Alachua Voter Guide

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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.