Floridians will be voting soon to decide if any changes to local land use plans will need to be approved by a voter referendum. The ballot language states that Amendment 4 “establishes that before a local government may adopt a new comprehensive land use plan, or amend a comprehensive land use plan, the proposed plan or amendment shall be subject to vote of the electors of the local government by referendum.” Blogger Scott Judy of ENR reports that the the statewide annual average for amendments to land-use plans was nearly 8,000 between 2001 and 2005.

Can you imagine the effect the passage of this state constitutional amendment would have on construction? Say you’re an Owner considering all the risks of developing an apartment community, or an industrial park, or even a church. Since site conditions and project needs often vary so widely, it’s fairly common to need some sort of relief from the “One size fits all planning codes”. So before you get too far into the project, you’re told that a voter referendum will be needed to approve your project. To proceed, you’d likely have to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete the design so you could adequately answer all the questions, while knowing the the voters could just vote no.

What would you do? You’d go somewhere else…or do something else. The risk/reward would be so skewed that projects won’t even be proposed. How can people be this stupid?

The folks at Florida Hometown Democracy were kind enough to post a YouTube video to explain.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWMXPWwrchU&feature=player_embedded#!

We are already a society that hasn’t built a new nuclear plant, chemical plant or quarry in years. Are we going to continue on that trajectory?