Meredith Rutland, Alligator Writer 

A dispute over the amount of meals Gainesville soup kitchens can serve may come to an end — in about four months.

Kent Vann, executive director of the St. Francis House, requested last week to reword a permit that limits the amount of meals Gainesville soup kitchens can serve in a day to 130. He’s asking for a three-hour time frame instead of a meal limit.

Max Tipping, executive director of the Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry, said more people can eat at the St. Francis House if the permit is reworded.

“If they’re not in the first 130, they won’t miss out,” he said.

Although rewording the permit won’t fix all the problems soup kitchens face, such as complaints that homeless people gather around the St. Francis House, he said it will make things easier.

If the permit is changed, Vann said he wants to have the St. Francis House serve meals from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm. It cost him about $300 to file the paperwork.

Vann is asking to change a permit that affects all Gainesville soup kitchens. Currently, the St. Francis House is the only soup kitchen in Gainesville that is affected by the meal limit because it is the only one that was established after the meal limit was put into place.

The paperwork will go to the Gainesville Planning Board in March or April, depending on how busy the board is, he said. It may go to the City Commission a month or two after that.

Joe Cenker, a member of the Coalition to End the Meal Limit Now!, said having a time frame instead of a meal limit will be a positive change, but the best change would be to not have a limit at all.

“What we’d like to see, in a perfect scenario, is the ordinance is repealed totally,” he said.

Since the process will take about four months, he said the coalition will continue to work toward the elimination of all limits on feeding.