Originally posted Sep 28, 2009

 

Hometown Demo-cracy, a proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution, serves a bona fide Florida need. To those who’ve been ignored -- even disdained -- by the very officials they elected to safeguard their life-quality, ecology, and wildlife, it shines like a lodestar in the night sky.

What our Founders might have called “Providence” seems to have channeled it to the right time and place. Hometown Democracy Amendment 4 is crucial now that the state growth oversight we had in the Department of Community Affairs is so iffy as to not be assured survival of the next legislative whim or developer lawsuit.

There really is no recourse for citizens suffering from local rubber-stamping other than voter referendum. For too long, the decks have been stacked against us and the survival of our slender peninsula. Greed looms to consume her like a black hole.

We’ve been thrown a lifeline in Amendment 4, and if we don’t grab it, we’ll drown. Besides its obvious conservation value, Florida Hometown Democracy restores to residents the right to help shape their community’s future -- a right long trampled by what Harry Truman once called “the favored classes of the powerful few.”

The goal of salvaging Florida’s native landscapes remains largely unmet. Our natural communities, among the oldest on Earth, stand to be extirpated by hopscotch growth patterns. Fragile species like the scrub jay and panther are unique to this state.

With the loss of biological integrity flows the poetry -- the very heart and song -- from the “Land of Flowers.” Our ecology ties directly to life-quality; once Eden is gone, even if growth-drunk officials don’t notice (or care), we will. Annihilation can’t be undone.

A week in Washington, D.C., reviewing the trials and sentiments of our nation’s Founders, and rereading Thomas Jefferson’s letters, convinced me America’s principles not only support, but mandate, that power revert to us in such pivotal matters as land use, when government fails to express our will.

In Florida, the idea of “representation” has become a farce. Though this may sound grandiose to its foes, Hometown Democracy, for me, seems to rise from those same sparks that fired Washington to defeat Cornwallis and Jefferson to pen the Declaration. These greats held a never-flinching trust that the people are their country’s (or state’s) own best watchmen.

Preserving Florida and our way of life lies with us.

In 2010, Amendment 4 would let voters veto projects that overstep their local growth blueprint, thus help curb “hostile” urbanizing of rural zones.

Though called “mobs” or “NIMBYs” by Amendment 4 detractors, residents voting on their communities’ fates would have a welcome moderating effect. Building will still occur, because comp plans already allow for it, but at a rate our wildlife and infrastructure can bear.

Guarding quality of life is a chief role of government. Developers currently steer land-use policy, but government is meant to represent all citizens. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Taylor: “Your Enquiry into the Principles of Government ... settles unanswerably the right of instructing representatives and their duty to obey.” It simply is not right for those we elect to dismiss us — especially to the detriment of our state’s survival.

A land-use change to densely develop is not a “property right.” Under Amendment 4, we all have a vote (not just those who would slow growth or over-accelerate it).

The referendums provided by Amendment 4 would reflect the people’s will -- a founding precept sorely missing from the development process.


-- Eagan, a Winter Park resident, is a portrait artist, a wildlife conservationist, and a third-generation Florida native.