Ave Maria A town with out a Vote

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so this report is showing up on Facebook and naturally the non-Catholics are horrified. I don’t know much about Ave Maria so would like some info to allay their fears.

"When Kathy Delaney moved a year and a half ago with her two teenage sons from Maryland to Ave Maria, she believed certain rights remained unalienable.

Elections, she thought, followed the rule she’d known all her life: Her vote counted as much as anyone’s. Delaney could only assume the government of her new town operated the same.

“I was even thinking, wouldn’t it be great,” Delaney said. “We could actually have our own mayor.”

What Delaney didn’t know is that Ave Maria’s founders already had decided how the town northeast of Naples would be ruled. They would have the power to control the town forever. This power, some say, is so great, it might be unconstitutional."
 
The story was filed in 2009. Hardly new news. There’s a hidden agenda for dragging this up five years after the fact.
 
NOTE: Ave Maria is an unincorporated area (or at least wasn’t). So they don’t have a town council, mayor, etc like incorporated towns. They are really like a “home owners” association, where the rules were written by the builder and still enforced by the builder until all the homes are built and sold.

I doubt Ave Maria, FL will have real independence from the developers and founders until all the developments have been completed and the entire project (from a real estate business point of view) is compete.

But there are A LOT of people who would like to see the town fail.

If my wife would allow it, I would seriously consider moving there. It looks great and is pretty affordable.
 
Interesting. I just graduated from the university there. I was vaguely aware of some of these things but hadn’t ever really read about them.

I personally don’t think it is a big deal (yet). As long as the town is being developed, it shouldn’t really make much of a difference. I guess it’s been like 7 years now, so if in however many years there’s still no sign of the developers “handing things off” then there might be reason to start to get concerned. It may take quite a long time to finish all of the developing, so as phil19034 mentioned, until then there probably won’t be much if any independence. If people have a problem with the town in this developing stage, then they shouldn’t move there. Others should mind their own business (unless, of course, something really bad is going on). True, I am definitely not a law/government expert, but nothing in that article or in the video stood out to me as bad or wrong. To me it seems impossible to judge anything this early on. If, when the town is nearly/fully developed, there is something wrong going on, it will come out, and it can/will be fixed then.

And phil19034, it really is a pretty neat community. I actually can’t speak too much about the community - I wasn’t that involved with it - but from what I observed from my 4 years there and from hearsay, the community is wonderful. Supportive and very friendly.

I have separate opinions about the university itself. Since my first year there was the 4th school year in Ave Maria, it was still like the early classes - a lot of homeschoolers, probably pretty much all Catholics. By the time I left, there were a lot more non-Catholics, there was much more emphasis on sports, etc., so in my 4 years I got to observe a pretty big change in the student dynamic and student population. It was quite interesting. Depending on what one is looking for in a Catholic university, it will not be the ideal Catholic university, in my humble opinion, but it is still a faithful Catholic university, which is one of the most important things.
 
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