by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
A proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution could require new or amended comprehensive land use plans to be voted on by the citizens living in the municipality where the change has been requested before the changes could become law.
The Florida Hometown Democracy Constitutional Amendment will appear on the November 2010, ballot as “Amendment 4.” This has some elected officials and organizations afraid of the affect such legislation will have on growth and development of Jacksonville.
This sentiment was expressed at a regular meeting of the City’s Seaport-Airport Special Committee at City Hall Tuesday. The committee is charged with helping the Jacksonville Port Authority and Jacksonville Aviation Authority (JAA) find and secure the resources needed to accommodate the city’s growing seaport business and the economic development of Cecil Field Commerce Center.
“To explain why we are talking about this here,” said Daniel Davis, City Council member and chair of the Seaport-Airport Special Committee. “How does this potentially affect the board and board related activities, Cecil Field and the airport?”
This wasn’t the first time Davis addressed the Hometown Democracy amendment. He sponsored an emergency ordinance (2009-586) for the Tuesday meeting of the Council asking for the City Council’s support in recommending the defeat of amendment four and asking citizens to vote “no.” Davis is also executive director of the Northeast Florida Builders Association, an organization which opposes the amendment.
Shannon Eller of the City’s Office of General Counsel was invited to attend the meeting to present an update on the Hometown Democracy amendment and how it might affect the City’s ports.
“The land uses that surround all of those areas, some of them have been identified for expansion and some have already been identified as areas where we need to change the land use categories,” said Eller. “If they haven’t been and, in the future, you want to make the modification to existing land use categories...that land use map amendment would require a vote. That obviously slows the process down and would require lobbying efforts on behalf of the City in order to have those changes made. Because you would have do a media campaign to educate the voters on approving that.”
The amendment would not change the current process that is in place, “following preparation by the local planning agency, consideration by the governing body as provided by general law and notice thereof in a local newspaper of general circulation.” It would add a vote by the citizens of the municipality at the end of the current process.
The amendment was developed by Hometown Democracy, which claims to be a grassroots, nonpartisan group that believes too many land use changes are approved for political reasons rather than a determination of the community’s well-being.
“This is on the ballot. We are going to have this fight,” said Davis. “I think we should prepare up front, if there are lands that the port or airport know should be or are potentially going to head in a certain direction, we need to prepare up front. We want to have our ducks in a row, because we would have to wait until the next regularly scheduled election to change any type of land use change.”
356-2466