“My comments were not meant that I do not think we need to plan. We do. I want the planning done at the local level… I don’t want to become a part of a region that they then determine our plan.”

Commissioner Frannie Hutchison made these comments to a standing-room-only crowd at a special meeting to discuss a Seven50 plan that transforms seven Florida counties into “sustainable communities” as dictated by the United Nations.

In those three hours, I witnessed one of the most amazing examples of Self-Governance in action.

Interestingly enough, the agenda had community input scheduled before their power point presentation, a bit disconcerting. Not only would the polished professionals get the “last say,” they could discount the citizens’ arguments by saying we just didn’t “understand” the plan.

In the end, due to the hard work of an newly formed “American Coalition 4 Property Rights,” the citizens’ prevailed in a 4 to 1 vote when St. Lucie County followed the lead of Indian River County and opted out of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) obligating them to implement the Seven50 plan.

The main reasons for counties and localities withdrawing from Seven50 are:

  • Lower population density areas do not want to be regulated by the needs of large metropolitan areas.
  • Citizens want local self-governance and are not comfortable accepting a plan for which Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency paid $4.25 million.
  • Citizens want to ensure fiscal responsibility and job promotion in their future plans, both of which are nonexistent in Seven50.

The question remains: Will Martin, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties also withdraw from the Seven 50 (Five 50) plan? They should.

As the truth emerges, voters and taxpayers are increasingly deciding this is neither a plan for prosperity nor one that gives the public a right to participate in the local decision-making process.

Thankfully, the American Coalition 4 Property Rights will be leading the effort against Seven50!

For more information and to learn some best practices for property rights battles like these, click these links:

Examples of regional planning efforts (gone wrong) led by HUD, EPA, and DOT:

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.