Your Family, Friend and Neighbor,
Buddy Helland
Broward Republican Executive Committeeman - Precinct D023
North Andrews Neighborhood Association Board Member
www.TheChristianAmerican.US   

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To see what has transpired via video, click the links listed in numbered order:

1 ) http://oaklandparkfl.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=302 
Go to Item #16 "Definition of Family" on left of screen under video

2 ) http://oaklandparkfl.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=320 
Go to Public Comments on left of screen Item #4 under video

3) September 1st, 2010 http://oaklandparkfl.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=327 
Go to Public Comments on left of screen Item #5 under video

Note! The City Manager decided ( with a nod from the vice mayor, I noticed ), to remove the Item for vote until a later date, that I and the residents of the City of Oakland Park had shown up to discuss just prior to the vote! The reason given was that there were too many Items on the agenda that night! This seemed rather surgical since there were a great number of people there to defend the family definition, or exclusion of it through square footage, in the City Housing Code! You are welcome to draw your own conclusions...

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Listed below is the PDF word letter that was sent to Oakland Park Commissioners, for your review:

September 1^st commission meeting regarding the “Definition of Family”:

I want to Thank you for taking the time to read this prior to your vote on September 1^st, 2010.  I know that you all work very hard and your service to the City of Oakland Park is much appreciated! I will offer up two perspectives for your consideration: First the moral viewpoint and second, the practical viewpoint.   

Please take the time to consider these, since they are both very important…

After having spoken with family, friends, neighbors and a great number of people all across our great city that live and work in the City of Oakland Park, the consensus is that “The Family” is not available for redefining!

There has been an attempt to create a new definition of family based on “a group of people held together by bonds of affection or attraction."  This redefinition encompasses unmarried, with or without children, gay and lesbian couples, and even larger groups of individuals in various communal living arrangements.  According to this view, what is important is not the actual family structure, but how people feel at the time. Any attempt to defend family values is considered judgmental and insensitive to those in these alternative cultural constructs.

            The first two chapters of the Bible reject these alternate restructurings of the family.  The family is arranged not as an arbitrary cultural construct, but as a fundamental God given institution built into the very nature of the universe.  God created both man and woman in His image, commanding them to "be fruitful and multiply."  The Bible makes a value judgment that "it is not good for man to be alone."  A man is to "leave his father and mother and cleave on to his wife, and they shall be one flesh."  All of these establish monogamous marriage and the raising of children as a God given ideal from the very dawn of creation.

When the traditional family is seen as a God given institution, then marriage and procreation take on a more profound meaning.  They are not simply ways to achieve self-fulfillment.  Rather, they become ways of serving God and fulfilling His will.  When family relationships become difficult, this Biblical perspective makes it more difficult to “bail out”.  There is a religious reason to work on making one's marriage work, being a better parent, and strengthening one's family.

When you validate the ideas of a very few against the values of the great majority in a society that bases itself on these fundamental principles of family, then you signal to the city that family commitments and values are no longer important unless they are interchangeable with the indefinable and changing views of the very few.

That said, there is a world of difference between a person who chooses to go against God's created order of what a family “is” and a government entity enforcing these rebellious choices against God's created order.  The choice made by Individuals that affect them personally, is and will always be, in a Free United States of America, between them and God.  The choices made by Individuals that infringe on the rights and freedoms of the majority, in an attempt to force the majority to agree with them, should never be permitted in law.  Political Correctness has gone too far and created a false image of politeness where tolerance is retooled to suit its author.

The secular view that the family is a mere cultural construct has contributed to the breakdown of the family.  Why work to save a "cultural construct"?!  On the other hand, traditional Biblical values strengthen family life.

Your decision makes a difference because ideas have consequences.  If marriage and family are mere cultural constructs, then marriage becomes a social convention with no deep religious value or meaning and the family is up for interpretation.

Your decision broadcasts to the community at large whether the “discrimination” of the Traditional Family is acceptable, because it is not recognized by this commission as valid and is up for redefinition or exclusion ….or that the definition of Family as is recognized by the creator of the universe along with the vast majority of the United States of America Citizenry that includes the people of Florida and the City of Oakland Park is not to be tampered with because it has already been defined.

Discriminating against the great majority of families, in trying to retrofit a definition to match personal choices sounds less like a concern about Housing and more like a specific agenda shrouded to look like city business.

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The definition of the Family in the Housing Code lists:

Under Oakland Park City Housing DEFINITIONS (36)   Family:  One (1) or more persons residing together in a dwelling unit as a housekeeping unit which shall not include more than three (3) individuals unrelated by blood, marriage, or adoption and shall not include any paying guests. 

 

Looking at this from the perspective of practicality, if a change was made to include more unrelated individuals, then with each addition, comes the need for a square footage agreement, because you would need to accommodate any amount of unrelated children.  If children were not in the mix, then you are looking at multiple roommates or renters, unless the Home owner is extremely generous…

 

 

Also, by removing the definition inclusion of “Family” through blood, marriage, or adoption and retrofitting the code to reflect “square footage” not only discriminates against the Family by eliminating it entirely, but also introduces a Pandora’s Box of problems.

 

Practically speaking, a change would also open up our neighborhood homes to a large number of people “calling themselves family” that would create flop houses and other problems into and around the City of Oakland Park.

 

Margate Commissioner Pam Donovan said, “We were having problems with flop houses”, “There were six, seven people living in a house, there were cars everywhere.”

 

Additionally, a square footage definition also limits a large family living in the City of Oakland Park, so if you are a married couple and the code reflects a “square footage limit” and you have more kids than it allows, then you find yourself at the receiving end of a government entity dictating how many children you can have in your home in the city!

 

Alternatively, if you expand the square footage to accommodate a large family, then you also expand the amount of unrelated individuals that can habitat a house in the city, therefore introducing the large “Flop Houses” into our neighborhoods that would be unstoppable based on the city codes!

 

The portion that says “Not including paying guests” would be impossible to maintain unless an unrelated person was paying for the other group of unrelated people in his or her house!  I think that you would agree that this would exclude common sense to think that six or more unrelated roommates would not be paying their share to live together…

 

Then there are the multiple car problems that would have to be addressed in other codes to accommodate for the many unrelated people that would be living in a Single Family Home!  Example:  Seven unrelated Adults calling themselves Family with Seven cars in the swale and driveway.  Welcome to the Pandora’s Box of problems that, we the people, living in the City of Oakland Park would be addressing well into the future...

 

The odd thing is that the code is not enforced, because you cannot visit each home each day to do it, which turns this into a symbolic act and creates an avenue of opportunity to those that would take advantage of the system.

 

 

 

 

 

The only change that the people of Oakland Park have agreed upon is the “reduction by one” of individuals unrelated by blood, marriage, or adoption listed below:

 

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Under Oakland Park City Housing DEFINITIONS (36)   Family:  One (1) or more persons residing together in a dwelling unit as a housekeeping unit which shall not include more than two (2) individuals unrelated by blood, marriage, or adoption and shall not include any paying guests. 

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This would leave open the option of two unrelated extended family members in a home and more closely reflect the purpose of a “Single Family Home” in the City of Oakland Park, as opposed to a rental property.  This would not exclude unmarried couples that decide to live together, roommates, or interfere with their children or adopted children, but would solidify the integrity of the “Family” in a “Single Family Home” as it was intended.

 

 

I have added these additional quotes from our Founding Fathers of the United States of America for your reflection:

 

John Adams stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." --October 11, 1798

Thomas Jefferson wrote that the “Creator,” not government, is the source of our “unalienable rights,” and the Founders expressed their “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” in the Declaration of Independence.

 

Benjamin Franklin said, “God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel” –Constitutional Convention of 1787 | original manuscript of this speech