Citizens Need to Take Control of Growth Management with Amendment 4?

[stjr]

Pros and cons.  Here is a good overview by the T-U of the mess in St. Johns County and how it might be impacted.  Not mentioned is the further mess that will be created by the Outer Beltway.  Can we vote on those projects too?  Now, that would nip urban sprawl where it starts!

Links to web sites can be found  below following the article for those who want to read more.  Expect this issue to heat up big time as we move toward November.  Looking forward to lots of discussion here on MJ.

With growth management vote coming, St. Johns has become focal point
St. Johns residents have arguments on both sides of Amendment 4.

   * By David Hunt
   * Story updated at 5:59 PM on Monday, Mar. 22, 2010

In the debate over Florida growth management, a spotlight is shining on St. Johns County.

It’s home to a county commissioner who campaigned against rampant development, only to later get caught soliciting developer bribes. It’s also the fertile ground where county records show developers are asking to build nearly 12,000 more homes, even though trouble in the housing market has stalled construction of 48,000 homes already approved.

It’s an area where the word “growth” carries a heavy political overtone, an area Amendment 4 supporters say deserves a look before voters statewide decide on a Nov. 2 referendum.

Amendment 4 is a ballot measure that would make planning decisions subject to popular votes.

It has opened a debate among those who say residential growth pays for its infrastructure needs, those who say the development-approval system is broken and those who believe the new communities put too much strain on older communities, which are stuck financing infrastructure through higher taxes.

Opponents argue it would hold back much-needed construction jobs. They also say Amendment 4 would lead to sprawling ballots loaded with questions better directed to the people voters elected to represent their will.

That argument isn’t necessarily a strong one in St. Johns County.

“Well, that’s where a commissioner pleaded guilty to taking bribes,” said Lesley Blackner, a Mandarin native who went on to become a Palm Beach attorney and president of Florida Hometown Democracy, a nonpartisan group pushing for Amendment 4’s passage.

She was talking about former commissioner Tom Manuel, who was elected in 2006 amid a groundswell of voter anger over the way the county was growing. He promised he would be tough on developers, only to later plead guilty to federal charges that he’d solicited bribes to support development projects.

Commission Chairman Ron Sanchez was elected the same year as Manuel. He remains critical of his predecessors, but still, Sanchez said Amendment 4 goes too far.

He envisions elections pushing voters away as ballots balloon with land-use questions. The questions, he said, will have to be boiled down from thousands of pages of planning documents. He sees voting precincts turning into something more akin to a social gathering for the anti-growth crowd.

“What do you wind up with? You have a total mess,” he said.

Between booms

St. Johns’ growth and housing woes started before Manuel and continue without him.

Take Nocatee, a nearly 13,000-home plan near Ponte Vedra Beach envisioned as a self-sustaining community with housing and commercial office space. The plan was approved in 2001. According to county records, 266 homes have been built there as of today.

A drive through the complex shows multiple lots for sale, often-empty playgrounds and roads that end in turns toward uncleared trees. Nocatee’s supporters say it has been the model for smart growth, though, as developers agreed to pay for much of the infrastructure and now the grid is in place for future use.

So far, that’s been a blessing for nearby residents like Bruce Benzley. On a recent afternoon, Benzley, an out-of-work mortgage banker who lives several minutes away, used one of Nocatee’s vacant athletic fields to run football drills with his son.

He said he’s found seclusion along Nocatee’s nature trails and joy in running his three King Charles Cavaliers throughout the property with no need for leashes. He also credits the development for putting a massive Publix grocery store within reach of many residents who until about a month ago had to drive farther to shop.

Amendment 4 has the support of multiple environmental groups and political figures statewide, including Ben Rich, a former St. Johns County Commission chairman.

Build or not to build

A Tampa group called Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy has focused its efforts on defeating Amendment 4. St. Johns County has not taken a formal position, but Clay and Nassau counties have opposed the amendment, as has the city of Jacksonville.

City Councilman Daniel Davis , who’s also executive director of the Northeast Florida Builders Association, said the reasoning is simple.

“If you want to continue having people lose jobs â€" in a recession â€" vote for it,” Davis said. “There’s no doubt we have to grow smart, but we have to keep growing or our community dies.”

That’s an argument Blackner is quick to counter.

“There’s enough growth on the books that they could build until hell was freezing over. They could be building right now, so why aren’t they?” she said. “The accusations about this hurting the economy are false and they reek  of desperation.”

Blackner cites a 1999 Southwest Regional Florida Planning Council report for ammunition. It said that if all approved development plans were suddenly built and filled, Florida’s then-population of about 15 million would surge to 101 million.

That’s about one-third of the current U.S. population.

Although St. Johns County has seen success in subdivisions like Julington Creek Plantation, where 5,610 of 6,292 planned homes have been built, there are concerns about traffic snarls and recreational space for the virtually overnight community. Other subdivisions have had less luck just getting started.

County records show that in four of the 14 major housing plans â€" the latest approved in 2006 â€" zero houses have been built so far. Plans call for about 19,000 among the four neighborhoods â€" Ashford Mills, Bartram Park, Silverleaf Plantation and Twin Creeks.

Al Abbatiello, an Amendment 4 supporter who ran unsuccessfully for the St. Johns County Commission in 2008, said Florida’s local lawmakers have long fallen back on residential growth to pad municipal budgets with property taxes.

But in the last couple of years, in which housing values plummeted and Florida’s population decreased for the first time since World War II, have proven that doesn’t work.

“What’s happening in St. Johns County is exactly what’s happening throughout the state,” he said. “Development is good but let’s develop jobs and commercial areas.”

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-03-22/story/with_growth_management_vote_coming_st_johns_has_become_focal_point

Amendment 4

Amendment 4 would set the legislative framework to enable residents to vote on development decisions currently in the power of elected city councils and county commissions. Voters will decide whether to give themselves that power in a referendum on the Nov. 2 ballot.

The opponents: www.florida2010.org

The advocates: www.floridahometowndemocracy.com

A position for: A yes vote on Amendment 4 would give people more control over how their community will grow, cutting down developers’ influence over elected bodies as massive subdivisions sprout to the chagrin of longer-standing neighborhoods and their residents, who are now footing the tax bill for expanded public safety and infrastructure needs.

A position against: A no vote on Amendment 4 will prevent lags in construction projects and decisions at a time Floridians are unemployed and need to get back to work. Neighborhood and civic associations already have leverage in the planning process, meaning the idea of letting individual citizens vote on each development measure is a waste of time.

[Joe]

Quick comment....

Amendment 4 would make sprawl worse.

Most communities would overwhelmingly vote against any change from the current comp plans. Most current comp plans have future land use maps which draw giant rings of low density residential around current development.

Consequently, if issue 4 passes, new development will mostly occur at the very low densities specified in the future land use elements of Florida's comp plans. It will be super sprawl.

All those PUD developments are gross - but just wait until NIMBY's start voting them down! All non-preserved parcels in Duval will fill up with even more spread out LDR zoned subdivisions

[tufsu1]

You are exactly right Joe...just look at the fight Springfield has over a car wash.

Why would a developer put up with that if they could just go build out in the woods?

Another case in point...recently there was a comp. plan amendment here in Jax. on over 3,000 acres out on the fringe...nobody showed up at the public hearing and the proposed change was transmitted to DCA for review.

[JeffreyS]

Very few things should be left to popular vote.  We are a representative republic for a reason.  Namely that the more people involved in a decission the worse.

[stjr]

...recently there was a comp. plan amendment here in Jax. on over 3,000 acres out on the fringe...nobody showed up at the public hearing and the proposed change was transmitted to DCA for review.

Maybe it was because the land was on the "fringe" as you say.  How many City folk are going to realize what's happening there until it is too late?  And, again, take off from family and work to do what experts should already be doing.  Where are all the taxpayer paid City "planners" and "land use experts" looking out for ALL the citizens who pay them to stick to a PLAN!?  Or, are they just looking out for a special few?  One thing is for sure, at some point, we will just plain be out of land to be developed, and all those "planners" can go find another job.

[tufsu1]

One thing is for sure, at some point, we will just plain be out of land to be developed, and all those "planners" can go find another job.[/b]

sorry, but I don't think so...there is plenty enough planning and development occuring in places like New York City.

[Joe]

Stjr ... honestly, I feel like you're not having the same conversation as everyone else. What does any of that have to do with issue 4?

From your comments, it seems like you maybe support issue 4 because you don't like planners and you think that somehow NOT being able to change the comp plan would reduce sprawl? Again, I must emphasize that issue 4 would do nothing but create MORE sprawl.

What would happen is that NIMBY citizen groups would block absolutely any land use changes within developed areas. Conversely, the path of least resistance would lead developers to building even more low density spread out developments and therefore, more sprawl.

I'll admit, it's a hard concept to articulate - and maybe I'm just not explaining it right. Maybe try to look at it this way ... if issue 4 passes, voters will probably prevent those "greedy developers" from upzoning their land in Fruit Cove and building even more McMansions. The problem is that the demand for homes won't disappear. So the developers are just going to keep on building McMansions where ever they are still allowed to. So that just means that there will be even lower density McMansions sprawling all the way to Hastings, Palatka, Palm Coast and beyond.

[stjr]

Stjr ... honestly, I feel like you're not having the same conversation as everyone else.

.... Again, I must emphasize that issue 4 would do nothing but create MORE sprawl.

... if issue 4 passes, voters will probably prevent those "greedy developers" from upzoning their land in Fruit Cove and building even more McMansions. The problem is that the demand for homes won't disappear. So the developers are just going to keep on building McMansions where ever they are still allowed to....

Joe, I don't know who "everyone" else is you are referring to or what their conversation is.  I was picking up on an ongoing theme between Tufsu, I, and others on various MJ threads about the value of public hearings as an effective forum for influencing the outcome of road planning projects which spur urban sprawl.

Now, we are talking large scale developments.  As the article from the Times Union indicated, St. Johns County hasn't said "no" to many, if any, large scale developments plastered all over its county, most of which has been rural prior to these developments.  Where is the existing control to urban sprawl that you infer vs. the outcome you predict with passing Amendment 4?  Could it be any worse than now?

I haven't made up my mind yet, but I must admit I, and obviously many others, don't see where the existing process is doing much to control sprawl.  What can you point to currently that controls it?  If not something now or Amendment 4, what alternative would you suggest?

Over the last 50 years, it seems many people have witnessed broken promises, discarded plans, loopholes exploited, political corruption of the planning process, abuse of zoning and land use guidelines, rape of the landscape, negative impacts of poorly executed development, etc. and feel compelled to consider Amendment 4 as an expression of that frustration.  There are not many people left in this state that haven't experienced an unfavorable development in their backyards or on land they treasure for its pre-development status.

If Amendment 4 opponents don't propose a reliable and effective alternative to it, I do think Amendment 4 will get a lot of votes.  Fear mongering that it could be worse than present probably won't be enough to carry the day by itself.  In fact, to your suggestion that developers will just build "McMansions wherever they are still allowed to" may be exactly what proponents want.  You don't seem to consider that if development is restricted and demand grows that it might create higher density development in already developed areas (could that mean a return to the infrastructure-rich urban core?).  If that is a possibility, again, it plays into what probably many proponents of the amendment would want to see.

By the way, I don't dislike "planners" but I do question the motives and effectiveness of many who are charged with planning for the good of the entire community over the long haul and their follow-through in seeing that plans are consistently and steadfastly adhere to.  I also believe there are a significant number that readily prostitute their positions to the sole benefit of their employers (be it politicos, road building agencies, or developers) even if their hearts tell them otherwise.  That behavior certainly isn't a surprise or limited to planners but planners role in the process and their credibility is the subject of this and many other threads here so they get a share of the limelight.

[CS Foltz]

CUTR is unbiased right?

[tufsu1]

By the way, I don't dislike "planners" but I do question the motives and effectiveness of many who are charged with planning for the good of the entire community over the long haul and their follow-through in seeing that plans are consistently and steadfastly adhere to. 

Do you understand that planners have little power in the decision-making process?  They only make recommendations to elected officials.

[Dog Walker]

Correct!  And a significant percentage of those elected officials are owned and operated by the development interests.  They have proven that they cannot be trusted with development decisions which is why we must remove their total control over the comp. plans.

Professional planners must be as frustrated as the general public seeing their work trashed by the elected officials.

[cline]

They have proven that they cannot be trusted with development decisions which is why we must remove their total control over the comp. plans.

A better way to do this would be to remove them from office with your vote.

[Dog Walker]

We've tried that and got Meserve who campaigned against the developers and then started taking money from them down as soon as he got in office.  The whole system of corruption is just too deeply embedded in the system right now.

[cline]

We've tried that and got Meserve who campaigned against the developers and then started taking money from them down as soon as he got in office.  The whole system of corruption is just too deeply embedded in the system right now.

Yeah well, great try on that.  These same types are elected every time.  Until the majority of people who actually turn out to vote decide they want something different, you will remain with the status quo (i.e. complacency and corruption) that has made Jax what it is today.

[stjr]

[Do you understand that planners have little power in the decision-making process?  They only make recommendations to elected officials.

Tufsu, I think you just cut to the heart of why Amendment 4 will have momentum behind it.  We have a process involving "professionals" and their input is discarded for political reasons.  Planning by politics is the problem.  The public may now be prepared to say "no" to that process as it is perceived as, if not corrupt, at least grossly unresponsive to the population at large.