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The Real Facts About Florida Hometown Democracy’s Amendment 4
Florida Hometown Democracy is the sponsor of Amendment 4, a proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution that will be on the November 2010 ballot. Amendment 4 will give voters oversight control over how their communities grow. Under Amendment 4, your city or county commission will study and vote as usual on proposed changes to the local comprehensive land use plan, which is a blueprint for future development. Plan changes approved by the commission will then be submitted to you - the voter -- on the ballot at the next regularly scheduled Election Day. You will either veto or approve them. It’s that simple. Amendment 4 doesn’t require special elections.
- When will Amendment 4 be on the ballot?
- What does Amendment 4 say?
- Why is Amendment 4 necessary?
- What is a comprehensive plan?
- How does Amendment 4 work?
- How can I learn more about my comprehensive plan and what it means for me?
- Under Amendment 4, when will a referendum be held?
- What land-use changes are NOT covered by Amendment 4?
- How did Amendment 4 get on the November 2010 ballot?
- What if your city or county commission approves lots of comprehensive plan changes?
- What will Amendment 4 cost to operate?
- What role will the Florida Legislature play under Amendment 4?
- What role will your city and county commission play under Amendment 4?
- Who supports Amendment 4?
- Who opposes Amendment 4?
- Will I have to "Vote on everything"? For example, will I have to vote on 200 land use changes every year?
- Don’t we elect our politicians to make these plan change decisions?
- What impact will Amendment 4 have on construction?
- What about jobs?
- Has Amendment 4 already been tried in Florida?
1. Q: When will Amendment 4 be on the ballot?
A. Amendment 4 will be on the statewide ballot on November 2, 2010. If you live in Florida, are 18 or older, and are a United States citizen, be sure you are registered to vote in this historic election. Also, plan to vote early for Amendment 4 and get family and friends to do the same. Spend November 2, 2010, making history by waving Amendment 4 signs at polling places and helping get out the vote. Get involved in the campaign today, and make sure this important reform becomes part of the Florida Constitution, where it belongs.
2. Q: What does Amendment 4 say?
A: This constitutional amendment will give Florida voters the right to decide whether their local comprehensive land use plan should be changed. Currently, city councils and county commissions exclusively make those decisions.
Here’s the ballot title and summary you will see on the November 2010 ballot:
BALLOT TITLE: Referenda Required For Adoption And Amendment of Local Government Comprehensive Land Use Plans.
BALLOT SUMMARY: Establishes that before a local government may adopt a new comprehensive land use plan, or amend a comprehensive land use plan, the proposed plan or amendment shall be subject to vote of the electors of the local government by referendum, following preparation by the local planning agency, consideration by the governing body and notice. Provides definitions.
3. Q: Why is Amendment 4 necessary?
A: Our local governments spend millions of dollars creating comprehensive plans in order to promote sensible development. These plans are also intended to ensure that growth does not destroy Floridians’ quality of life and our environment, and that infrastructure and government-provided services are not overwhelmed by unplanned, run-away construction. Yet, as recent history demonstrates, too many local governments do not respect our plans. It is just too easy for wealthy developers to obtain comprehensive plan changes. All they have to do is persuade the majority of a city or county commission to grant their requested change. Routine granting of plan changes destroys the value and integrity of comprehensive plans. The result is unplanned growth. Floridians are now living with the consequences of unplanned, runaway growth: overcrowded roads, depleted water supply, rising taxes, and reduced quality of life.
Amendment 4 will likely save Floridians untold billions of dollars. Unplanned, reckless over-development will be much more difficult to push through. You already know that most new construction does not pay its way: the tax revenue and impact fees from new construction do not begin to cover the costs associated with putting in new roads, schools, water, and sewer, not to mention essential services including fire, rescue, police, garbage, etc. Taxes are rising fastest in the faster growing areas. For too long Floridians have suffered the double calamity of both watching their state ruined by bad development and paying for it too.
A “Cost of Community Services” study prepared for Leon County, Florida, determined that for every one dollar of economic benefit generated by new development, the county must pay between $1.38 and $1.72 for required additional services. Read the study for yourself here.
Now that Florida’s development-created bubble has burst, Florida homeowners are confronted with the nightmare of simultaneously falling property values and rising property taxes. How did that happen, when our politicians boasted for years that your taxes would “drop like a rock”? Turns out Florida’s government went on a huge spending spree over the past decade. All that new development has proven to be incredibly expensive. None of it has paid its own way. Now homeowners are stuck with the bill.
Mark Lane, a columnist for the Daytona Beach News Journal, wrote a great article that explains growth doesn't pay its own way. Read that article here .
Because comprehensive plan changes often determine the destiny of a community for generations to come, it is vital that such changes are made -- as they are supposed to be made -- in the public interest. Amendment 4 will ensure that changes to comprehensive plans truly reflect the consensus of the community. Because voters must live with the consequences of plan changes, they should have the final say over whether to approve or reject proposed changes.
5. Q: How does Amendment 4 work?
A: Under Amendment 4, your city or county commission will study and vote as usual on proposed changes to the local comprehensive land use plan, which is a blueprint for future development. If your commission approves changes to your local comprehensive land use plan, you will get the opportunity to veto or approve those changes at the next regularly scheduled Election Day. It’s that simple. Amendment 4 doesn’t require special elections or local petition-gathering efforts.
Voters will decide if a proposed plan change serves the public interest and makes their community a better place to live. If the majority votes yes, the change happens. If the majority votes no, the change doesn't happen.
6. Q: How can I learn more about my local comprehensive land use plan and what it means for my future?
A: Each city and county in Florida has a comprehensive plan. You may want to familiarize yourself with your own local comprehensive plan.
Your local government may post its local comprehensive land use plan on its website. You can also obtain your local plan by request. Contact your local government's planning department or clerk's office to request a copy of your plan. Florida’s Sunshine laws guarantee that these plans must be accessible to you.
7. Q: Under Amendment 4, when will referendum elections be held?
Amendment 4 does not require special elections. Any referendum on a comprehensive land use plan change can occur at the next regularly scheduled local election. Typically, there is an election every year.
If a developer does not want to wait until the next election and seeks a special election, the local government should make the developer pay for it.
10. Q: What if your city or county commission approves lots of comprehensive plan changes?
The Florida Growth Management Act became law in the mid-80's and mandated comprehensive planning in order to ensure sensible growth and protect Floridians from sprawl and over-development. Local governments spend millions of dollars to create local comprehensive land use plans. Every seven years a plan is reviewed at the local level and by the Department of Community Affairs in Tallahassee. A proposed plan change goes through two public hearings and review by the Florida Department of Community Affairs.
So what went wrong? The reality is that too many local governments do not respect their local comprehensive land use plans. Local comprehensive land use plan changes are political decisions made by elected officials. When your commissioners vote on a proposed local comprehensive land use plan change, they are presumed to be representing the broad public interest. They are supposed to reject a proposed change unless they make a determination that the plan change serves the public interest. But we know what happens: too often the public interest is simply defined by our commissioners as “Keep the developer happy.” The well being of the community, citizens' quality of life, fiscal responsibility, our beautiful environment, everything that makes your community a desirable place to live, is sacrificed at the altar of the Sprawl Machine. Too many commissioners rubberstamp destructive comprehensive plan changes.
The Growth Management Act did not intend constant local comprehensive land use plan changes. Once Amendment 4 is in the Florida Constitution, the number of speculative plan-change requests will drop because developers will know that they will need to persuade not only a majority of a city or county commission that their proposal is in the public interest, but the voters also. The sweetheart backroom deals between local government and developers will become much more difficult and unlikely.
Knowing that the public has veto power, commissions will be more careful about approving unpopular land use changes. Developers and local governments will learn to live with the plan, which is the way it was always supposed to be.
Under Amendment 4, you will not vote on rezonings or variances. You will not vote if the lady down the street wants to repaint her house or add an addition. You will vote on only those few comprehensive plan changes that are actually approved by your commission. You can expect Amendment 4 to give commissioners the backbone they've been missing, and for them to start to say NO to bad plan-amendment proposals.
11. Q: What will Amendment 4 cost to operate?
A: Negligible. If your city or county commission approves one or several comprehensive plan changes, there will be a little more ink on the already scheduled ballot. Our opponents’ campaign of mistruths has been claiming that you will be constantly voting at very expensive special elections. Amendment 4 does not require special elections.
12. Q: What role will the Florida Legislature play under Amendment 4?
A: None. The Legislature will have no role to play. It is not required to pass any implementing legislation or allocate any funds for implementation. Amendment 4 is a fully self-executing law. November 2, 2010, the day Amendment 4 will be approved by the voters, is the day it will take effect.
13. Q: What role will a City or County Commission play under Amendment 4?
City and county commissioners will continue to hold public hearings on proposed comprehensive plan changes and to vote whether to approve or reject each proposal, just as they have always done. Commissioners will still have the same power to kill bad proposals. Amendment 4 will give voters a veto over bad proposals that a commission insists on passing.
The amendment will clean up the corrupt local politics of growth. Developers will no longer be able to buy off a simple majority of a city or county commission with their campaign IOU's. Example: three Palm Beach county commissioners were convicted regarding their corrupt land-use votes in exchange for secret payoffs from developers. There are lots more examples, and these are just the under-the-table deals that are discovered. Amendment 4 should give at least some commissioners the backbone to finally say NO to bad comprehensive-plan changes.
15. Q: Who opposes Amendment 4?
A. Amendment 4 is opposed by construction and land-use interests who profit mightily from “government of the developer, by the developer, and for the developer.” They like the status quo, which requires only a majority vote by a local commission to approve a plan change. The Florida Chamber of Commerce is leading the disinformation campaign against Amendment 4.
When you read a letter, column or blog in opposition to Amendment 4, Google the name of the author. Chances are, the author makes his living over-developing Florida or works in government (which is often the same thing.)
16. Q: Will I have to "Vote on everything"? For example, will I have to vote on 200 land use changes every year?
A: Absolutely NOT! Amendment 4 wouldn't require voter approval of every new hotel and grocery store, but it would require voters to approve changes to the community’s overall master plan – called a local comprehensive land use plan. For example, voters would be asked to decide if the use of a parcel of land should be changed from farming to housing.
If a developer chooses to build in the areas already set aside for development in your local comprehensive land use plan, no change -- and no vote -- is required. When a developer insists on building outside your plan’s development area, your local commissioners will review and vote on that local comprehensive land use plan change just like they do now. But under Amendment 4, you will then get the opportunity to veto or approve your commission’s decision on the next regularly scheduled Election Day.
If your local commission adopts, for instance, three local comprehensive land use plan changes in a year, then you’ll vote on three. If they adopt one, you’ll vote on one.
On average, Florida commissions vote to approve three or four local comprehensive land use plan ordinances per year. Under Amendment 4, voters won’t weigh in on the more frequently-decided individual development approvals, re-zonings or variances. And it doesn’t require special elections.
Our opposition points to the towns of Carrabelle and Orange City as examples of local governments that enacted hundreds of plan changes in a given year.
It isn’t true. City Commissions in Carrabelle and Orange City voted to approve entirely new comprehensive plans. Those new plans incorporated many new changes, but each commission only took one vote to adopt the new plan. Under Amendment 4, voters in Carrabelle would vote once and voters in Orange City would vote once -- just the same as the commission did -- to either accept or reject the new comprehensive plan.
The goal of Amendment 4 is to enforce respect for local comprehensive plans. It is designed to teach local government and the development industry to respect our plans and ensure that comprehensive plan changes reflect the public interest. It is the intent of Amendment 4 to reduce the number of outrageous plan changes sought by the Sprawl Machine, because outrageous plan-change proposals will have to face the scrutiny of local voters.
17. Q: Don’t we elect our politicians to make these plan change decisions?
A. Our opponents argue that we live in a representative democracy and we elect the officials we want to make decisions for us. Actually, in Florida we have a mixed system of government with elements of both direct and representative democracy. At the local level, we already vote directly on charter amendments, bond, and tax questions, as well as recall elections.
Amendment 4 reflects Floridians’ dissatisfaction with the failure of our elected officials to respect growth management and our publicly approved land-use plans. President Teddy Roosevelt famously said: “I believe in the Initiative and Referendum, which should be used not to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative.” This is precisely the purpose of Amendment 4.
18. Q: What impact will Amendment 4 have on construction?
It is a gross exaggeration to say that if Amendment 4 passes, development will come to a standstill. There is already enough land approved for development in Florida to accommodate 80 to 100 million residents – about five times more people than we have living here now.
And even that isn’t enough for some land speculators and politicians. In just two years (2007 to 2009), commissioners around Florida voted to change local plans to allow a staggering amount of overdevelopment -- 520,000 more houses, 1.2 million more people, and 1.3 BILLION more square feet of commercial and office space.
Developers have plenty of land set aside for building right now and into the future. Amendment 4 would only require a vote if a developer insists on building outside the already-approved areas.
Read about the 1999 study here.
19. Q: What about jobs?
A. Our comprehensive plans have lots of growth built into them. There are millions of construction projects authorized and on the books that have not yet broken ground. Under Amendment 4, there will still be lots of opportunities for construction.
Proposed plan changes that truly benefit the community’s well being will no doubt be approved, as they should be. An employer who comes to town with the promise of many good jobs should have no problem mustering community support for a plan change, if such a plan change is necessary. A business that wants to quickly get up and running has much vacant commercial property available to select from and considerable land designated as commercial and ready for building. The normal plan change now takes at least one year. Amendment 4 will simply add the requirement of a referendum at the end of the current process, a referendum that the developer can pay for if he does not want to wait for the next regularly scheduled election.
Our opponents desperately paint Amendment 4 as a “job killer,” which is ironic, given that Florida is in the midst of a job crash brought on by reckless over-development and real-estate speculation. During this recent period, developers got pretty much everything they wanted. The Developer/Government Machine created burst the real estate bubble and crashed our economy. They are the “job killers.” Now Floridians are living with the consequences: soaring property taxes, coupled with crashing property values.
20. Q: Has Amendment 4 already been tried in Florida?
Our opponents constantly harp on the saga of St. Pete Beach. They call it the town that “tried Hometown Democracy and failed.” What happened? The devil is in the details:
The Hometown Democracy process requires that a referendum on a plan change shall occur only at the END of the state-mandated review and public-hearing process. State law has long held that no land-use change can occur without two public hearings. In St. Pete Beach, however, a developer-backed political action committee wrote up petitions to change the local comprehensive plan. They got the petitions signed and put them on the ballot. The voters passed the petitions. Petition opponents filed suit saying the petitions were misleading and that the petition process violated state law because no public hearings were held. St. Pete Beach clearly did not follow the Hometown Democracy process. Our opponents’ allegations regarding these details are deliberately designed to mislead and trick voters.
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