State Rep. Alex Andrade announced this morning that he will not be filing a local bill to place the question of Perdido’s Incorporation on the ballot for 2024. He said significant changes need to be made to the proposal before he can bring it to the Florida Legislature.
Rep Andrade provided the following statement:
“I will not be filing a local bill to place the questions of incorporation on the ballot this Session. After reviewing We Are Perdido’s feasibility study in-depth and consulting with the Florida Department of Revenue and Florida House staff members, we determined that significant changes would be required to the proposal. Because, at this stage, these changes would need to be made by a single legislator instead of residents of the affected area, I have made the decision to not file and sponsor the bill.
I have informed We Are Perdido of the decision, and encouraged them to spend this next year engaging in additional due diligence and public outreach if they decide to pursue this initiative in the future.”
I’m familiar the state laws that govern the formation of a municipality. I’ve also reviewed all of the feasibility study evaluations at the below link and done additional research. The process of forming a municipality is made a lot harder when the people putting together the feasibility study don’t follow the rules. The We Are Perdido study was pretty bad containing some obvious errors and fantastical assumptions. The proposed town constitution or “charter” was pretty horrible and at just under 14,000 words humongous in length. By comparison, the new City of Gulf Breeze Charter is just over 2,000 words and with some editing could have been shorter. I attended the first We Are Perdido meeting. It was obvious that the people in charge were very unfamiliar with local government to include constitutional officers and especially how they all should work together. Bottom line – good call by Andrade though it never should have got this far. Creating a municipality in Perdido is a good idea but We Are Perdido should enlist the help of local experts to develop a workable plan. Former county and city administrator Keith Wilkins is local. The new city managers in Milton and Century could help too.
http://edr.state.fl.us/Content/local-government/index.cfm
Alex,
What happened to “trusting the voters” to decide this important issue? You have show us your true self and your feet of clay!
Glad to see Rep. Andrade pushing for due dilligence from the pro-inc side.
His handlers finally got around to reading it?