By Peter Johnson, Amelia Island Association

“Opponents of the Hometown Democracy Amendment (A4) to the state’s constitution repeatedly point to the experience of the city of St Pete Beach as proof that Amendment 4 will not work for Florida. This newspaper printed this point of view on October 14. It’s worth taking a hard look at St Pete Beach to understand the irrelevancy of the comparison.

It turns out that this beachfront city of 10,000 in Pinellas County mirrors, in many ways, the deep divide in Florida between developers and residents on growth management. The argument in St Pete Beach began years ago – - well before Floridians began petitioning for Amendment 4 because their elected officials saw the world too frequently through the eyes of the development community. When the Amendment 4 came along a few years ago, the St Pete Beach community was already split between the developers and the residents. The developers and hotel interests wanted to increase the height limits for beachfront hotels and raise certain population densities. On the other side were the city’s residents, who preferred their quaint beach side community as it was. The city commission approved the changes requested by the developers..

In 2006, because the city charter allows that “citizens can call for a vote on any adopted ordinance”, a citizens’ group collected petition signatures to reverse the city commission’s approvals. Pro-development forces then formed a counter group and the scene was set for conflict between the two sides with no process in place to resolve the differences.

The hotel-backed candidates won the commission election in March, 2008. The new commission adopted a set of referendum items for the June 2008 ballot that were obviously favorable to the development interests. The development interests narrowly won the election approving the hotel- backed referenda.