Urban Sprawl

In order to combat this, we decided to support a change to the state legislature. We distributed educational fliers on the causes and effects of urban sprawl. We also worked with an organization called Florida Hometown Democracy to support a petition to bring a proposed amendment change to the election in 2008. This amendment would allow voters to have a say on land development in their communities. However, a different amendment was passed during the mid-term elections which invalidated our petition. This amendment, called Amendment Three, required a large proportion of votes for future amendment changes, which would make a controversial change such as ours near impossible to pass.

Following this revelation we modified our project to focus on local issues. We created a presentation outlining simple methods of making our town of Boca Raton a green one. For example, we advocated the use of cleaner-burning biodiesels in public buses and suggested in the city's participation in the Sierra Club's Cool Cities program. We made arrangements to present this to Mayor Steven Abrams. Although our first endeavor was disappointing we employed several of the lessons learned into a hopefully successful and promising project.