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We know that Amendment 4 - a statewide "Vote on Everything" initiative - is a grave threat to Florida's future. The proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution, written by the state's most extreme special interests, is one of the greatest perils to Florida's prosperity and quality-of-life. Their amendment - requiring voters to approve all local comprehensive land use plan changes - subverts a well-established, open, accessible, and democratic planning process. With the Vote on Everything amendment, many Sunshine State voters - not the representatives they elected - will be expected to decide 200 to 300 intricate land-use planning amendments every year.
The extreme special interests promoting the amendment have failed three times to qualify for the ballot. However, they have paid for nearly all the signatures required to place their amendment on the November 2010 ballot. Floridians for Smarter Growth has been established by our State's business and community leaders to combat this dangerous amendment.
Floridians for Smarter Growth was founded to alert voters to this extreme amendment and the hazards it will bring to every Floridian's daily life. Every citizen, working family, teacher, health care provider, community leader, elected official, and mainstream environmentalist - every Florida voter - needs to know that our unique quality-of-life is at stake. If they succeed in changing our State Constitution:
• THE DISRUPTION of local communities and the daily lives of Floridians will be extraordinary. Cities and counties will be required to hold elections for each proposed comprehensive plan change - not just major projects, but even minor technical details. In the last four years alone, this amendment would have required an average of over 10,599 additional local votes per year in Florida. In fact, in 2007 alone in Carrabelle, a small town in Franklin County, voters would have decided 840 separate ballot questions.
• THE DISORDER will further disenfranchise Florida's already-fatigued electorate. Voters will be deluged with highly technical background materials prepared by the local government planning staff. The legalese of proposed comprehensive plan changes, often puzzling for expert engineers and attorneys, will further dampen voter turnout. Lines at voting booths will grow as Floridians attempt the virtual impossibility of voting on hundreds of separate and often confusing ballot questions.
• THE COST will be astronomical. Every city and county in Florida will be burdened with the time and cost of holding additional elections to vote on proposed changes to comprehensive land use plans. Each of these elections will be costly. And with smarter growth stalled, Florida's robust economy will taper off to a recession while property taxes skyrocket to pay the bills.
• THE RESULT will be a system that is far worse, not better. That's why respected environmental leaders refuse to support the amendment. They know this amendment will not put a stop to all development, but will make well-planned, smarter growth impossible - thereby encouraging sprawl that reduces green space and makes effective growth management unachievable. For more information please go to www.florida2010.org.
ST. PETE BEACH ABANDONS LOCAL VERSION OF AMENDMENT 4
Since beginning a 3-year experiment in Amendment 4-style rule, St. Pete Beach residents have seen endless lawsuits, higher taxes and widespread economic turmoil.[i] On Tuesday, the citizens of St. Pete Beach scaled back their local version of Amendment 4 so that only certain land use changes require a referendum. While Florida voters are set to soon decide the fate of Amendment 4 - a statewide Vote on Everything initiative - St. Pete Beach voters have chosen to rein in their own local experiment by a decisive 60-40 margin.
"St. Pete Beach residents are tired of voting on everything, especially issues that don't even relate to development," said Ward Friszolowski, former Mayor of St. Pete Beach. "This amendment doesn't work. It has resulted in chaotic, confusing and expensive elections driven by sound bites rather than sound planning."
The TIMELINE:
• November, 2006: St. Pete Beach narrowly adopts a local version of Amendment 4, requiring a referendum for all changes to the local comprehensive plan. Amendment 4 supporters promise that they just want to give "the people a right to vote."
• June, 2008: St. Pete Beach voters approve a new comprehensive plan at the ballot box.
• June, 2008: After losing the election, Amendment 4 supporters in St. Pete Beach file a string of legal challenges to invalidate the will of the people.
• September, 2008: Numerous administrative challenges are subsequently filed by Amendment 4 co-author and co-founder Ross Burnaman.
• June, 2009: The St. Petersburg Times reports that St. Pete Beach has exhausted its legal budget months before the end of the fiscal year.[ii]
• September, 2009: Amidst rising legal bills, St. Pete Beach raises taxes.[iii]
• October, 2009: Court-ordered mediation collapses when Amendment 4 supporters refuse to join the City and the business community in supporting a compromise.[iv]
St. Pete Beach is proof positive that Amendment 4 is not designed to give the people a say on growth. It is designed to give anti-growth lawyers another legal avenue to stop commonsense progress, even when voters approve it. In St. Pete Beach, the taxpayers' legal bills continue to mount. Unfortunately, there is no end in sight.
Floridians for Smarter Growth leads opposition to Amendment 4. To date, more than 170 organizations throughout Florida have opposed Amendment 4. More join the fight every day.
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