A once-small group of Floridians frustrated with their local elected officials over land-use decisions now numbers more than 300,000 citizens who have signed a petition supporting the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment.

The amendment is focused on reducing the number of local comprehensive plan changes by giving voters an opportunity to veto them. In letters to papers in Florida, the James Madison Institute, Florida Chambers of Commerce, and others have called the initiative "draconian," "impractical," "extreme" and "severe." If that argument doesn't work, then land-use decisions are called "too complex" for the general public to understand.  

There is some merit in these responses, but not enough to dismiss the concept of Hometown Democracy outright.

Florida communities and environmental resources have suffered from permissive development policies heavily subsidized on the back end by taxpayer. We now have aquifer contamination and polluted springs, from Wakulla to Wekiva. The St. Johns River Water Management District is telling Jacksonville that its drinking water resource could pass its sustainable level after six years. The Southwest Water Management District, which includes 16 counties, has spent $200 million to help restore 3,000 acres of wetlands, forests and waterways. We're spending $160 million right here in Tallahassee to offset water contamination from previous and planned development.

Florida's sprawling development now has us consuming 400 acres of farmland a day and more energy than New York.

We're in a multi-billion shortfall with our transportation infrastructure, and one of the answers is to privatize more road building. Coastal developments can't get insured, so the rest of us are insuring them. Central Florida is expected to experience explosive growth, and a continuation of the land-use decisions there will overrun areas that shouldn't even be developed.

Sarasota County, in the midst of its Sustainable Sarasota initiative, has proposed to rein in growth by requiring super-majority commission votes on some large or intensive developments. The Marion County school superintendent says that, for schools there to catch up to the need for more facilities, the county would have to stop growing for the next three years.

We're talking an extreme and severe use of taxpayer money.

As a local planning commissioner, I dread a process that is bent toward approving development at a rate that is expensive for existing residents and communities. Instead of having to prove a certificate of need, a development can merely meet the letter of the law. This obligates a community to take on developments of questionable economic, social, and sustainable value. The "spirit" of the law is lost. If the effort to balance concerns such as economic development and environmental quality, and public needs with private interests, were truly working, we surely would not be spending our public tax dollars on cleaning up springs, adding portables to schools, and fighting over who pays for crossing guards.

The reality is that growth management in Florida is causing more communities to lose what makes them unique and to become more homogenized, more sprawled out and more costly. Any public gain is quickly swallowed by new public costs to support new residents.

The new and well-meaning secretary of the Department of Community Affairs, Tom Pelham, has expressed his intent to improve the planning process. He can do it, but not alone. In the background of our planning woes, efforts to weaken the public sector have been successful. Legislation has been passed that stops votes, cuts down on amendments, limits petitions and revokes signatures. The ranks of public servants, including land-use planners, have been thinned, outsourced and micromanaged at all levels.

This notion of less government has been well at work in Florida. We must be reminded, however, that whether it is based in good intentions or simply an infatuation with cutting taxes, there are costs from a loss of oversight and a cut in services.

There is no constitutional right to pollute, or to build for private gain that leaves public expenditures. There are two things you can accomplish by supporting the petition for a Florida Hometown Democracy Act: You can preserve your public involvement and right to petition, and you can send a message to local and state officials that the status quo with land-use planning is not good enough. Not by a long shot.

Sign the petition. This should give Mr. Pelham the public backing to make substantive legislative changes to Florida's comprehensive planning process before the amendment comes up for a vote. You still can vote No on the November 2008 ballot.

Speed up building permits, panel says
By THOMAS R. COLLINS
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 17, 2007
WEST PALM BEACH — A panel of building professionals is recommending a host of changes to speed the city's issuing of permits, saying procedures are painfully slow and discourage potential development.
But the group is in a standoff with Building Official Neil Melick, who says having people in the building industry propose changes is "like getting the fox to guard the henhouse."
Melick says some of the recommendations could put the public at risk by allowing unsafe buildings. One of the proposals - setting deadlines for issuing permits - amounts to illegal interference with the permitting process, he says.
Because time is money in the construction business, every city draws complaints from builders about hassles with permitting.
But in West Palm Beach, the complaints have grown increasingly bitter, particularly during the past year.
Builders say West Palm Beach takes far longer to issue permits than other cities, although the panel did not compile comparisons.
Melick and city plan reviewers don't dispute that, but they say architects, engineers and other professionals are to blame for crafting faulty plans.
The tension prompted Mayor Lois Frankel to assemble the panel this year. Its recommendations were finalized last week.

Former state Rep. Sharon Merchant, whom Frankel asked to chair the panel, predicted a full house when the recommendations are presented to city commissioners at 4 p.m. Tuesday at city hall.
"It's one professional's opinion versus another professional's opinion," she said. "It's been brewing for some time."
Commissioner Molly Douglas, a Realtor who has been an advocate for property owners, including some she represents, said changes are needed regardless of who's to blame.
"What I care about is that we have a system that is flawed," she said.
"People can be held up for months and months and months and months and there has to be a user-friendly way that that isn't necessary."
In addition to Melick, the panel members comprise four construction professionals, two architects, an engineer, the head of a company that processes permits for contractors, Chamber of Commerce President Dennis Grady, and Merchant, vice president of a company that rents equipment to construction companies.
Melick scoffed at the panel's suggestion of changes to how he does his job, because many of the members have a financial interest in getting permits quickly.
"That doesn't make much sense, does it?" he said.
Merchant, who chose the panel members, said she didn't consider including people who don't know about building and permitting.
"It's sort of complicated," she said. "I don't know how much value there would be to try to learn it as you went."
In their boldest proposal, panel members say Melick should be forced to strictly adhere to deadlines for issuing permits or face "consequences for failure to meet the required schedules."
Melick says such a system would violate a Florida statute that doesn't allow anyone to "threaten, coerce, trick, persuade, or otherwise influence" a plan reviewer.
He said he's never been shown any examples of permits delayed for any reason other than that the project wasn't in compliance with the Florida Building Code.
"The people we're here for are the citizens - the citizens," he said. "We're here to make sure that person is safe in the building he works in."
City called too strict
Melick is known as a no-nonsense official who allows little wiggle room when it comes to enforcing the Florida Building Code.
He once forced city Police Chief Delsa Bush to pay four times the regular permit fee when her contractor began work on a fence at her home without first getting a permit. Melick said the fee increase is allowed under the code and he makes no exceptions.
Last year, business owners complained that the city was too strict in interpreting the code on hurricane-proofing for awnings, such as going against a nonbinding opinion of the Building Officials Association of Florida.
Merchant said Melick might be too rigid in his reading of the code.
"All of that is up to interpretation," she said. "I think there's some latitude. There's some 'mays' and not all of them are 'shalls.' And he takes a very conservative approach."
Lately, builders and developers say they've had enough, describing a process that's not only harsh but chaotic. They complain that a common situation is that they submit plans, then fix the problems, only to have new problems pointed out that weren't previously identified.
After developer Gary Goldstein's plans for townhouses along Broadway were failed by plan reviewers in every discipline - from mechanical to plumbing to electrical - for a third time, he sent a frustrated e-mail to Douglas, the commissioner.
"We either have the most incompetent architects and engineers or the problem lies with the city permit process," Goldstein wrote.
The architect on the project, David Lawrence, said it's more difficult to get a permit in West Palm Beach's Construction Services Department "than any department in the state of Florida."
"That doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong, that's just a fact," he said.
Jim Madravazakis said he abandoned a plan this year to open a burger joint in Pleasant City after plans were returned five times - the latest requiring $60,000 worth of changes.
He thought he'd have the place open in the summer of 2005.
On a four-unit residential project, he got building permits after a year and a half. During an inspection after construction began, he was told he needed metal hurricane straps to brace the wood - an $8,000 requirement, he said.
He wonders how the plan reviewers overlooked something that significant in the first place.
"They don't know what they're looking for," Madravazakis said. "They're making people's lives miserable."
Madravazakis has shared his woes with Douglas.
But Douglas' advocacy has led to tension between her and City Administrator Ed Mitchell, who has defended city staff.
When Douglas forwarded Goldstein's complaints about the townhouse project in July, Mitchell replied to her, "If the plans do not pass inspection the Dept has not failed, the developer has."
Douglas replied: "I respectfully request that you re-think your answer, it is not acceptable to me ... this issue can no longer be dealt with in the manner you just exhibited."
Mitchell then scheduled a meeting between the developers and the staff.
In October, Douglas sent an e-mail to Mitchell about a house she had on the market, saying the potential buyer was told they'd need an architect's, contractor's and engineer's inspections for a bathroom that had been in use for at least eight years but had never been permitted.
"I think that's a little harsh," she wrote to Mitchell. "Can you help remedy the situation?"
Panelist: City not to blame
City Attorney Claudia McKenna said commissioners generally are allowed to make inquiries but not to use their position to influence city action.
Douglas said she wasn't exerting influence but only wanted city staff to tell the prospective owner about the city's requirements.
"I never intimated that I didn't want them to have to get a permit," she said.
Melick is not at odds with the panel on every suggestion.
City staffers recently took a course on consumer relations, which the panel recommended. He supports changes to a city ordinance to further encourage contractors to hire private plan reviewers, which might speed the process.
But he doesn't agree that the city should reduce fees for contractors who hire those reviewers.
In fact, he supports increasing permit fees so the city can hire more of its own plan reviewers, which the panel is recommending against.
Melick isn't the only one who thinks the panel's process was tainted.
Neyita Fuentes-Leiva, a panelist who runs a company that processes permits for contractors, refused to sign the recommendations, although an introductory letter from Merchant says the report is "unanimously supported."
Fuentes-Leiva, a former city plan reviewer, said the group should have examined the cause of delays in specific cases rather than accepting the complaints as valid.
Many times, it takes a year or more for permits to be issued because it takes months for the project designers to resubmit the plans once the city points out problems, she said.
She said the idea of deadlines for issuing permits is troubling.
"If you just issue a permit and it's not code-compliant, you're not doing your job," she said. "If anything happened and a building collapsed, who do you think's going to be held responsible?"
But Jim Anstis, who teaches architecture at Florida Atlantic University and led a subcommittee that crafted the timeline proposal, said the city's reputation as slow indicates that there must be a problem.
"If West Palm Beach is right, then all the rest of these (cities) are wrong. And that's just not the case," Anstis said.
In an e-mail response to questions, Frankel wrote that she supports Melick.
She said she'll wait to hear the discussion Tuesday before deciding whether to support the recommendations, but pointed out that the department performed 17,000 plan reviews and 36,000 inspections last year.
"I have heard from both sides many times," she wrote. "It is my understanding that our staff has a full load."
A need for speed?
Nearly all of the members of a task force recommending major changes to speed the city's building permit process are involved locally in construction. The members are:
Sharon Merchant, chair: Equipment Rental Service, rents equipment to construction companies
Kevin Butler: Butler Construction
Calvin Campbell: Campbell Branch, construction
Ron Davis: Hardie Industries, construction
Neyita Fuentes-Leiva: License & Permitting Services, helps construction companies process permits
Dennis Grady: president of Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches
Gary Hennings: The Weitz Company, construction
Wayne Johnson: JLRD, electrical and mechanical engineering
Neil Melick: West Palm Beach building official
Keith Spina: Oliver Glidden Spina & Partners, architecture
Paul Twitty: Schwab Twitty & Hanser Architectural Group
Building their arguments
On many points, the city department that issues building permits doesn't agree with a panel of construction professionals that is suggesting changes to the permitting process. Here are the major recommendations from the panel and the department's responses:
Panel: Permits should be issued within two to 30 days, depending on the type of project involved.
Response: Turnaround goals are fine, but mandated timelines would violate a state statute that doesn't allow anyone to 'threaten, coerce, trick, persuade, or otherwise influence'a plan reviewer.

Panel: When plan reviewers are unable to meet required timelines, private plan reviewers should be used.
Response: The department couldn't afford to pay for the private reviewers, even if permit fees are increased.
Panel: When builders use private plan reviewers to speed the approval process, which is allowed under state law, the city should reduce fees to encourage use of the private reviewers.
Response: The department is recommending changes to city codes that might lead to private reviewers being used more often, but says fees won't be decreased.
Panel: A consultant should be hired to work with the department to improve customer service.
Response: The department is developing a customer service course for its staff.
Panel: Don't increase permit fees.
Response: Fees should be increased so that more staff can be hired to speed permitting.
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