Come alive, Clermont. You are being betrayed, and the sellout is coming directly from the men you elected to represent you.
Your City Council is doing the bidding of developers, plotting to bring more homes to your hills under the disingenuous guise of "bringing jobs." Are you buying it?
This time, they deliberately are leaving residents out of the process, and they're insulting voters in a stinging way that ought not to be forgotten at election time.
Three weeks ago, four of Clermont's five council members - longtime Mayor Hal Turville was the lone holdout - with straight faces asked Lake County commissioners to remove a "rural" designation on land south of the city, opening 11,000 acres to development.
Eleven-thousand acres. That was not a typo. Commissioners removed the designation from about 5,000 acres, figuring that land would be part of Clermont soon, anyway.
This time, council members want 5,700 acres more, and they want to control it all, a land-grab that could change the destiny of a big chunk of rural land stretching from Clermont to Four Corners.
On Tuesday, Clermont's four council members are returning to county commissioners. This time, they're trying to get in through the back door and they're in a steaming hurry to meet developers' deadlines. Oh, yes! We have to act! We must help developers now! Move it! Never mind that the community has clearly and repeatedly said no. We know what this community needs better than those poor benighted voters.
Their attitude is the height of arrogance.
Here's how it works:
Clermont has an agreement with the County Commission about how to divvy up property south of town along the U.S. Highway 27 corridor in the future. Clermont decided what property it would want to annex and drew a line around it. The county agreed. In return, Clermont was prohibited from taking any other property outside the line.
This process typically is viewed as smart planning. Everybody knows what's going on, and the city can begin to prepare to serve the area with everything from police and fire to road maintenance. No skipping around and creating wacky-shaped protrusions on the map or suddenly gobbling up land that ought to be in other municipalities or the city can't logically serve.
Clermont's council members are heaving this carefully thought-out plan into the trash because developers are in an all-fired hurry, and for no other reason. They will be asking commissioners to enlarge that planning boundary by three miles, which would give Clermont the go-ahead to annex the 5,700 acres immediately.
They say they need the remote land to promote economic development. Never mind that there are about 12 square miles of property east of U.S. Highway 27 and south of State Road 50 that is undeveloped and could be used for the new businesses that supposedly need a home in Clermont this minute.
And these Clermont council members are fidgeting like kids before recess to get it done.
City Manager Wayne Saunders explained why: If Amendment Four passes in November, it would transfer the power of how to use land from elected officials directly to voters. All these big landowners, including the folks who proposed the rejected 5,200-home Karlton development a few years ago, would have to lay their plans before the voters of the county and get approval. No approval? No development.
"There's a very short time frame because all the people annexing want to get a land use in place before November," Saunders said. "That's what they're all scared of."
So the landowners are leaning on Clermont's council to annex these properties fast. Give them a land designation that will allow development - and plenty of it.
Leave it to Turville to point out what should have been obvious to all the council members: "The citizens of Clermont have already voiced their disapproval of developing property south of Clermont.
"The whole reason it's come down to Amendment Four is that the people who would like to be able to voice their opinion aren't happy with the votes of their elected officials."
And so what does the Clermont council propose to do? Vote against the will of the people. "Apparently, my council thinks that people voting on development is a bad idea. They don't trust the people of Clermont to do the right thing," Turville said in an interview. "I do."
And so do I. Voters aren't morons. They'll know if a good development proposal is going to bring jobs.
Council members claim that this vast expanse of land would be used only for economic development - to attract industries that would employ Clermont people. They say they can make sure of it if they take this property under their wing.
Council member Robert Thompson, who owns a public-relations company, detailed how developers easily could sway an election by sending out mailers and dropping money. He said his company shapes public opinion all the time for clients. That's why council members need to take action now.
What an insulting argument. So voters are too much like sheep who can be chased into the right corner by an enthusiastic border collie? One has to wonder whether the little lambs will remember Thompson's remarks at the ballot box.
In his Jan. 12 newsletter to citizens, council member Ray Goodgame wrote, "Don't get your feathers ruffled. This will be an economic area that can bring jobs to Clermont and Lake County. This will not be a housing development."
At one point, he wrote to constituents, "No More Homes!"
Yet, there he was on Monday, helping to calculate the number of houses "necessary" to "support" the alleged economic development that is stampeding to these 5,700 acres in Clermont.
Asked for an explanation, Goodgame said in an email, "My poor expression read ‘No More Homes' and should have read, ‘No Housing Developments.'"
Of course, council members acknowledged Monday, developers would have to build a certain amount of promised businesses and offices before they could put up homes. How much? Well, they couldn't say just right then.
Turns out that for every 1,800 acres, it's going to take a subdivision of roughly 640 houses to "support" the businesses - at least that's the current rough estimate. That, too, could change because city fathers haven't decided how much residential growth should even be allowed in the new land designation for this property. At the moment, they're just too busy bringing the land home to Mama Clermont.
Scam! This is just rooftops with lipstick.
Goodgame added: "I'll assure you and everyone that this annexation is not about a housing development. Clermont needs a location for future jobs."
Really? Then maybe some of those businesses could find homes on the 14,210 acres in the city's current planning area already designated for some type of business, office, commercial or manufacturing use. Then no one would have to once again go out to rape the rural areas and turn them into strip centers. That way, workers could live in Clermont instead of building a new city to the south.
All of this doesn't even take into account the expense of annexing property.
Saunders told council members that Clermont would get only about $8,500 in property taxes from the area if it annexes all of it.
Consider that Lake County is spending about $26,000 a year to maintain dirt roads. The city has no equipment to do that. Then there are brush fires. The city has no tankers, and its firefighting force isn't trained to fight brush fires. And what about police? More will be needed.
If approved, this poorly thought-out land grab will be destructive to rural south Lake County, and, regardless of how the "deal" is structured, in the end enormously expensive to the residents of Clermont.
It's bad planning because it's not planning. It's blindly snatching property prompted by the infectious panic of developers. That panic should in no way constitute an emergency for council members.
Worse yet, council members are doing it for the same handful of land speculators who pushed the soundly hated and completely rejected Karlton proposal four years ago.
These shenanigans are so far out of line that Clermont residents should ask themselves this question: Who are my council members really working for?
