Re: “Council says no to Amendment 4” – Seminole Beacon, May 4 Editor: Opponents of Amendment 4, the development and home building industry, have been successful in scaring many local governments with misinformation. Unfortunately, many local governments aren’t even researching these bogus claims.
They’re just accepting them and passing resolutions saying that the sky will fall if Amendment 4 is passed.
Overdevelopment helped crash Florida’s economy. We currently have over 400,000 vacant dwellings. Local governments helped create the building boom by charging artificially low impact fees to builders along with not forcing them to fully fund the needed infrastructure (roads, schools, water, sewer, safety). In spite of what politicians tell their constituents, development doesn’t pay for itself, and there are numerous studies that have proven that (in Jacksonville, Sarasota, Fort Myers, Hillsborough to name a few). In both commercial and residential development it costs government more to provide the services than what it receives in the new tax revenue that’s generated.
Our long range growth plans that are required by state law are meant to place services and population in an organized and efficient manner so as to improve our quality of life, prevent sprawl and keep taxes lower. But these well thought out plans are constantly being changed every time a developer wants to build something that conflicts with existing plans. Instead of asking developers to conform to our plans, our local governments quickly cave-in and approve the plan changes. This is occurring in every county of Florida at an alarming rate because our politicians can’t seem to say no to developers. If you look at most politicians’ campaign contribution records, they receive a sizable amount from development interests (in some cases more than 50 percent). Consider that fact along with the fact that they approve most of the plan changes that are submitted by developers. As an example, the Hillsborough County Commission approves over 92 percent of submitted plan changes.
Most counties are in dire straits because of overdevelopment with inadequate infrastructure. Does the Legislature, the local politicians, the chambers of commerce offer a solution? No, their solution is more of the same. They say, don’t change anything … we like it this way … we need to make it easier for developers so they can quickly build more homes … we’ll have to raise your taxes to fix roads and provide basic services, but it’s worked well for us here in government and our business partners love it, too.
What will Amendment 4 do?
• It will provide a simple and balanced approach to planning for our communities
• It adds only more steps to the existing process for changing growth plans
Citizens will have a say in the future of their communities. Shouldn’t we have meaningful input into deciding where the next 3,000 home subdivision will go, or the next airport, or the next supermall?
• It will help force business interests/developers to stick to a community’s growth plan
• Local governments will be more cautious in approving developer-initiated changes because citizens will have the ability to veto bad growth decisions
• As the number of privately-initiated amendments goes down, process costs will decrease. Governments will be able to actually do more long range planning, as a result
• The scrubbing, vetting and technical review of changes by county/city planners will remain in place
• The approval of plan changes will still be in the hands of elected officials as it is today. The only difference is that voters will have the option of agreeing or disagreeing with the officials when the item reaches the ballot, as the last step in the process.
The only changes that the public will vote on will be future land use changes on their respective growth plans. Voters will not have to vote on any other changes to the plans. They will not vote on zoning, rezoning, variances, building permits, etc. Depending on the size of the county, the estimated number of ballot items is from one to five items per election cycle.
• Amendment 4 will not stop anyone from building. Florida is “shovel ready” as we speak. It does not require a change in the growth plan to build a building. Current land use designations that are already in place across all of the counties in Florida would allow enough building to accommodate another 100+ million people, without ever making another change to the growth plans. According to data provided by the state’s Department of Community Affairs, in the last four years commercial pre-approvals have increased exponentially – more than 1.3 billion-square-feet of floor area, which would equate to 13,000 Walmarts. Pre-approved land is everywhere. When the market rebounds there will be nothing to stop business from building.
Look at your own community. The bad growth decisions that we have to live with are all too obvious. Amendment 4 is needed. We need a vote on growth.
George Niemann Amendment 4, regional coordinator Brandon
