Amendment 4 is known as Hometown Democracy by its proponents, but it’s not hometown friendly and it’s not good democracy. Nonetheless, you will have to vote on it as a proposed Florida constitutional amendment in November-- and you should vote no.
The amendment would require that all land plan changes be approved by the voters of that city or county. That sounds warm and fuzzy until you realize the impossibility of the task. Land plan changes often number in the dozens or even hundreds every year, and are often very long and technical in nature. They do not fit on a ballot.
Lee County has five incorporated cities, and they each have their own land plan. That’s fine for them—their citizens would at least be voting on land plan changes that affect themselves. However, the rest of Lee County is divided into 27 sectors (or communities), each of which has (or soon will have) provisions in the Lee County Plan that relate to only their sector. Greater Pine Island is one of those 27 sectors, and our sector provisions (which we call the “Pine Island Plan”) are perhaps the most progressive in Lee County. If Amendment 4 takes effect, all of the voters of Lee County would have to vote on any changes to the Pine Island Plan. And, of course, we would have to vote on any changes to the other 26 potential sector plan provision changes. That not only makes no sense, but would be impossible to administer by ballot.
Even general land plan changes of county-wide applicability are too numerous and too frequent and too complicated to be administered by ballot. Land Plan changes are usually dozens if not hundreds of pages long and new ones are processed every few months. Ballots are a few sentences long and normally processed every two years. They are incompatible.
The current Pine Island Plan was in the main written some 8 to 10 years ago, and has been modified and improved several times since. We hope to continue to improve it. It was (and still is) supported by some 90% or more of Pine Islanders, but was bitterly opposed by powerful development interests. If all of Lee County had been required to vote to approve the Pine Island Plan, just imagine the advantage the development interests’ campaign and advertising dollars would have had. There would have been no Pine Island Plan.
If Amendment 4 is approved, expect all changes to land plans to grind to a halt, and it won’t matter whether the changes are good changes or bad changes. Comprehensive land plans have become the basic blueprint for nearly all local government operations, and the inability to make changes in the blueprint will wreak havoc with even the most basic of government services, including construction and maintenance of roads, utilities, parks, libraries, etc. The chaos will heap even more devastation on our already crippled economy.
The proponents of Amendment 4 say they want to stop land plan changes that promote over-development and urban sprawl—most Pine Islanders certainly agree with those goals. However, the majority of existing Florida land plans already promote over-development and urban sprawl-- so why would the proponents want to make those undesirable land plan provisions unchangeable? The proponents’ intentions and goals are good, but their proposed solution misses the mark.
The proposed amendment originated from people in the Miami area that do not support the land plans approved by their local city and county leadership. They should be working to replace that leadership, not to cripple or destroy the governmental process. Anarchy is not the answer.
Amendment 4 should be defeated, but that should not be the end of the issue. The evils of over-development, urban sprawl, and environmental destruction require strong actions if they are to be controlled, and constitutional restrictions are a good way to do that. But, the solution is to directly attack those evils—not freeze in place the existing defective land plans.
Phil Buchanan
3861 Galt Island Avenue
St James City, FL 33956
Phone/fax: 239-283-4067
cell: 239-789-6114
email: coolcherokee@comcast.net
