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Suwannee Democrat Editorial, December 4, 2007

LAND USE: Who should decide?

BY ROBERT BRIDGES

Business and civic leaders gathered at City Hall Monday to voice concerns over the Florida Hometown Democracy initiative, a move to require voter approval for changes to local land-use plans.

Under the proposal, voters would have final say over matters now decided by the city council and county commission, such as whether to reclassify farmland as commercial or whether to allow a gas station to be built at an undeveloped intersection.

The result, say local officials, could be chaos.

"Hundreds of changes would be on our ballots," Ryan Houck, political director of an Orlando-based opposition group, told the crowd. "We'd have to send out telephone book-sized voter guides."

"And how many people would vote on all the amendments?" he asked. "We'd have a tremendous number of undervotes, and in the end, no growth at all."

But the real issue could be the cost of implementing such a program, Houck said.

First there's the cost of holding special elections for growth issues. Local government foots that bill. (The alternative is voting on such measures during regular elections, the timing of which could delay considerably the decision-making process.)

Then there's the cost of mounting a political campaign to win support for a proposed change to a land use plan. For large developers that's not an issue, but for smaller concerns such costs might prove prohibitive. In the end, say opponents of the proposal, only the well-heeled would be positioned to wage and win such battles.

County Coordinator Johnny Wooley said the Hometown Democracy movement sounds attractive on the surface. "The only thing voters hear is, 'You're going to have a voice'," he told the crowd. "But they don't know what kind of voice it is they're going to have."

One local builder spoke to the sometimes contradictory impulses of newcomers to Suwannee County.

"Everybody wants to move to Suwannee County and close the gate behind them," said contractor Dennis Music. "They want to come here, but they don't want anyone to live next to them."

Houck said his group, Floridians for Smarter Growth, acknowledges that planners "could do a better job," but calls the Hometown Democracy initiative too extreme a response.

"It's a classic case of 'right problem, wrong solution'," he said.

The Florida Hometown Democracy initiative is a state constitutional amendment, and as such requires approval of 60 percent of voters. Supporters of the movement have collected 422,000 of the 611,000 voters' signatures required to put the measure before voters.