"HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY WILL BLEED OUR STATE OF JOBS

700 affordable homes for seniors in the heart of
Pembroke Pines. This important project will make a difference for hundreds of seniors and working families in my community. It will
improve their quality-of-life and ensure that they can continue to live in Pembroke Pines.
If "Hometown Democracy" had been the law of the land, this would nothave been possible.
This affordable housing area required changes to our city's "comprehensive land use plan." Under "Hometown Democracy," articulating
a vision for the project and ensuring implementation would have beenred-tape ridden, if not impossible altogether. As a result, our city would have lost an important quality-of-life improvement.This may not be what the folks behind Florida Hometown Democracy want.
But it is exactly what we'll get. Under this amendment, it would be quite common for residents of my city-and countless other communities-to face 300 technical plan changes
on a single ballot. According to the Department of Community Affairs,Florida has averaged over 10,000 comprehensive plan changes each year
for the last four years. Under this amendment, each of those changes would have been
individually placed on the ballot.
Hometown Democracy supporters say that these plan changes are motivated by greedy developers. In some cases, that may be true. However, that is not the case in Pembroke Pines. In fact, it is not the case with the
vast majority of important public projects that are inspired by a desireto help people.
I agree with those who say we can improve growth management. However,
Hometown Democracy is a step in the wrong direction.If adopted, this amendment will make things harder on working families.
It will cost jobs, ruin affordable housing, slow our economy and ensurethat economic downturn becomes the new status quo.
FRANK ORTIS is the Mayor of Pembroke Pines, President of the Florida State Council of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and a board member with the Florida AFL-CIO.


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