Myriam Marquez's column Florida lawmakers marching to developers' beat in the Miami Herald today is on target. She accused "greedy" developers of trying to derail the Department of Community Affairs (DCA):"Why not blame the state's rules governing growth, the ones meant to protect Floridians' quality of life? That's what some lawmakers in Tallahassee are doing. Egged on by developers desperate to make the math work for their new projects at a time when credit is super tight, lawmakers have come up with a wild plan to ''fix'' what ails us: Dismantle the Department of Community Affairs, loosen rules on building in swampland and let local governments do their thing without the state's check and balance." She suggests in defense of the DCA, and I agree:
We want our Florida lifestyle protected while there's still one to protect. (P.S. I fixed her neck in the photo, it always looked off on her masthead.)
See Post below -- same subject... more meat!
4 comments:
This was one great article!
AND we do NEED the DCA even if they annoy me at times.
"Saying we should do away with environmental regulations and growth management requirements after the development bubble burst is like urging banks to start giving more subprime loans."
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
By Maggy Hurchalla
Are we here because we are idealists? Or because we’re masochists who don’t know what to do with a beautiful Saturday afternoon?
There are several unflattering reasons trotted out by the opposition:
We are little old ladies in tennis shoes who can’t play tennis and have nothing better to do with their time.
We are mean spirited obstructionists.
We are the loud mouthed minority who like to get attention.
They suggest that if we would only be positive and cooperative and not get up at the podium and disagree, everything would be ‘jes fine.
On our side, there are dozens of reasons why people get involved, but it comes down to this:
We want to save the world.
Or at least some small part of it.
Cynics will tell you that is vain and delusional.
I’m going to tell you that if the cynics can stamp out that notion - that we can do better and that each of us can make a difference - we will have lost the chance to maker the world a better place.
If we thoroughly stamp out the idea of doing good as unrealistic and quixotic, we will have stamped out humanity and hope.
And why is it our responsibility to do something good for a place we care about?
First, because if we don’t, no one will.
Second, because we can get others to do likewise and we can make a difference.
There is an interesting piece of social research that purports to show that all people are torturers at heart. Subjects are told that volunteers in the next room will receive painful shocks according to how far a lever is pushed. They are told that the people are volunteers and won’t suffer permanent harm and the subjects job is to keep pushing the lever a little further. When they get to a higher level they start hearing the person in the next room scream and beg them to stop. The manager of the experiment tells them to keep going. Over 90% keep going in spite of the screams.
There is a new variation on that experiment where one of the subjects (a ringer instructed to do so) stops pushing the lever and announces that he is not going to make the guy scream, even if he is “supposed to.” When he does that, over 80% of the lever pushers stop and declare they will go no further.
Sticking your neck out matters. Making a loud decision about what is right matters.
I am not suggesting that our current crop of county commissioners are torturers – though it is sometimes torture to listen to them.
I would not suggest that the local issues are so simple and so morally clear.
I am telling you that when you are right and when you stand your ground, you can make the world a better place. Drawing the line when others are silently acquiescing is not showing off or making trouble. It is the right thing to do.
Getting involved with what the future of your community will be is neither useless nor vain.
How do I know that?
I know because since the 1960’s Martin County has been a grand experiment in whether local citizen activism makes a difference. And I know that Martin County is different because people like you got involved.
Go to the Jensen Beach Environmental Center and read through the names in the Environmental Hall of Fame. They made Martin County greener, safer, happier and more beautiful. They made your taxes and your traffic less.
Can you be like them? Before you put a chunk of your life on the line fighting for your neighborhood or your county, you have to know if it might make a difference. You have to believe you have more than a snowball’s chance in hell of making things better.
You don’t have to be guaranteed success, but you have to be guaranteed hope.
You need some evidence that it is different than Don Quixote tilting at windmills – that it can make Martin County a better place for ourselves, our grandchildren and all of God’s creatures.
I think the great Martin County experiment in local activism supplies ample evidence.
A few years back I gave a speech at this forum outlining a whole list of objective measures where Martin County stood out as a good place to live. I won’t take you through the details, but I can tell you Martin County won hands down over the counties that insisted that development was the only way to achieve progress and prosperity and that lost neighborhoods and lost environmental values were collateral damage that was necessary for economic survival.
Back when I compiled that data, Martin County outscored all the like sized counties in Florida in a composite of lower taxes, safer neighborhoods, better schools, less crime, a better tax base, better wages and a host of other measures.
The Stuart News captured the thought nicely in their editorial headline:
“Wetlands didn’t kill the economy.”
Having the strictest environmental rules in the state made the economy better, not worse. Having a strong comp plan and slow growth made Martin County a good place to live. That’s why you came here.
If you were to make the same statistical comparisons today, Martin County would look even better. We’re being told that because the housing bubble burst and left us with more unemployment and foreclosures we must pump up the housing bubble again by acting like the more laissez faire counties.
Look at those other counties and how much worse off they are. There is no denying that Martin County is in a bad recession along with the rest of the world, but wetlands didn’t kill the economy. Our economic downturn looks rosy compared to Port St. Lucie. Look at their foreclosure rate. Look at their job losses in the last year. Look at their unemployment. We win those comparisons hands down.
In relation to the larger economic crash we hear a lot about ponzi schemes these days. Florida is cited as the biggest ponzi scheme of all. A lot of local governments bought into the idea that if we only grew fast enough we could outrun the need to pay for growth.
You’re also hearing a lot of a quote attributed to Freud: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
If ever there was a time that showed what you did locally can make a difference, it’s right now. Saying we should do away with environmental regulations and growth management requirements after the development bubble burst is like urging banks to start giving more subprime loans.
How do we know we were right in advocating better growth controls in Martin County? We know we were right because it worked better. We know we were right because most people would admit that environmental activism has made this a better place to live. The challenge to those who disagree is to ask them to show us a place that worked better.
Show us where the ponzi scheme worked. Show us a place in Florida that we can go and see, where we can compare objective measures. Show us a place where the citizens never got out and fought to protect the future of their community; where the government never adopted restrictions that might slow development; and where the results were better than ours.
You will hear from the progrowthers that it is not the past environmental activism that bothers them. They support the comp plan. They want to protect the environment. The problem is the environmental extremists that now prevail. Their mythology says that the founders of the Martin County Conservation Alliance were wise and non-confrontational statesmen who worked things out without divisiveness. They weren’t like the environmental extremist of today – like Maggy Hurchalla and Sally O’Connell and Donna Melzer.
Hogwash! I may be an extremist, but I can tell you that our early activists were too. I was there. They were confrontational. They were loudly cursed as environmental extremists.
It is doubly ironic that the greenwashed bad guys who say they love the environment and the right kind of reasonable environmentalists and what makes Martin County different are setting out to undo all that has been done in the past to keep Martin County different.
So the reason we are doing this is because we have made a difference and we can make a difference.
But I would be the first to admit that there is emotion as well as logic. We should not have to apologize for caring about people and critters and the beautiful places of the earth.
We need to do our homework. We need to be intellectually honest. We need to be logical and practical. But we should never apologize for caring and for caring enough to try to do something about it.
Margery Stoneman Douglas used to tell a story about being chastised by her father, the editor of the fledgling Miami Herald, when he sent her out as a young reporter. “I send you out on a news story and you come back with two sunsets and a sunrise!”
My sunsets and sunrises in Martin County are more beautiful because environmental activists risked being called extremists. My grandchildren’s world is a better place because people in Martin County were not embarrassed to try to save the world.
Or at least our little piece of it that we love.
Excellent article, at least somebody at the Herald is reporting the truth.
Now more than ever, we need Florida Hometown Democracy. With no DCA, master plan changes need to be in the hands of the people. Get your petitions and send them in; www.floridahometowndemocracy.com
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