Answer to Lyin Ryan

ST. PETE BEACH IS NOT THE ‘BEACH’ OF AMENDMENT 4

Ryan Houck, the director of “misnomer,” Floridians for Smarter Growth, continues to tout the results of St. Pete’s placing their revised Comprehensive Plan to referendum as an example of what would happen if Amendment 4 passed in 2010. Frankly, unlike Amendment 4, St. Pete’s Charter allowed referendum without following State Growth Management requirements. Mr. Houck can twist the true “meaning,” the same as does the name of his organization.

The mention of “foresight” in Business leaders and elected officials (in planning the Nona project) brings to mind…just where was this “foresight” when Real Estate businesses sold price-inflated homes (?)…while Banking Business was making loans to people unable to afford them (?) Where was “foresight” of Developers and Building businesses who continued to build more, limiting resources and without revamping infrastructures (?)

Elected Officials sat on their benches, counting tax dollars flowing in, spending it just as fast, approving every comprehensive plan change brought forth; all, without consideration of what would happen, not IF, but WHEN, it came to an end.

If anything has “halted” Florida’s economy today, it is the continued dependence on Growth. As every growth cycle comes and goes, it fails to sustain Florida’s economy; it depletes limited resources, costs taxpayers, and leaves it the transient State it has always been from short-lived jobs.

Mr. Houck’s theory about St. Pete Beach doesn’t apply. But, perhaps, Albert Einstein’s theory of insanity, “to keep doing something over and over again and getting the same results" is more appropriate.

Dori Sutter

Orlando Sentinel Read Letters to the Editor one of which is edited version of Dori's.