Former St Pete Beach mayor warns about the dangers of Amendment Four

On Thursday, October 14, former St. Pete Beach Mayor Ward Friszolowski delivered a cautionary message about the proposed Amendment Four which will appear on the November 2 ballot at a Palms West Chamber of Commerce Forum that took place in the Wellington Community Center. Friszolowski spoke from personal experience due to the fact that a version of Amendment Four had been incorporated into St. Pete’s comprehensive plan a number of years ago, and voters who had voted to approve it by a short margin eventually voted to repeal it.

“Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight,” said Friszolowski. “I want to walk you through what St. Pete Beach experienced and why this happened to St. Pete Beach and give some warnings for the State of Florida if this passes. We are the first and only municipality to have adopted a version of Amendment Four. It was adopted in November of 2006 by our community. We’ve been experiencing this legislation for the past four years.”

Friszolowski explained the makeup of St. Pete Beach and how it was a barrier island on the West Coast of Florida with a fluctuating population of 10,000, and which had a population of 25,000 during its peak season. He also spoke about the comprehensive plan process and how it was a kind of master plan or vision for the community. He explained how the comprehensive plan was a living, working document that changed as the community changed. Over time, he said, there was a reason to go back and look at the comprehensive plan and make changes as the community changed and grew. For St. Pete Beach, he said, it was the fact that the planning process seemed to favor condominiums.

“We were starting to lose those hotels,” said Friszolowski. “They were mom and pop hotels. They were being devoured and changed from condos into hotels. Tourists come to St. Pete Beach and they spend a little cash. They spend money in our restaurants and retail shops. They were supporting our community. We were losing that. We wanted to keep that in our community. We realized our comprehensive plan was antiquated and need to be updated. We were following the state mandated process. We had a lot of community meetings. We looked at where we wanted to be in the future. From 2003 to 2005, we worked with our state planners and other agencies to revise the comprehensive plan. It has to go through a lot of different review agencies. Public hearings are required at each and every one of these steps. There was ample time for people to weigh in on the process. Everything was going well or so we thought until June of 2005.”

In June of 2005, he said, a political action committee called Citizens for Responsible Growth was formed, and they started a petition drive to put a version of Amendment Four on the ballot to be voted on by the residents. Further, he stated, the community voted to approve that ballot item by twenty-two votes so now the community had a version of Amendment Four as a part of its comprehensive plan. After that item passed, he noted, the headaches started for the community because now every single item had to be approved by public referendum, including even little things like whether the community needed to have a new fire truck. The Capital Improvements Plan which was a part of the Comprehensive Plan also had to be opened up to the public process which tied things up for months. That item indicated that before a community could change its comprehensive plan, it had to go to a full public referendum.

“Every year, we have to have a referendum vote on our Capital Improvement Plan,” said Friszolowski. “If you don’t know what it is, that’s the outlay of expenditures for your entire city for the entire year. If we have to have a new fire truck, that becomes a referendum. It hampers and impedes our efforts to do our jobs. The State mandated that we put a water supply in our comprehensive plan. We work with the County on that. We don’t have a water supply so we have to put that in our Comprehensive Plan. So guess what. That has to go to a referendum vote. You start to see a pattern of what is happening.”

Friszolowski also said that the residents of the community which originally supported the passage of the ballot item decided enough was enough, and they got together to try to repeal it. That repeal passed and the community still has a version of Amendment Four but it applies to land use and density, which Friszolowski said, was how it should have been in the first place. The people behind the original ballot measure also tried to sue in court to keep it from happening, and that is still tied up in the court system.

“We don’t have the full version of Amendment Four,” said Friszolowski. “It’s ironic that St. Pete Beach is coming to terms with it, and the State of Florida is thinking of adopting it. It’s very scary for us. We are limited with this to land use and density, which was probably now written the way it should have been written. It was very poorly worded legislation.”

As far as some of his other observations, Friszolowski said that most people voting are well-read and very intelligent, and that included the residents of St. Pete Beach. However, the vote in June 2008, was a vote on the re-write of the community’s comprehensive plan, and that meant that the voters had to read a 175 page technical document. He got a lot of phone calls and emails, and also voters got flyers from different agencies telling them to vote both ways, to vote yes and to vote no. Unfortunately enough, the idea for a public vote was a good one, but special interest groups had a lot of money and they could turn the heads of the voters. The community’s elected officials were supposed to be the gate keepers to keep that from happening as they had the background and the training to understand what was going on, and to stop it.

“I know what they were reading because I was getting stuff in my box,” said Friszolowski. “We had the political action committees sending out flyers. These were political statements. Instead of listening to your elected officials, now you get bombarded by special interest groups. It’s confusing because they are diametrically opposed. One is saying yes, and the other is saying no. Are voters really going to know who to believe. It’s politicizing the issue.”

Friszolowski also said that the ballot item would probably harm small businesses and other agencies who did not have the money to muster up a public relations campaign when they wanted to expand their operations. If you wanted to expand your business, you would have to go through months and maybe years of examination by the public, and the big developer would have the bucks to put out a good public relations campaign and sway the public. The item had the opposite effect of what it intended, he said.

“Dollars win the elections,” said Friszolowski. “They will be able to muster up the campaigns with special interest money. It’s going to be especially harmful to small businesses. If you have a small business, and you are doing well, and you want to expand, and you want to buy the property next to you, you will have to go through a comprehensive plan change. Are you going to have the dollars to be able to hire the special interests that will get the word out. I don’t think you will be able to do that in your community or the County. You may not be able to expand. The bigger developer will have the money.”

Friszolowski said that Amendment Four did not discriminate in the planning process, and there were no exemptions for items such as hospitals or public schools. The item would delay a hospital from expanding for two or three years, and that meant the people needing a hospital would not have the benefits of the facility and the community itself would not have the financial benefits from the hospital. Why delay a good thing like a park or a hospital, he said.

“Why would you want to do that,” said Friszolowski. “Why would you want to delay a hospital or the economic impacts of the hospital. It doesn’t make any sense. There have been seventeen major editorial boards that have also weighed in on this. Seventeen of the seventeen have said no.”

Also, businesses and other agencies are afraid to touch St. Pete Beach because the community is tied up in lawsuits, he said, and that means that the community is experiencing a double whammy from the recession and from the item that was supposed to help the community. St. Pete Beach used to be the poster child for Hometown Democracy, he said, but now the proponents of Amendment Four wanted to distance themselves from the community because it was an experiment gone bad.

“We used to be the poster child for Hometown Democracy,” said Friszolowski. “Back in 2006, they were citing us on their website. Now we are their worst nightmare. We had four years of this. Myself and other elected officials are speaking out against this and warning people about it. The proponents of Amendment Four want to distances themselves from this. We are the closest thing to reality. I jokingly refer to it as the attorneys’ retirement plan. The two co authors are attorneys. Our community has spent up to $750,000 on legal fees just for this one issue. If you were a voter in 2008, your vote still has not counted two and a half years later because of the proponents of Amendment Four. The most disturbing thing is that the people who promised them that their vote would count are now suing them. That is irony beyond belief. I’m asking voters to learn about St. Pete Beach. I would hate to see the State of Florida go through what we’ve gone through.”

After the presentation, Friszolowski asked if there were any question from members of the audience. Western communities resident Michael Axelberd spoke of a recent effort by two planning officials in a neighboring community who tried to jam a business center and a college in the middle of a community when it was not zoned for it despite cautions from residents that they would be voted out if they went against the wishes of the residents.

“Amendment Four can protect us against unscrupulous planning board members,” said Axelberd. “How else are we supposed to protect ourselves. They are supposed to represent the wishes of the constituents. There were about seven hundred people against them, and yet two people on the board who were supposed to represent us stood up and voted what they wanted. These are our elected officials. They are supposed to represent us. It doesn’t seem that we get that. I respect your opinion, and I will think twice about this. But there has to be some way to protect ourselves from this. We said if you vote against us, we will vote you out. They still did not care.”

Kaye Gates, a member of the Sierra Club, said the agency supported Amendment Four, because the agency and other agencies were frustrated with the County Commissioners and City Commissioners going against the wishes of the people in the planning process. There were six former Commissioners from Palm Beach County and West Palm Beach in jail, she said, and it was overwhelming to think that even with the comprehensive plans in place and elected representation, there were still some people that were not doing what they were elected to do but were in there for their own interests. She also said that not every detail would be voted on in a public referendum. Also, she said, when development was approved, the schools and roads were not always put in place until after the fact.

“Amendment four will control development and protect the quality of life,” she said. “We are told that development will improve our way of life. We have to put in roads and schools. It costs the tax payers money. You wind up with higher taxes to build them.”

Friszolowski said he understood the frustration of people, but also asked that people get more involved in the public process and hold their elected officials accountable. He still felt that the charter amendment for St. Pete Beach was an overcorrection and something which did more harm than good in the community.

“We realize we were trying to correct something, and we made it worse,” he said. “It was overwhelmingly revoked. You are going to run a campaign against big developers, and they will win. They bombard everyone with literature. They will win. I have lived in Florida for over twenty-two years. My grandparents go back three generations. I am going around the State of Florida telling people this will make things worse. This is the reason why we voted to repeal it. This will be worse than the current situation.”

For more information about the Palms West Chamber of Commerce, contact them at (561)790-6200 or check out their website at www.palmswest.com.