Part of my role as deputy political director of Floridians for Smarter Growth is to coordinate vital research. While examining Comprehensive Plan Amendments from across the State, I noticed far more technical and text amendments than increased-density amendments. In fact, there are thousands more!
In the mind-numbing bureaucratese of land-use plans, proposed changes can be State-Mandated Amendments, Administrative Amendments, Large Scale Amendments, and Small Scale Amendments. Hometown Democracy would require us to vote on all of them, without distinguishing the controversial from the mundane.
Every year, the Florida Legislature passes laws to change certain growth management requirements. State-Mandated Amendments are changes the City or County must submit as a Comprehensive Land-use Plan Amendment to show its Growth Plan is compliant with new mandates. If Hometown Democracy were in place today, Floridians would be voting on changes the State Legislature has already enacted into law. Hometown Democracy proponents forgot about this, or just didn’t care about the confusion that will surely result.
Administrative Amendments are technical, or text, amendments submitted by the City or County which usually represent a clerical error. For example, renumbering of policies, changing "the" to "a," or adding commas, periods or other punctuation where appropriate.
Large-Scale Land Plan Amendments are amendments that are 10 acres or more and change the current future land use designation for that particular parcel of land. Accordingly, Small-Scale Land Plan Amendments are amendments that are 9.9 acres or less and change the current future land use designation for that particular parcel of land.
I can tell you this: most Comprehensive Land Plan Amendments fall into the State-Mandated and Administrative categories. With that said, I cannot even begin to imagine how anyone would be able to decipher everyone of these very technical terms, conditions, procedures, and more. I know, because I read almost every single one of them – and survived!
My fear is that the extreme special interests behind Hometown Democracy are trying to pull the wool over Floridians’ eyes. They’ve said it many times: all Hometown Democracy deals with are the Large and Small Scale Amendments. They are flat-out lying. Just read the Hometown Democracy Amendment - nowhere does it distinguish one amendment from the others. Instead, it clearly requires votes on all Comprehensive Land Use Amendments.
All 11,000 of those amendments - every single year.
JJ Whitson; Dep. Political Dir.
