Hometown News Dec. 17, 2009 Letters to the editor Amendment 4 is Florida resident's Declaration of Independence It's time to get real about Hometown Democracy, also known as Amendment 4. Nothing will make our representative government more "representative" than local voters checking politician's most important work, comprehensive land use plan changes. Amendment 4's link to our founding principles shows in the Declaration of Independence comparison below. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Ruinous neighborhood land-use changes are not a right. "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations (zoning changes, abandoned neighborhood schools and libraries), pursuing invariably the same object (comp plan change profits) evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." Amendment 4 can stop the taxation without representation in unnecessary rural infrastructure. "Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain (local power brokers and politicians) is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world." Daytona Beach has almost 40,000 residences built yet allows 300,000 plus. We are already pumping over 80 percent of our water allowance. Will Florida leaders continue to ignore local facts until desalination raises our water bills five times? By then it will be too late. An informed voter will demand disclosure of their local potential build and water facts. Amendment 4 is Florida's Declaration of Independence. Don't get tricked into letting it fail. Greg Gimbert, Daytona Beach | 
