[bob47]

Originally Posted by Jazuela

They "fiscally responsibled" themselves into debt. By not spending when they should have, in order to boast about how much they were saving for the constituents, the infrastructure and other services were neglected. Now, instead of maintenance, they need repairs. Someone has to pay for it, since no one paid for the maintenance.

You would've had to pay all along, if they were being TRULY "fiscally responsible." You just would've paid it gradually.

Being "fiscally responsible" doesn't mean cutting corners and not spending money. It means spending it efficiently on things that need spending on, to prevent having to spend even more on those things when something goes wrong.

That ALSO means including into a budget a significant buffer of funds, which apparently they didn't do. My town up north is fiscally responsible. Our taxes are high, but we have top-notch services. Our roads are taken care of; this year every major road in the town is being repaved. We have snow removal services and own all the machinery needed and the crew is all trained. We have our own EMS system. We have our own town police and 911 dispatch and multiple fire department houses. We have some of the best schools in the state, which are some of the best schools in the country.

We have enough funding to handle at least the immediate recovery of disaster mitigation; clearing roads, moving trees, getting live wires off the roadways, redirecting traffic around floods, etc.

Our taxes also cover the cost of weekly trash pickup, bi-weekly recycling pickup, yard waste pickup, and twice yearly bulk pickup. And we have our own town dump, where we have solar panels built on the side of the "hill" and that solar energy from that one location powers every single official town building in the town.

We also have comprehensive senior services, including low-income senior housing partially funded by the state, partially by the fed, and partially funded by the town. We have a senior community center which, while nothing compared to the Villages, is pretty significant for our low-volume senior population. We have a couple of public parks that are maintained in part by the town, with state and federal fund assistance.

THIS is "fiscal responsibility." Making sure the constituents have what they need to live safe, comfortable lives and their kids offered excellent educational backgrounds from which they can thrive in adulthood.

We pay for it. That is OUR responsibility to the town.

I'm not suggesting that you should expect to pay as much as we do for our services in our town.

I'm suggesting, however, that what you thought you would automatically be getting, you haven't been paying for. And now it's time to pay for it, because the town has to play catch-up with costs vs. services.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The Sumter county commissioners have NOT been fiscally responsible in planning for the future and now have to play catch up. Is it a surprise that large portions of Buena Vista and Morse, for example, need repaving?

And the other significant part of the decision: whether to have the developer and future residents pay a significant portion of the cost of new infrastructure via impact fees, or to have the existing residents pay for new infrastructure required by the developer's plans.