In what will be a bitter pill for Gainesville City Commissioners, the Supervisor of Elections plans to certify the petition count results that will allow a charter amendment on the ballot that overturns the city’s new provisions that allow anyone to use any public restroom based on an inner sense of their own sexuality. The city must hold a special election not less than 90 days after certification, and that date is not yet known. It would be most logical, and cost effective, to hold it on the same day as the 2009 city elections.
The certification will be announced Monday, August 18th, at that day’s Gainesville City Commission meeting. Details will follow.
Before I left for vacation, I did not have much hope for the ballot initiative that would give Gainesville voters the chance to reject the gender identity clause in its civil rights ordinance. And when I got home and saw that the corner of 13th Street and 16th Ave was pretty much owned by the signature gatherers, I was still skeptical. But I was wrong. The group, Citizens for Good Public Policy, had kicked on the after-burners when things looked darkest, and got the signatures they needed plus about 3,000 more. They now await verification by the Supervisor of Elections Office. This can take up to 45 days.
Presuming that there is not a failure rate of over 35% (signatures thrown out because the person does not live in the city limits, or otherwise does not match the official voter registration information), this spells doom for the ordinance, that the city commission passed in January, over the howls of protest of many irate citizens and business owners. And that’s not all. If it turns out that 6 or 7 thousand citizens who cared enough to sign the petitions also show up at the polls, they will constitute a new majority in what is usually a forgotten March election. And if these same people get in the habit of voting in the Forgotten Election, it could mean a sea change in Gainesville City government. But that will only happen if several of them decide to actually run for the city commission and take a turn at governing, which takes a much bigger commitment than what happened this week.
With just two weeks to go to get their ballot initiative qualified, the Citizens for Good Public Policy are a long way from getting it done. They need 5,581 signatures by July 29, and so far they have collected only 1,847. And it gets worse. Of the 1,190 that have been checked so far by the office of the Supervisor of Elections, only 738 are valid city residents, which means they have had an exceptionally high failure rate of 38%. I got these numbers from SOE just yesterday by going down there and talking to one of the clerks.
I am, by nature, a suspicious person, so I asked why there was such a high failure rate. The clerk I spoke with said tha t she can only speak for the petitions that she had personally checked, and she said that it was residency that kept tripping people up. My other question was where this 5,581 number came from to begin with. She said that it needed 10% of the registered voters in the city to sign petitions. When I ran for a county-wide office in 2002, I only needed 1260 signatures, or 1% of the registered voters, to get on the ballot. Why was there such a high threshold for this item? And if it’s because it’s a law and not a candidate, did the two charter amendments on the city’s 2003 ballot both have to pass the same test? I could not get an answer to that at this time, but SOE is certainly welcome to have their day on this website.
I found the failure rate stunning, but sadly believable. People who are not used to engaging the system make a lot of mistakes. When I get signatures for a candidate, I always have to double check their work, and I frequently find unfilled blanks and information that does not match their voter ID. And most of the voters I have encountered are not even aware that their precinct numbers and voting districts are all on their voter IDs in their wallets. Volunteers really have to know what they are doing, or they do a lot of work for nothing.
Of course, if you do the math you can see that 4800 more signatures needed divided by 14 days (about 343) divided by 20 volunteers makes a little over 17 signatures per volunteer per day. It’s still a tough number, but it shows how steady, careful effort can get it done.
Local politics is about to get nastier in Gainesville. It all began when the City Commissioners ambushed the general public with it’s highly controversial “transgender rights” amendment to the City’s anti-discrimination policies. Without seeking the usual public input they get before putting in a restaurant drive-through lane, Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan and Commissioners Jack Donovan, Jeanna Mastrodicasa, and Craig Lowe insisted that this ordinance had to pass. Since then, a new group has formed to get a binding referendum on the ballot that would let Gainesville voters annul that decision.
Citizens For Good Public Policy, led by former State House candidate Cain Davis, needs 5,581 petition signatures to get this on the Spring ballot for 2009 City of Gainsville elections. This should not be hard to do, considering the noise that this ordinance raised. But there is a speed bump on the road to their success: intimidation tactics that raise questions about the reputations of the signers. Are they all bigots?Are they guilty of something terrible for wanting a choice?
An eyewitness account of a single petition gatherer being harassed and shouted down and vilified at Fanfare & Fireworks by a group of gay-rights proponents may give would-be signers second thoughts. (If anyone has video of this, please contact me!) Just wanting this item on the ballot is enough to have you labeled as a bigot, a homophobe, or a hate-monger. And since these petitions are a matter of public record, they could be obtained and used for purposes of revenge. One group of pro-gay-rights activists are listing the names and addresses of Florida Marriage Protection Amendment petition signers on a website called KnowThyNeighbor.Org. If there is a purpose for this other than intimidation, I’d like to know what it is. And will there be a similar attempt to smear the signers of the local petition?
I am not the least bit ashamed to say that I signed the petition to repeal the transgender ordinance. I didn’t do it because I hate gay or transgender people. I did it because it’s the only way to force the city commissioners to do what they should have done to begin with: have a full and complete discussion with their constituents about the problem and how to solve it instead of just calling us names. Accusing people of good will of hatred in order to get your way is bad policy, and it should cost you an election.
If this issue makes it to the ballot, Jeanna Mastrodicasa will be facing an opponent who will be the beneficiary of the larger-than-usual turnout that it will surely generate. She has already opened her campaign account for the 2009 race. So far, she has no opponent.
I saw this, and many other signs on the fence surrounding West Side Park this Saturday morning. It was part of a large demonstration by the local Veterans For Peace chapter. By “large demonstration”, I mean it had a huge sign presence that stretched for at least 50 yards along the fence. I’m not sure that there were more than 12-18 actual demonstrators.
I took this picture and bring this up because I remember that in 2002, as a County Commission candidate with little money, I asked the parks department if I could set up a political rally in this tax-payer funded space. I needed to be able to access the public and allow them to have access to me so I could share my platform personally. I was refused. I was told: “No political rallies.”
Well, things must have changed. Or perhaps it is purely a case of selective enforcement. I’d love to have them weigh in on this site and let me know.
In 2002, I learned the hard way about the antipathy that candidates must face. The Girl Scouts can sell cookies in a shopping center, and certain selected “charities” of dubious veracity can set up a table in that shopping center, and anyone seems to be able to set up a car wash, but a local candidate is told “no” on the grounds that then they will have have to let them all do it.
Besides the fact that this is an irrational fear (most candidates are unwilling to give that kind of access, nor can they all be omnipresent at multiple shopping centers) , it is one that the centers do not take into account when allowing the aforementioned groups to squat on their property.
I remember well how humiliating it was to be chased off from any venue where there was a line forming because I dared to gather signatures to get on the ballot. The people I approached did not complain. It was always the manager of the theater, or whatever.
So, why is it that a candidate is the only one who has to pay for his or her “free speech”? We are told to use direct mail and advertising, but then we are vilified for raising the money to pay for that advertising. It is the height of hypocrisy. Or perhaps it is something that no one ever thinks about.
And that is part of the reason why I created this site. It’s a totally free venue where the candidates can say whatever they want. What remains to be seen is if they will use what is free, or just keep raising money.
Below is a map of proposed roads in Alachua County. The new ones are yellow. Please weigh in and take our Latest Poll.
Tuesday night, November 27, at 5pm the Alachua County Commission will be meeting to discuss approving the “Future Traffic Circulation Corridors Map”. I got this from the Save Millhopper Road group that was instrumental in slamming the lid on the Spring Hills development.
If you haven’t been following the Spring Hills saga, it’s about a large planned development that would have brought a lot of shopping to North West Gainesville. This could have cut down on a some of the congestion on Newberry Road and Archer Road, and saved a lot of trips for North West Alachua County residents. However, a vocal and influential minority made an impressive showing at a May 1st meeting, and the County Commissioners decided to disapprove the plan they had decided to approve a long time ago.
I know this sounds like a great David and Goliath story, but I don’t believe it’s like that at all. Actually, Goliath is the huge political organization that arises every time someone tries to put up shopping or build roads in Western Alachua County. That organization is the coalition of “green” groups that never met a development they liked, other than the ones in which they live. These new roads, to hear them complain, have no redeeming value at all. They only bring harm to the environment. Forget that such roads may actually reduce congestion on the main roads we use now by giving people other options. Forget that time saved in gas-burning vehicles reduces auto emissions. No, there is always some gloom and doom argument made for roads:
“Drinking water for a large part of North Central Florida is threatened with pollution because the roads would crisscross the aquifer that is literally exposed on the surface or thinly shielded, a problem made more serious by abundant sinkholes that perforate the land.” -Coalition for Responsible Growth, November 24 email.
Frankly, this is the kind of rhetoric that comes up whenever anything is going to be built. And it ratchets all the way up to one Gainesville City Commissioner’s “nuclear devastation” charge against the Spring Hills development. Is there no sensible approach that gives both sides something? Can at least some of these roads be built?
Since “Big Green” will fight each and every road on a case by case basis, the average person, with a low tolerance for “protest fatigue”, will roll over and decide he or she does not want to look bad. That is why we need to elect sensible people who will take a stand and make decisions that are good for all of us. And that is why you and I need to pay attention and see what candidates will do that.
There is a ballot initiative working its way through the pipeline. It has about half the signatures it needs so far, and it’s sponsor, Florida Hometown Democracy, is working hard to get it done. Here is their Youtube offering:
This story was originally brought to my attention by an article in the High Springs Herald. In it, mayors of Alachua and High Springs are asked about the wisdom of having a voter referendum on every comprehensive plan change, and they are against it. So, is it a bad idea? Or is it just a case of elected officials guarding their turf?I first started paying attention to growth issues in 2001, when I decided that I wanted to be a better citizen and learn about my local government. It was just then that our own Comprehensive Plan was under attack as being too restrictive on private property rights. The next year, two of the incumbent county commissioners who were responsible for that plan were turned out in their party’s primary.That year, the forces of growth and no-growth had fought to portray growth in diametrically opposed ways. And since it was a county wide vote, the breaks went toward the growth side. People who own land in the unincorporated area don’t like a lot of restrictions on their land, whether they are living on it, or if it’s an investment. The environmentalists who portrayed growth as a habitat holocaust lost the argument with the general public, but they have not gone away.
Anti-growth forces are now flexing their muscle through the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) factor. They succeeded in getting the brakes applied to the Spring Hill development by marshaling the fears along Millhopper Road that their tree canopied, single-lane road needed to be saved from the ravages of development. If this amendment is passed, all plan changes, “shall be subject to vote of the electors of the local government by referendum, following preparation by the local planning agency, consideration by the governing body and notice.”
Now, you might ask, “Why does the plan have to be changed so often?” My theory is that the plan is usually crafted with the oversight of the environmentalists and their lawyers. The average person or business owner does not know what’s going on until the activity that he wants to engage in, and that the plan was created to prevent. At this point, the business owner requests a change in the plan, and if it seems reasonable, he or she can usually get it.
Sometimes plans have to be changed because there are loose ends from old plans that need to be tied up. I had a customer who could not get a permit to build a swimming pool because, according to an old plan, a road had been planned to go through her yard. She had to seek the help of a county commissioner to rectify this, since it was impossible for this road to be built anyway.
Regardless of which way this goes, it underscores the difference in how people approach growth. People who are for it vote for it with their car trips and their wallets. People who are against it, manipulate the rules to prevent it. The Florida Chamber of Commerce also used Youtube to get out this message: that out of state petition gatherers are hired to get signatures from unsuspecting citizens, even if it requires deception.
If this ballot initiative is passed, who will usually turnout for these local referendums? I suspect it will be the same 10% of local voters who usually think to vote in local elections. They will be those most motivated to use the political process. And that is not the average person
In the continuing saga of Charlie Grapski, the former candidate for Florida State House and Alachua City Commission was released from jail after his hunger strike put him in the hospital after a week. His bond is expected to be reduced, although the bond reduction hearing has yet to take place. Does this make sense to anyone else? Story.
