It is the battle for the soul of Florida: whether Floridians will have a vote on changes to land use plans that turned the state into the poster-child for collapsed housing markets. The Florida Chamber of Commerce and the growth machine have pledged to spend $65 million--or whatever it takes--to defeat the citizen referendum that is closing in on the number of voter signatures to quality for a state-wide ballot.
In an interview with the editor of the Florida Northwest Daily News, Governor Charlie Crist (Rep.) may have inadvertently boosted the misinformation against the citizen's iniative, Florida Hometown Democracy:
He said, “… in terms of Hometown Democracy, and how that affects us in our future, (I think) that if you have to have a permit for every single new business that wants to go up, and you have to have a vote of all the people in order to get it accomplished, that can slow down things tremendously and therefore maybe thwart the opportunity for economic growth and new jobs coming into the state, and it concerns me in a significant way.”
Is Governor Crist on the wrong side of facts, deliberately or simply because he had a bad day? When enough voters sign petitions (print out your petition here) to qualify for the ballot, Floridians will have a chance to vote on a simple measure: new changes to comprehensive development plans that have already been approved by local government will first go to voters, then to local government.
Florida is the abject example of growth gone haywire, and the responsibility lies squarely with elected officials who benefit each and every time the true costs of growth are deferred. Now that the building boom is in cinders, the results are plain as day.
But don't count on newspaper executives, whose bonuses may be tied to advertising page revenue increases, to shed much light. “I would agree,” says the newspaper editor from the region where massive new developments are being primed that could accomodate millions of new residents to Florida when finally demand returns to collapsed housing markets.
“That’s what you have your local officials for is to review those different changes to the land development code, the growth management act. Under (a hometown democracy) amendment, you’d have to have a referendum for that. And I think that’s what you have elected representatives for.”
Let recent experiences in Miami-Dade County, Florida’s largest county, inform Governor Crist who worries that Florida Hometown Democracy will require “a permit for every single new business that wants to go up”. That is simply untrue.
In Miami, unlike northwest Florida, the growth machine has already left behind the detritus of suburban sprawl for 2 million residents and taxpayers funneled into unabsorbed costs as meekly as cattle in a factory farm.
Here, in the 2005 round of applications by developers and land owners to move the Urban Development Boundary—which required new changes to the county land use plan—citizens were forced into a multi-year game of cat-and-mouse with the growth machine, tended by land use lawyers, engineering consultants, and an army of lobbyists who long-ago corralled a majority of county commissioners through bundled campaign contributions.
It is all well and good for high public officials to praise volunteers and giving back to the community (as President Clinton apparently does, in his new book, 'Giving'), but the Florida example of democracy in 2007--as it relates to growth--makes a mockery of "giving".
It is draining, demoralizing, and frustrating for homeowners, taxpayers, and even some business interests when the outcome of changes to land use plans is predetermined by the influence of big campaign contributors from developers, land speculators, and big farmers.
By all means, let Governor Crist (and newspaper editors) spend a couple of years trundling down the road to changes to the land use plans, strewn with virtual IED’s by the growth machine. See what ordinary people face in the daily struggle to protect communities from unsustainable development.
Giving citizens the right to vote on new changes to comprehensive land use plans before local elected officials do redresses the imbalance that has ruined representative government in Florida because of the outsized influence of building and construction.
It is wrong to suggest that the balance between the environment and the economy is what is at issue in the Florida Hometown Democracy movement. It is about respect for fiscal responsibility. It is about the soul of Florida.
The building and development industry--its greed, excesses, coupled with strong-arm tactics by state and local legislatures contributed mightily to the housing bubble and the costs the bubble's burst has imposed on Florida taxpayers.
In 2005, a majority of county commissioners in Miami-Dade County would have voted to approve each and every amendment to the county comprehensive development plan outside the urban growth boundary, despite overwhelming objection by citizens.
What counted, then, wasn't the law--and the legal challenges that citizens would have been forced to mount--but slick powerpoint presentations that confidently predicted endless demand for suburbia.
Only quiet intervention by the State of Florida, related to concerns about the availability of fresh water, stopped these amendments.
Because local legislatures are controlled by political contributions from the growth machine, because people don’t have the time or financial resources to spend years, time after time, addressing the same applications for ill-advised development, the land use planning process has turned into a a fifth grade school play, with all the stock characters in their bad costumes, a marathon contest whose results are indelibly etched in the built landscape of Florida.
Right now, in Miami-Dade County, the real cost of infrastructure deficits because growth does not pay its own way is close to $10 billion. It is a number that elected officials won’t talk about and newspapers won’t print.
But every day, citizens in Miami experience that number through gummed-up roadways, classrooms for children in air-conditioned trailers, unkempt and inadequate parks and playing fields, pollution, degraded wetlands and a declining quality of life.
This isn’t a “gloomy point of view”. This is reality. The $10 billion that the growth machine won’t talk about represents the imposition of an unfunded mandate on Miami-Dade taxpayers. But local elected officials won’t talk about that unfunded mandate, the one imposed by unsustainable growth.
Why should the people of Florida acquiesce to the fiscal irresponsibility that is at the heart of the growth machine’s objection to Florida Hometown Democracy?
The reasons to support Florida Hometown Democracy are all around us: the highest foreclosure rates in history, housing inventories so saturated that it will take years to absorb, degraded wetlands and public corruption.
Let the people vote on new changes to comprehensive land use plans that local elected officials have already approved.
Give the people of Florida a hand to democracy, Governor Crist. We know it is possible. We have faith.
10 comments:
One problem I see with Hometown Democracy is that it ignores the reality of comprehensive planning.
For example, say you own a 2 acre urban lot that is ready for infill apartment development but, because of the comprehensive plan, is limited to single family use.
Many comprehensive plans reflect "legacy" zoning on these kinds of lots and there are a good number of these applications filed every year.
Under Hometown Democracy, the citizens of the City or County would need to vote for your application before it could go forward. That is, frankly, pretty stupid.
While I understand the impulse, Hometown Democracy would be akin to using a sledgehammer to hang a picture on your wall in these kind of cases, which are the majority of comprehensive plan applications.
The real sledgehammer is the ability of connected developers and land use attorneys to manipulate elected legislators to vote in favor of comp plan changes. The residents are the losers paying for the loss of quality of life.
Anonymous has made my point. Many people are fed up with the rapid growth of Florida and Hometown Democracy is seen as the easiest way to shut down what this blog likes to call the "growth machine."
I, however, am simply pointing out some of the consequences of the concept. It is not as simple (nor as black and white) as some would want to believe.
A brief note on the UDB applications referenced by gimleteye, the following is from the Hold the Line website. Note that the County killed all but one of the applications, which is not what is (at least) implied in your post.
"On April 19, the Miami-Dade County Commission voted on 5 applications to move the UDB line. The Commission approved one application in recently annexed land in Hialeah. It was approved by a vote of 13 to 1 (Commissioner Katy Sorsenson was the lone opposition on this request).
Over the last year 10 applications were put forward to move the line or make expansion easier in the future. Of the original 10, 5 were withdrawn before the Commission vote and 4 were denied during the hearing on April 19.
THIS EFFORT TO MAKE HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY A REALITY IS UNFORTUNATELY A DIRECT REACTION TO THE DISAPPOINTMENT THE VOTERS HAVE HAD WITH THEIR GOVERNMENTS.
WE HAVE VERY LITTLE CHOICE IN THE MATTER, SINCE WE DON’T HAVE A WAY TO VOTE NO CONFIDENCE TO REMOVE THEM AND WE JUST CAN NO LONGER CONTINUE TO WAITE UNTIL THE NEXT ELECTIONS TO REPLACE THEM.
IF ELECTED OFFICIALS WHERE DOING THEIR JOBS AND PROPERLY SERVING OUR COMMUNITIES NEEDS AND WISHES THERE WOULD BE NO EFFORT MADE TO CLIP THEIR WINGS.
BASICALLY HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY IS A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION THAT IS FORCED UPON US BECAUSE OF OUR GOVERNMENTS INEPTNESS OR BY THEIR OVER ZEALOUS SUPPORT OF DEVELOPERS AND OTHER SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS THAT HELP FUND THEIR REELECTION CAMPAIGNS.
As someone who owns sever under-zoned lots of single family homes in an area encircled by multi-story, multi-units I support FHD. Even the County staff think that multi-unit would be more suitable to the neighborhood b/c that is what surrounds the lots I owned yet I still signed. Why? Because I was told that in Miami-Dade county I would have to hire from a certain list of lawyers/lobbyists to get the zoning changed or sell to certain developers (Sergio Pino et la) or else nothing would happen regardless of how stupid the existing zoning is. So, forget it I signed. If the growth machine wants an pound of flesh of everything unless you are "connected"well then they should just get screwed, since they are already screwing the rest of us.
I appreciate the comment of "little business man", for its honesty. The fact is that the growth machine in Florida is bankrupt: it is without ideas, without a plan except to go the Florida legislature or local government and plan one measure after another to create an ever higher wall between citizens and their government.
The passage of Amendment 3 by the Florida Chamber and builders--raising the threshold of voters required to change the Florida constitution from a simple majority to a supermajority under the banner of "protecting" the Constitution, the movement to drastically curtail signature gathering, finessing legal language to make it very, very difficult for citizens to prevail in state administrative law proceedings: in Florida Hometown Democracy the builders lobby is getting exactly what they have earned.
As to the comment of "Lee Allen" challenging my assertion that the county commission would have passed every one of the 2005 cycle CDMP applications, here is what happened: the growth machine played its game of chicken with the county commission who were happy to do whatever it wanted.
The majority of the county commission in Miami-Dade would have passed any of them, or all of them: the deferrals, withdrawals-- it was all part of an insider game that, in the end, pushed the limits of patience of the State of Florida.
And even now-- TODAY-- as the next round of CDMP applications is readied, the growth machine and its figureheads on the county commission are ready to show how all the objections of the State of Florida in 2005 have been solved, as if by magic. In the middle of the worst collapse in credit markets related to construction since the early 20th century.
So yes, voters deserve the right to a level playing field where so much damage has been done to the State of Florida.
Sign the FHD petition now.
Gimleteye,
Let's be fair here. How does approving one out of ten applications = agreeing to pass all of them?
Developers do not file expensive and time consuming comp plan applications for grins.
Clearly, every one of those applicants hoped to be approved -- only one did, the City of Hialeah. What benefit does a property owner get from being denied? Is there some secret advantage to spending thousands of dollars on a fruitless application that is not obvious to us commoners?
You certainly seem to believe that the Dade County Commission is a rubber stamp for developers, but you can't ignore reality.
The question is what happened at the state level? Why did the state all of a sudden get cold feet and recommend against so many of the applicants? In typical "Growth Machine" Theory fashion it was not the commission who halted the Miami developers it was most likely competition from another region and more powerful competitor who utilized the process to perhaps prevent South Florida from stealing its water resources and development potential. After all that is what the Growth Machine theory actually dictates, all localities and rentier capitalists are in competition with each other nation-wide to attract capital to increase the value of their local holdings. Indeed this is what local chamber of commerce literature anywhere will say.
It is clear what the record shows: that the same lobbyists, engineering firms, zoning lawyers and consultants, in limited combinations, represented all 10 applications outside the UDB. This is the fifth grade play, character list. As to the outcome of the 2005 CDMP cycle-- at the height of the construction bubble--and considerations by the State of Florida, you have to look even further down the road, to transportation concurrency and water infrastructure. Just follow the money: that's what G.O.D. does best, and what the local press should do, too.
Does Mr. Allen have any idea how much work and money it takes for the residents to defeat one of these applications? He seeme to think it is easy. Wrong! The people are broke and exhausted trying to get bad applications defeated. I hope he gets involved and helps carry the water.
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