Quote:
Originally Posted by eyc234
Did not get hit with 25%, only 12 and had 15 years of no increases. Taxes are still lower than a majority of places. When you vote them out you will still have the same issue, not enough money to run the county. If you raise the fee on the developer you raise the fee on all builders. I am sure the small builders will love that.
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Perhaps taxes on individual houses have remained level or even diminished over an extended period of time because most of the infrastructure for buildout on the land owned/controlled by the developer was already in place through some prior financial arrangement such as the municipal bonds that were not truly municipal bonds. Every new house that was built over this period of time added to tax revenue and of course had a bond lien placed on it when sold to cover water, sewer, utilities, streets, etc.. For example, if 2,000 houses were built in a year and the average property tax on each was $3,000, these new houses collectively would add $6,000,000 to property tax revenue every single year from that year forward. As many thousands of houses have been built every year over the last 10 to 12 years total county tax revenue has enormously increased every year, even if tax rates have remained the same or been slightly reduced.
Now, acres and acres of newly acquired raw land, essentially enough land to double the size of The Villages, require infrastructure to be put in place before houses can be built and sold. What to do? Where can the money be found. Aha! We can increase the tax rates on the existing homes all over Sumter County. Let the taxpayers pick up the bill. Why not? What a great idea? If we do it right they may grumble but they won't be able to stop us...