As most St. Pete Beach residents know, our City was sued after we voted on a Comprehensive Plan in 2008: the main charge against the City was that its 75 word ballot summary describing the Comp plan was misleading.
When Judge Demers issued his ruling in the case, he ruled partly in favor of the City and partly against the City. When ruling against the City, the Judge found that the City's 75 word ballot summaries describing the City's 100 page comprehensive plan needed to include more information to satisfy the disclosure requirements of Florida election law.
After Judge Demers' decision was issued, some folks have said they think the City deceived the voters...that the City could, and should, have drafted 75-word ballot summaries that provided all of the necessary description of the City's proposed 100 page comprehensive plan according to Florida law.
I wasn't so sure. My gut says it would be next to impossible to create a 75-word ballot summary of a comp plan that cannot be challenged in Court, but since Judge Demers made some very specific comments in his opinion about what he thought was missing from the summaries, I decided to find out for myself whether it is possible to follow Judge Demers' opinion and revise the ballot summaries to include all of the missing disclosures and still satisfy the 75 word limit imposed by Florida law.
The more I looked into this the more I saw what I'm now calling The St. Pete Beach Paradox: Our City Charter requires that we vote on comprehensive plans and amendments, but Florida law requires that putting those plans on the ballot requires a 75 word ballot summary...yet putting Judge Demers' rulings into practice forces the city to add more information than can be condensed into 75 words.
In other words, adding sufficient words to a ballot summary to provide full disclosure in satisfaction of Judge Demers's standards causes the City to violate the 75-word rule, and attempting to satisfy the 75-word rule by deleting words from the ballot summary causes the City to violate Judge Demers' disclosure rules...thus creating an endless loop of election law violations that the City cannot ever hope to avoid.
Please click on the video link below to see a short video where I describe what I found:
Comp plan ballot summary:
ReplyDeleteOrdinance 2008-10 transmits a Comprehensive Plan Amendment designating a Community Redevelopment District providing goals, objectives, policies, permitted uses, densities, intensities, and heightS UP TO 146 FEET, standards encouraging commercial and temporary lodging uses; provides green standards for redevelopment promoting energy efficiency and conservation, public beach access, evacuation requirements, and enables impact fees. After state review, the City Commission may adopt, reject, or change the Amendment to comply with state law. Should Ordinance 2008-10 be adopted?
Ken:
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for commenting...I appreciate your contribution! Rather than trying to cram my comments into this tiny comment box, I've devoted a new blogpost to discussing your suggested ballot language.
Please feel free to continue our discussion on the new post...I welcome your input!
Kevin, The following unnecessary words were intended to pander to the voters and evidence in the trial showed that SOLV did a phone survey to utilize the buzz words necessary to obtain voter approval. Every issue below was in the top 5 positive responses in that survey, which is available for all to see if you care to post it.
ReplyDelete"provides green standards for redevelopment promoting energy efficiency and conservation, public beach access, evacuation requirements, and enables impact fees."
If you or any readers would truly like to understand the argument opposing the ballot summaries, I'll gladly post our "closing argument" to the judge. It includes a discussion of all of the issues and shows an intent to deceive. SOLV and the City actually argued to the judge that the comp plan did not require the city to adopt the height standards (up to 146 feet in the large resort district) so a reference to height was not necessary in the comp plan summary. However, but both Bonfield and Holley testified that the way the comp plan was written the city WAS required to adopt the increase in height in the land development regulations. The judge saw through all of the deception...and it was very apparent at trial.
And, this posted discussion has conveniently omitted the other referenda items, for example,why was the 146 foot height increase not included in the Large Resort District ballot language below? Because SOLV and the city were worried that the voters wouldn't approve it. Why else omit 146 feet in the district which everyone admits included the height increase.
It was this clear intention to deceive which became apparent throughout the trial....which I note NOT ONE commissioner attended....NOT ONE...perhaps because it was the forum for truth and not propaganda.
Ordinance 2008-11 immediately adopts Land Development Code amendments establishing Large Resort district regulations that provide permitted uses, density intensity, and height standards for redevelopment of temporary lodging, commercial and residential uses. Ordinance 2008-11 preserves the maximum height of fifty feet for residential uses, prohibits variances for increased height of structures without voter approval, and provides green standards for redevelopment promoting energy efficiency and conservation, increased setbacks and public beach access. Should Ordinance 2008-11 be adopted?
I am curious why my reply posts don't appear.
ReplyDelete