Concerned Friends of Fernandina |
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Hometown Democracy Petition page: More info, link to: Florida Hometown Democracy and Floridians for a Sustainable Population
Hometown Democracy will win--and soon! _____________**____________
Our official
petition tally has hit 594,563 towards our goal of 611,009!The
Florida Chamber of Commerce petition is at 443,511. Mind you, the Chamber
spent $3,255,000 dollars to get there. Most of it came from the National
and Florida Association of Homebuilders and big landowners (developers in
waiting). They paid for 650,000 petitions, and all dumped them all at once
on the Supervisors of Elections around the state in January, just before the
deadline. Since the Chamber train-wrecked the process, they haven’t
submitted even one more petition. Job done.
The
Florida Attorney General has sent the Chamber Trojan-horse petition on to be
reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court. Hometown Democracy filed its
opposing brief Friday. We’re confident the court will put the Chamber
petition where it belongs…in the garbage.
Also, the State is appealing the revocation slap-down to the Florida Supreme
Court. Got to keep hope alive for the developer crew! That will make six
appearances by Hometown Democracy before Florida ’s highest court. All this
just to secure each of us the right to vote on the local decisions that make
or break the future of our community.
Given the way government fights against your right to vote, you might
wonder, is this the America the rest of the world dreams about? Fact
is, even here Democracy can’t defend itself. It’s up to you and me.
Please get behind our final push for petitions to get to the 611,000
goal….we only need another 15,000 petitions or so….PLEASE send money and
petitions to help get us there!.
Best wishes,
Lesley
OrlandoSentinel.comCOMMENTARYSo you want to halt sprawl? Fat chance!
Orlando Sentinel.com
Mike Thomas
COMMENTARY
May
15, 2008
It
doesn't matter that Florida has a huge glut of abandoned homes thrown up in
the hinterlands, dragging down the economy.
Our political leaders want more. Not only are they refusing to control sprawl, but they also are making sure you don't either. It's the biggest disconnect I've ever seen between public desire and political action. Consider Florida Hometown Democracy, an amendment proposed by a small band of environmentalists that would require voters to sign off on changes to local growth plans. Supporters are gathering signatures to put it on the 2010 ballot. The very notion has terrified the state's business/political cartel, which treats growth plans like disposable diapers. So the business lobby has joined the Legislature and Gov. Charlie Crist to pull every dirty trick possible to keep it off the ballot. One tactic was legislation passed last year. It allowed amendment opponents to try to persuade those who signed the Hometown Democracy petition to revoke their signatures. This started a disinformation campaign in which the business lobby warned that "this bad amendment will open the door for big developers to ruin Florida 's natural and scenic beauty, but you can help stop the special interests." It may be the most stunning lie ever told in Florida -- the audacity of desperation. The person behind it was John Thrasher, a former speaker of the House, now a hired-gun lobbyist for the state's biggest developers. It's one sleazy, incestuous stew up there in Tallahassee . Do you really think they're going to let you muck up their good thing by letting you vote on growth? Last month a state appeals court threw out the signature revocation law. The Crist administration plans to appeal. All the so-called responsible environmentalists and growth-management gurus sit on the sideline because they say Hometown Democracy is just too radical. As if sending bulldozers ever farther out into the rural abyss of a state already overbuilt is more responsible. Meanwhile, legislators once again squashed growth-management reforms this year. Rep. Dean Cannon of Winter Park , the future House speaker, actually tried to weaken citizen input. Maybe he's after John Thrasher's job. Said Department of Community Affairs Secretary Tom Pelham: "I expect that the sponsors of Hometown Democracy are very happy with the way things turned out. All of this will add fuel to their cause, I'm sure." It is past time. Back in 2004, more than 70 percent of Volusia voters supported a referendum to limit rampant growth. Home builders got it tossed with a legal challenge. This year, nearly 80 percent of Sarasota voters passed a referendum requiring a unanimous vote by the County Commission to increase zoning densities outside the urban-service boundary. Earlier they passed a measure requiring a supermajority County Commission vote to increase density in the comprehensive growth plan. "There is much more debate now," says Bill Earl, an activist behind the measures. "Smart developers are going to neighborhood associations and to environmental groups to ask what they can do to make projects acceptable." Backroom deals are out in Sarasota . Guess who loses power? It is why the politicians, lobbyists and developers are so desperate to keep this movement from growing. Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomas@orlandosentinel.com.
Copyright © 2008,
Orlando Sentinel
HELP SAVE WHAT'S LEFT OF FLORIDA...
LET THE PEOPLE VOTE to control growth!
PO Box
636, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170-0636.
Pd.pol.adv.byFloridaHometownDemocracy,Inc,PAC
_____________**_______________
Happily, the legislative session is over. Our esteemed lawmakers did not
pass one iota of a “Citizens Planning Bill of Rights” pushed by Department
of Community Affairs chief Tom Pelham. Not that his proposed “Rights”
really would have changed the imbalance of power between residents and
developer/local government machines. Instead, the legislature was too busy
mulling over new laws to mandate toilet paper in public bathrooms and ban
“truck nuts.” (Don’t ask—gratefully both bills failed!)
After a decade of developers gone wild the State is broke, people don’t have
medical care and schools are cut to the bone, but the Tallahassee posse
still found the big bucks to unnecessarily relocate the Panama City airport
just to spur development around St. Joe’s empire of land holdings…...so we
will have the airport to nowhere. (Not for long St. Joe hopes!)…even though
local voters/residents had rejected the move in a straw ballot. (NB:
Pelham was the attorney for the St .Joe airport pushers before he went to
DCA…..small world?) If Hometown Democracy was on the books, this
monstrosity of developer welfare would go the way of “truck nuts”.
In other
news, our petition count now stands at 592,561.
We have been prodding the supervisors of elections to report in their count
certifications to Tallahassee. Is that too much to ask?
Our
research into the January petition meltdown is now complete and we have
learned that many petitions from some of our strongest individual supporters
were not counted. Even petitions signed by folks who gave us
thousands of dollars were not counted. Was your Hometown
Democracy petition counted? Call your supervisor of election and find
out…they have lists, and let us know if it wasn’t!
Best wishes,
Lesley
OrlandoSentinel.comCOMMENTARYSprawl is just one more nail in economic coffin
Mike Thomas
May 1, 2008
Urban sprawl can ruin the environment and our quality of life.
But could it also undermine our economy? There is growing sentiment among urban planners that cities are surrounding themselves with the slums of tomorrow. These are the outlying developments, many thrown up with reckless abandon during the housing bubble to feed speculator demand. In 2005, Florida cities and counties gave out a record 208,000 permits for detached homes, mostly out in the burbs of Central Florida and coastal cities. These far-flung projects have been hit hardest by the plunge in housing values. Dropping prices can kick off a spiral of foreclosures, rentals and abandonment. A recent eye-opening piece in The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Next Slum?" picked examples of new subdivisions around Charlotte, N.C., Sacramento, Calif., and Florida's Lee County -- some with $500,000 homes -- falling into crime-ridden decay. As this happens, such developments bring in less tax revenue but require more services in the form of police patrols and code inspection. Making matters worse, some demographic researchers think the current housing downturn simply exacerbates a long-term trend. As people age, they go from being homebuyers to home sellers. This means that with the impending retirement of the baby boomers, we are entering an era of more sellers in proportion to buyers. And the sellers will be selling suburban homes designed to raise children, while a growing percentage of buyers won't have children. Arthur Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, predicts a glut of 22 million "large-lot" detached homes by 2025, with large lot defined as one-sixth of an acre and up. Put another way: If we didn't build another house in the suburbs, we still would have too many of them 17 years from now. The home-vacancy rate in Central Florida is a staggering 7.4 percent, by far the highest in the nation. "For Sale " signs are multiplying on the urban fringes, along with unkempt yards. "There are more empty houses the farther out you go," says Jack Connor of Alliance Appraisal & Consulting Services. "I was down in Kissimmee , at a development on Lake Toho , and it is a ghost town." Empty downtown condos have become a housing-bubble poster child. But the glut in the outlying burbs is the real time bomb. Sprawl supporters say these areas provide affordability. But the Charlotte Observer recently reported that starter-home subdivisions there are most prone to problems. Virginia Tech's Nelson notes we have mitigating factors in Florida . Growth has stalled, but history says it will resume, making us better able in the long term to soak up excess housing inventory. And given our narrow peninsula, the suburbs here are denser and not as far-flung as they are around Sacramento , Atlanta and Charlotte . But getting to long-term stability will require short-term survival. We need aggressive police and code enforcement in at-risk subdivisions. If they tip into a state of decay, they may never recover, and new growth will pass them by. We also need a hiatus on developing outside urban service areas. It's past time to stop moving out and start filling in. But Florida politicians never say no to developers. Not even the possibility of a looming crisis will change that. Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomas@orlandosentinel.com.
Copyright © 2008,
Orlando Sentinel
HELP SAVE WHAT'S LEFT OF FLORIDA...
LET THE PEOPLE VOTE to control growth!
PO Box
636, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170-0636.
Pd.pol.adv.byFloridaHometownDemocracy,Inc,PAC
___________**___________
We won our case against the State at the 1st District Court of Appeal – they
unanimously ruled that the ridiculous anti-FHD revocation statute is
unconstitutional! The Florida Legislature is currently rushing to pass even
more spurious anti-petitioning roadblocks which we believe to be also
patently unconstitutional.
Here’s where the State says we are today in our petition count:
The numbers have moved since the “deadline” because a lot of petitions
submitted before February 1st were not counted. Now they
have been, although some supervisors of elections still haven’t posted them
up. Yes, we asked them to do so several times.
Plus, there are about 67 different ways to count petitions in Florida , all
depending on which county you live in!
We plan to do something about that in the next week or so. So send
petitions and donations. Our battleground before now was in the
streets….petitioning….now the battlefield moves on to the courts…. things
should be getting interesting soon!
Best,
Lesley
Article published Apr 23, 2008
State appeals court rules in favor of citizens groupTALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)
People cannot take back their support
once they sign petitions to get citizen initiatives on a ballot, an appeals
court ruled Wednesday in a case over whether voters should have a say in
changing infrastructure and development plans.
The 1st District Court of Appeal said a law that let people take back their signatures is unconstitutional, so it overturned a trial court's ruling. The Legislature passed the law at the request of business organizations. They then used it to revoke thousands of signatures obtained by proponents of Hometown Democracy, an initiative that would require voter approval of changes in plans laying out where new roads, homes, businesses and other development can be built. Hometown Democracy then sued. The appeals court's seven-page ruling said revoking signatures burdens the initiative process with requirements not found in the Florida Constitution. Instead, the constitution gives citizens the right to propose amendments without legislative assistance. "The court got it right," said Ross Burnaman, co-founder of the Hometown Democracy political action committee. Barney Bishop III, president and CEO of Associated Industries of Florida, was a leader in the signature revocation effort. He said it allowed people to change their minds "because they perhaps weren't told the real truth at the time to begin with." Burnaman, of Tallahassee , and fellow lawyer Lesley Blackner, of Palm Beach , started the initiative as a response to public officials they believed were too willing to give developers everything they want while ignoring citizen protests. But in an all-out effort to defeat the proposal, builders, developers and other business leaders wrote and called petition signers to suggest they had made a mistake. Hometown Democracy narrowly missed the 2008 ballot after Secretary of State Kurt Browning rejected a request to delay ballot certification until all signatures submitted before the Feb. 1 deadline were verified. The law is one of several steps the Legislature has taken in recent years with encouragement from business leaders to make it more difficult to pass initiatives. They contend initiatives such as Hometown Democracy could slow growth and the harm the state's economy. (LB: Yeah, the same crew that crashed the economy with overbuilding.) Burnaman and Bishop agreed the issue may wind up being resolved by the Florida Supreme Court. "We're not out of the game yet," Bishop said.
Associated
Press
Writer Bill Kaczor contributed to this report.
__________________**________________
Florida Hometown Democracy is here to stay First, I want to thank everyone who was involved in getting FHD where it is today. Because if you—our petition gatherers, signers, and contributors—hadn't worked so hard, it never would have gotten this far. Over 814,000 signatures were submitted to the Supervisors of Elections throughout Florida. However, our ballot initiative that sought to give citizens the right to control the growth of their own communities, and hopefully bring some sanity to growth in our entire state, is being claimed to have fallen 65,182 signatures short of the 611,009 needed to make the ballot. This is partly due to a massive campaign by the development-business industry, with its huge financial resources, to crush this effort using massive mailouts to get signers to rescind their petitions. They also created a secondary sham growth-control measure, “Floridians for Smarter Growth,” that flooded the Supervisor of Elections offices with petitions at the last minute, making it hard for our own petitions to get verified in time. We are not folding our tents or giving up this effort, which is essential for growth control, the protection of our natural resources and water supplies. Our first job is to get all the petitions that were submitted counted. We asked the state to extend the time limit for verification, and were promptly denied. The state must hold the local supervisors to the election rules. Irregularities need to be addressed. For example, Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections rejected valid petitions, and Broward and Bay County’s Supervisors of Elections acknowledge they did not count all the petitions. We are also reviewing all our options for both this year and election 2010, if necessary. Petitions are good for up to four years. We will make the citizens’ petitions count, and we will be on the ballot. Previous polls indicate that if FHD gets on the ballot, it will pass. If these are accurate, eventually FHD will be in the Florida Constitution. Thanks again, everyone, for your past and anticipated future efforts in this important initiative. Please contact us if you need any information or want to help: John Hedrick, phone 850-339-5462; e-mail: johnhedrick13@yahoo.com Lesley Blackner, phone 866-779-5513; e-mail: lblackner@aol.com ___________________**________________
The State of
Florida Division of Elections alleges that the Florida Hometown Democracy
Amendment has not qualified for the 2008 ballot. We have submitted over
814,000 total petitions as of January 31, and have determined that many
thousands of them were not reviewed in a timely fashion and are not included
in the State’s totals. We are confident that once all petitions that we
have submitted are reviewed and counted, we will indeed qualify. We will
continue to do everything in our power to ensure that all valid petitions
are counted.
We thank the
thousands of Floridians who have signed our petition, and extend special
thanks to those supporters who collected petitions and donated their time
and money to this important effort.
Our petition
drive has faced vicious developer opposition, including the running of a
deceptive counter-petition, sponsored by the Florida Chamber of Commerce
(which came nowhere close to qualifying), and an unprecedented, misleading
revocation effort by a developer-backed PAC, “Save Our Constitution”. We
are challenging their revocation statute in court and await the court’s
ruling.
On December 31,
2007 a directive from the State Division of Elections was sent to the county
Supervisors stating that they were not legally obligated to count all
petitions submitted after that date. Then, in early January, our opponents
dumped many hundreds of thousands of petitions on the local Supervisors of
Elections to clog up the petition review process. This stunt, along with
the re-scheduled Presidential Preference Primary election, ensured that all
Florida Hometown Democracy petitions would not be reviewed and counted
through our deadline of January 31, 2008.
Florida Hometown
Democracy realizes that extracting our beloved state from the train wreck of
over-development requires endurance.
We are confident
that, despite the many diversions, deceptions and obstructions we have
encountered, Florida Hometown Democracy will ultimately be on the ballot and
in the Florida Constitution.
As Yogi Berra
said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Thank you for your support,
Lesley Blackner
HELP SAVE WHAT'S LEFT OF FLORIDA...
LET THE PEOPLE VOTE to control growth!
PO Box
636, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170-0636.
Pd.pol.adv.byFloridaHometownDemocracy,Inc,PAC
________________**_______________
Hello to FHD supporters!
I’m wishing you all Florida Hometown Democracy
for the holidays and in the coming New Year!
It’s been a busy week. First, my email address
was hijacked and a "colorful" email was sent to just about every elected
official in Florida. Good thing I have a sense of humor! Then, the
State Division of Elections website started doing funny things, like
subtracting numbers of valid petitions. Shall I say Florida is still
the state that can’t count straight? We do have a paper trail and will
get this straightened out, but it’s distressing to deal with. Also, our
appeal on the outrageous revocation statute has been accepted and
fast-tracked by the First District Court of Appeals and we will know by
January 31st if it will be overturned.
Finally, we have collected and turned in OVER
600,000 total petitions. Our validity rate is running around 75%-80%
meaning we still have a way to
go to NET 611,000 valid
signatures. Most rejects are because many signers are still not
registered to vote. And our numbers unfortunately are NOT accurately
reflected on the state website due to their "technical difficulties".
We have not built up a “cushion” to protect us from the revocation
sabotage, so PLEASE keep sending MONEY and PETITIONS.
We will be accepting petitions through January 20th,
but really Santa’s helpers need to send PETITIONS and DONATIONS
now.
We've heard that the Dark Side opposition is amassing
their petitions to submit all at once in order to flood the Supervisors
so they won't be able to get our petitions counted by the January
deadline.
We will make it if you go out and send us 10 or 15
petitions and a donation of at least $25-100.
Read on below if you need further testimony from a
professional planner of why Florida Hometown Democracy is essential to
saving Florida’s future.
Best,
Lesley
______________**______________
From: The
Tallahassee Democrat
Article published
Dec 17, 2007
Sign and gain freedom from a squandered future By Daniel Parker MY VIEW
A
once-small group of Floridians frustrated with their local elected officials
over land-use decisions now numbers more than 300,000 citizens who have
signed a petition supporting the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment.
The
amendment is focused on reducing the number of local comprehensive plan
changes by giving voters an opportunity to veto them. In letters to papers
in Florida , the James Madison Institute, Florida Chambers of Commerce, and
others have called the initiative "draconian," "impractical," "extreme" and
"severe." If that argument doesn't work, then land-use decisions are called
"too complex" for the general public to understand.
There is
some merit in these responses, but not enough to dismiss the concept of
Hometown Democracy outright.
Florida
communities and environmental resources have suffered from permissive
development policies heavily subsidized on the back end by taxpayer. We now
have aquifer contamination and polluted springs, from Wakulla to Wekiva. The
St. Johns River Water Management District is telling Jacksonville that its
drinking water resource could pass its sustainable level after six years.
The Southwest Water Management District, which includes 16 counties, has
spent $200 million to help restore 3,000 acres of wetlands, forests and
waterways.
We're
spending $160 million right here in Tallahassee to offset water
contamination from previous and planned development.
Florida's
sprawling development now has us consuming 400 acres of farmland a day and
more energy than New York .
We're in a
multi-billion shortfall with our transportation infrastructure, and one of
the answers is to privatize more road building. Coastal developments can't
get insured, so the rest of us are insuring them.
Central
Florida is expected to experience explosive growth, and a continuation of
the land-use decisions there will overrun areas that shouldn't even be
developed.
Sarasota
County, in the midst of its Sustainable Sarasota initiative, has proposed to
rein in growth by requiring super-majority commission votes on some large or
intensive developments. The Marion County school superintendent says that,
for schools there to catch up to the need for more facilities, the county
would have to stop growing for the next three years.
We're
talking an extreme and severe use of taxpayer money.
As a local
planning commissioner, I dread a process that is bent toward approving
development at a rate that is expensive for existing residents and
communities. Instead of having to prove a certificate of need, a development
can merely meet the letter of the law. This obligates a community to take on
developments of questionable economic, social, and sustainable value. The
"spirit" of the law is lost.
If the
effort to balance concerns such as economic development and environmental
quality, and public needs with private interests, were truly working, we
surely would not be spending our public tax dollars on cleaning up springs,
adding portables to schools, and fighting over who pays for crossing guards.
The reality
is that growth management in Florida is causing more communities to lose
what makes them unique and to become more homogenized, more sprawled out and
more costly. Any public gain is quickly swallowed by new public costs to
support new residents.
The new and
well-meaning secretary of the Department of Community Affairs, Tom Pelham,
has expressed his intent to improve the planning process. He can do it, but
not alone. In the background of our planning woes, efforts to weaken the
public sector have been successful. Legislation has been passed that stops
votes, cuts down on amendments, limits petitions and revokes signatures. The
ranks of public servants, including land-use planners, have been thinned,
outsourced and micromanaged at all levels.
This notion
of less government has been well at work in Florida . We must be reminded,
however, that whether it is based in good intentions or simply an
infatuation with cutting taxes, there are costs from a loss of oversight and
a cut in services.
There is no
constitutional right to pollute, or to build for private gain that leaves
public expenditures. There are two things you can accomplish by supporting
the petition for a Florida Hometown Democracy Act: You can preserve your
public involvement and right to petition, and you can send a message to
local and state officials that the status quo with land-use planning is not
good enough. Not by a long shot.
Sign the
petition. This should give Mr. Pelham the public backing to make substantive
legislative changes to Florida's comprehensive planning process before the
amendment comes up for a vote. You still can vote No on the November 2008
ballot.
·
Daniel Parker has a master's degree in urban planning and is a planning
commissioner for Tallahassee-Leon County . Contact him at
scribe13@comcast.net.
HELP SAVE WHAT'S LEFT OF FLORIDA...
LET THE PEOPLE VOTE to control growth!
Help put HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY on the 2008 ballot
Please download and SIGN THE PETITION
!
PO Box 636,
New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170-0636.
_________________**_______________
Greetings FHD Supporters!
Only twelve more weeks till the end of the year… and our deadline
looms......Scary!
We have collected over 500,000 total petitions. To be on the safe side, we
still need at least another 200,000 validated petitions.
Believe it or not, we are getting emails and phone calls from voters who
fell for Thrasher’s letter - the revocation ploy. Even though we're
confident that we will prevail in our lawsuit against the nefarious
revocation scheme, that it will be found to be unconstitutional and will get
thrown out, we can't afford to be complacent or take any chances, and so we
must collect extra petitions to compensate for any revoked petitions.
Please sponsor a quick petition drive to help us get where we need to be
through your favorite group, neighborhood, friends, church---wherever and
with whomever you hang out. (Use the attached petition!) Send 50, 100. or
500 petitions. These last 3 months can make or break this campaign.
Think about this…..how bad will it be if for some awful reason we don't make
it to the ballot and you didn't do your share?
Please help make this happen. Send petitions and donations--both together
is best!
Lesley
Miami Herald
HELP SAVE WHAT'S LEFT OF FLORIDA...
LET THE PEOPLE VOTE to control growth!
Help put HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY on the 2008 ballot
Please download and SIGN THE PETITION
!
PO Box 636,
New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170-0636.
______________**________________
By HOWARD TROXLER,
St. Pete Times Staff Writer
The coming fight for the soul of
Florida is the oldest political fight there is.
As we duke it out between now and
November 2008, we will call it by its current label, "Hometown
Democracy."
But it's really an argument that
began 2,500 years ago on a hillside in Athens.
Can citizens govern themselves
wisely? Or should somebody else make decisions for them?
Florida Hometown Democracy is a
group that wants to give voters control of major growth decisions in our
state. The group is petitioning to put a constitutional amendment on the
2008 ballot.
Countless times over the past 25
years, I have watched opponents show up at public hearings, angry,
energized, saying the same things to fight a proposed development.
Their City Council or County
Commission shrugs and says, "Where were you when we were drawing the
maps? Our maps tell us that we cannot say no."
So here is the genius of
Hometown Democracy: It says that voters get to draw the maps in the
first place.
To be precise, the group's
amendment would require local voter approval for any change in a
community's "comprehensive plan."
Plato would hate it. Aristotle
would fret. Socrates would ask irritating questions for 15 hours or
until somebody made him drink hemlock.
Me, I kinda like it.
I like it because (1) I am
flat-out sick of local government saying yes and (2) because the
opponents are frothing with ridiculous overstatement.
"This will lead," warns a
builder-funded group with the ironic name of Floridians for Smarter
Growth, "to far less planning, increased urban sprawl, much more
traffic, higher property taxes and anemic municipal services."
Holy cow! All that, just from
letting voters control growth in their own community.
Floridians for Smarter Growth
has a proposed counter-petition. It, too, claims to give citizens the
"right" to control growth but sets up roadblocks to keep them out.
Oh, and this rival amendment also
says that if both it and Hometown Democracy pass, then Hometown
Democracy won't count. Sneaky!
So if somebody asks you to sign
a petition to "control growth," make sure you know which one you're
signing.
This isn't black and white. I know
lots of smart people who think Hometown Democracy is a bad idea.
After all, in the end the
Athenians turned into a fickle mob. They chose demagogues and fools as
their leaders. They were whipped by Sparta, which was governed by kings
and a kind of gussied-up County Commission.
So by all means, if you think that
decisions about growth are best made by "professionals" and local
elected officials, then you should oppose Hometown Democracy.
After all, they've done such a
good job so far
HELP SAVE WHAT'S LEFT OF
FLORIDA...
LET THE PEOPLE VOTE to control growth!
Help put HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY on the 2008 ballot
Please download and SIGN THE PETITION
!
PO Box 636,
New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170-0636.
___________**____________
The BAD NEWS
first. Our enemies tacked a horrible anti-petition provision onto the
paper trail bill and the Florida Legislature swallowed the bait and
voted to approve
“5/4/07: HB537 and
SB900 - PAPER TRAIL LEGISLATION AND ANTI CITIZEN INITIATIVE BILLS MERGED AS
TWO BILLS PASS THE LEGISLATURE, SENT TO GOVERNOR.”
.
What does this mean for FHD and all other current and future citizen
initiatives to amend the Florida Constitution?
1.
As of August 1st,
we will have only 30 days from the moment a petition is signed to submit the
petition to the Supervisor of Elections for validation. We had been
operating in a “pay as you go” mode -holding our petitions until we received
contributions to pay for the validation fees.
2.
Our opponents will then
have 120 days from the date a petition is verified by the SOE to hunt down
and contact voters who signed a petition and try to convince them to sign a
document rescinding his or her petition! No word yet on how the
Supervisors of Election are going to handle the holding/timing issue, as
they are obliged to certify to the State Division of Elections the number of
valid signatures they receive.
SB900 could well be found to be un-constitutional, as the state constitution
fully addresses the petitioning process, and we can only hope there will be
organizations out there who will band together to challenge its legality.
You
have to wonder about the enemies of democracy out there…busy every day
dreaming up new ways to throw up roadblocks to petitioning, every year
eroding the people’s constitutional right to petition. The 30 day
submission will be a housekeeping nightmare…the rescinding provision gives
our opponents the right to harrass voters who signed the petition to get
them to rescind. Believe me, our opponents will say and do anything to
destroy Florida Hometown Democracy.
Will Charlie Crist veto this bill? We just don’t know. Everybody
wants the paper trail to ensure accountability and fairness in elections!
Contact Charlie, who purports to be “the people’s governor” and tell him how
unhappy you are about this poison pill. There are approximately 3000
of you FHD’ers out there on our email lists….if you will contact him 3
times: 1 -send an email, 2-mail a brief note, and 3-fax him a copy of the
note, ...and then ask everyone you know to do the same, our mighty voice
will be heard!
Phone: 850-488-7146
Fax: 850-487-0801
Mailing Address:
Office of the Governor PL-05 The Capitol Tallahassee , FL 32399-0001
And now for the GOOD NEWS:
Many thanks
to animal rights champion Steve Rosen for his continuing generous support
for Florida Hometown Democracy. Steve is adamant about protecting gopher
tortoise habitat and he understands that the Florida Hometown Democracy
Amendment is the key tool to do just that – protecting animal and wildlife
habitat.
and
IN THE NEWS:
……….new Palm Beach County Commissioner Jess Santamaria has gone on the
record in favor of extending referenda to rezonings and annexations:
Let
referendum settle land changes that affect many
May 07, 2007
By JESS R. SANTAMARIA Palm Beach EDITORIAL
Property
owners have rights to use their property as zoned. If a property is zoned
agricultural, the property owner has the right to use it for any and all
agricultural purposes. They paid the fair price for that land, and
therefore, they have every right to use it for its intended agricultural
purposes. Agricultural land owners do not have the right to use their land
for high-density residential and commercial purposes.
Citizens in a community have rights, too. They have the right to demand that their existing "quality of life" not be damaged by a new development on adjacent or nearby land for purposes not originally intended. Citizens have the right to demand the continuance of the peace and tranquility they paid for. However, if the majority of the residents desire a major change in their immediate environment, this can be easily and fairly resolved by a referendum, allowing all the citizens to vote on the proposed change. In a democracy, differences are easily resolved by a fair and honest vote of all the parties affected, and the vote of the majority is to be followed by all. It is time to change our municipal and county charters, wherein all major zoning and annexation changes that have major impacts on the lives of thousands of people be resolved by a simple referendum, wherein "we the people" decide our own destiny.
Editor's note:
Jess R. Santamaria is a Palm Beach County commissioner.
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