensions over growth, governance, and electoral trust.
Mayor Walter Welch and Commissioner Jacob Fletcher, who won their races in the April 8 municipal election, were sworn in during the early portion of the meeting. Welch unseated longtime Mayor Gib Coerper by just 21 votes (639 to 618), while Fletcher claimed Seat 2 over former Vice Mayor Ed Potts, 785 to 514. The Commission also unanimously appointed Shirley Green Brown as Vice Mayor.
John Brown, husband of Vice-Mayor Shirley Green Brown, spoke during public comment, reflecting on the emotional weight of the meeting and the significance of the leadership transition. “It’s not easy to be up in the seats of which you are,” he told the new Commission. Brown, who also serves on the city’s senior advisory board, praised the contributions of both departing and incoming officials. “Congratulations to you, Commissioner Fletcher, and congratulations to you as well, Mayor,” he said. “The senior advisory board works diligently for the seniors of this city, and that will not change. We invite all seniors to come out and be a part of what we are doing.”
Meanwhile, resident and former commissioner and former vice-mayor Ben Boukari, Jr., also offered heartfelt remarks in recognition of outgoing Mayor Gib Coerper’s legacy. “Mayor Gib Coerper has served this community since 1999, lived here since 1974, and did one hell of a job for our community,” Boukari said. He noted that Coerper’s decades of service extended far beyond city limits. “Mayor Coerper is so respected across the state of Florida …” Boukari noted that Coerper received the prestigious E. Harris Drew Municipal Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida League of Cities, an award given to only one person statewide each year.
While the atmosphere was celebratory at first – with student performances by the Alachua Elementary chorus and a Relay for Life donation from Mi Apa Latin Café – public comments and Commission votes quickly shifted to weightier matters: development, rezonings, and, in one notable instance, allegations about voter eligibility.
Mitch Glaeser, local businessman and former president of the Alachua Chamber of Commerce, addressed the Commission with concerns that “double-digit instances of ineligible voters” had cast ballots in the recent municipal election. “Ineligible votes, whether due to error, deception, or fraud, undermine the will of the people,” Glaeser warned. He said the matter would be referred to the appropriate local, state, and federal authorities but did not specify names, precincts, or how the issue had been verified.
From electoral scrutiny, the Commission transitioned into a trio of development approvals in the Fletcher Trace subdivision, a master-planned residential community east of County Road 235. The development, totaling 111 homes over 44 acres, was approved in three separate final plat votes. Despite the election of Fletcher and Welch to the commission, there was remarkably little change in the ultimate outcome of projects up for approval. Fletcher cast dissenting votes on a few items but voted with the remaining commission on two of the larger development projects before the board.
Phase 1, comprising 32 detached single-family homes, passed 4-1, with Commissioner Fletcher dissenting, citing lack of access to the staff report and concerns about procedural clarity. Phases 2 and 3, which included 42 and 37 homes respectively, passed unanimously. According to city planning staff, the developments met all requirements for concurrency and infrastructure, including sufficient water and sewer capacity.
Though largely procedural, the first vote was disrupted by repeated objections from Tamara Robbins, a frequent speaker at public meetings known for her adversarial tone and exhaustive legal critiques. Robbins alleged that the hearing was invalid due to a deferral process months earlier that, in her view, violated the city’s public notice rules.
“You didn’t open the public hearing. You dropped the ball on February 24—massively,” Robbins asserted during the meeting, ignoring clarifications from city staff that the hearing had been properly re-advertised and deferred by a Commission vote. At one point, Robbins launched into a lengthy, impassioned monologue asserting that the public was being “left out” and that the Commission routinely ignored due process in favor of developer timelines.
Several commissioners and staff members calmly pushed back, explaining the procedural steps taken and affirming that the public had been given notice in compliance with state law. No one came forward claiming an “affected party” status during the three Fletch Trace quasi-judicial hearings.
The most contentious votes of the evening came during a pair of land use and zoning changes for a 5.07-acre property along U.S. Highway 441, directly across from Santa Fe High School. The Commission voted 4–1 to approve a Future Land Use Map (FLUM) amendment reclassifying the property from Agriculture/Rural to Commercial, and a companion vote to rezone the property to Community Commercial (CC) also passed by the same margin. Fletcher dissented in both cases, citing traffic concerns along “Segment 6” of U.S. Highway 441, which planning staff acknowledged was operating near its evening peak-hour capacity. Segment 6 is the stretch of U.S. Highway 441 between Interstate 75 and County Road 235A.
One nearby homeowner who identified herself as an “affected party,” urged the Commission to consider the impact on her neighborhood.
The property owner’s agent, Chris Blurton of Northland LLC, emphasized that the zoning being requested was moderate. “We are not pursuing Commercial Intensive zoning. We’re limiting this to Community Commercial, and we’ve planned significant buffering from adjacent homes,” Blurton said. He noted that potential uses might include dental offices or quick-service restaurants and explicitly ruled out more intense uses such as liquor stores or smoke shops.
Robbins again took the floor during the rezoning item, this time accusing the Commission of environmental negligence and suggesting that “any development at all” inherently produces “significant adverse effects.” She objected to the city’s standard findings that a rezoning “would not adversely impact the environment,” dismissing the language as incompatible with any construction activity.
“If you're not leaving the land exactly as it is, you are adversely impacting the environment – period,” Robbins said. She also criticized the lack of transportation impact fees, saying city policy was shaped too heavily by staff and developers rather than by elected officials.
Commissioners did not engage with Robbins' commentary in detail, though staff reiterated that any future development on the site would require its own traffic concurrency review. Vice Mayor Brown thanked city staff for their professionalism and added, “Little things mean a lot. When you do little things, they roll into big things. That applies to us up here too.”
Mayor Welch closed the meeting by thanking the public and pledging transparency. “I heard you,” Welch said. “I promise you that my goal is not for you to be blindsided. My heart is for the citizen.”
The meeting, which began at 6 p.m. and adjourned just after 10:30 p.m., demonstrated a heightened local political tension in recent months.
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