John Moore on the CMU
Land use laws should be fair, predictable and cost-effective -- the current CMU ordinance is none of these things
-- Vice-Mayor John Moore, published to the web on 11/11/05
-- jmoore@ci.venice.fl.us

On November 8, 2005, Venice City Council passed into law the controversial Conditional Mixed Use ordinance. The vote to pass the ordinance was 4-3, with Mayor Dean Calamaras, Bill Willson. Fred Hammett and John Simmonds voting in favor of the ordinance. Voting against passage of the ordinance were Vice-Mayor John Moore, Vicki Taylor and Rick Tacy.

Speaking for the dissenting minority just before the final vote, Moore (photo at right) stated in great detail why he is opposed to the ordinance.

The following is a transcription of Vice-MayorJohn Moore's full comments.

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You can't get there from here
I don't think there's been any secret that throughout this entire process, I've had a great deal of difficulty in how we went about arriving at this ordinance. I would have much preferred that we had done it through a workshop forum rather than on the dais up here in open council meetings.

Notwithstanding all of the efforts of staff and council to try to amend and modify what was originally given to us, I have to say that I don't think we have created a very good ordinance. The wording is very loose, the intent is very vague and ambiguous and, frankly, the implementation of the ordinance itself is very subjective.

I'm a strong believer in mixed use, especially for the city of Venice. I can't think of any concept of development that would be better suited to the seaboard district along the Intracoastal [Waterway], Venice Avenue and Business 41. But I don't think we're going to get there with this ordinance.

What this ordinance does at best is [that] it provides an opportunity for a developer to bid on something. Basically, the developer comes into the city and says, 'This is what I want to do.' The city says, 'Well, this is what we want you to do,' and so we start negotiating through the staff, through the planning commission, through city council -- we negotiate each and every term of this development agreement even to the extent of the number of condominiums, the size of the units, the number of bedrooms, the fixtures in the bathrooms and the kitchen.

In my candid opinion, I don't think that city council does a very good job of that. I think all you have to do is look at all the difficulty we have in trying to develop our parks, for example. So, I think trying to get true mixed use out of this is going to be a very, very difficult and tedious process.

Fair, predictable and cost-effective
The consensus of the discussions that I've had with developers and attorneys and citizens is that land development ordinances should be fair, they should be predictable and they should be cost-effective.

I don't think this ordinance satisfies any of those criteria. It's certainly not predictable, there's absolutely nothing predictable about it. What is going to happen is that you're going to negotiate [that] the sky is the limit.

What really, really troubles me about it is the fact that on any given day, one developer can negotiate a development with the city which may, and probably will be, entirely different from a development that that same developer, or somebody else, might negotiate with the city in six months or in a year.

My question to council: Is this going to be a fair process?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

If it is not fair, then I believe [that] the city is setting itself up to be sued for being arbitrary and capricious in the disposal of development rights among developers. In essence, when the city creates one of these binding development agreements, that agreement is going to set a precedent that the city is going to have to consider along with everything else when the next development proposal comes along.

So, if somebody comes in with two acres on Business 41 and they get a proposal, then we're going to have to be very careful about what happens on the other side of the Hatchett Creek Bridge when another developer walks in with a two-acre development over there.

Sliding down the slippery slope
I think this is a very slippery slope. If it were up to me (obviously I'm only one of seven), I would have done what I've done many times when I was sitting on the bench when I got into a situation where I was uncomfortable [and] I wasn't sure of where I was going, and that certainly qualifies with this ordinance in my mind. I would take a recess, step back and do the research, maybe grant a continuance and take the time necessary to do it right, to make sure about the decision that I was making.

If it were up to me, I would disapprove the ordinance at this point. What I would do is schedule some workshops, bring in an independent consultant who could help us, maybe look at some ordinances and some plans and developments that have been done successfully in other communities and then, along with input from both developers as well as the citizens, try to hammer out an ordinance that was, in fact, fair and predictable and clear.

This is not that kind of ordinance.

I'm not very proud of our work product in creating this ordinance. I couldn't be true to myself if I voted in favor of it.

John Moore is a former trial judge from the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is in his second term as a councilman on the Venice City Council and is currently the city's Vice-Mayor.