[Advogado]

"Please do not mistake objectivity for negativity.

Seriously? I'm just trying to understand impact fees and what's going on. So I read the POA bulletin to learn about the tax increase. Here are phrases in that bulletin about The Commissioners: "Poor planning or Poor management". "Smugness and arrogance". "Clearly the Commissioners and County Administrator have only paid lip service.."

So...that's objective? there is no bias in those statements? As someone who honestly wants to learn what is going on, do I read that and say "this is a news source that is reporting the facts and I should read to learn more about this situation?" Or do I read those statements and conclude "this is a very biased source and I'm only going to hear a one-sided viewpoint of this matter".
I picked up the POA bulletin to get a factual accounting of what is happening with this situation. I read it. Based on the POA's descriptive adjectives, I have a very hard time viewing the POA as an objective source.
And I'm dissapointed in that... because I was looking for factual reporting."




I think I agree with your basic point: The POA could have done a better job explaining the unprecedented 25% tax increase. I tried to do so in my original post in this thread. If you find any errors in it, please let me know.

It appears that the POA writers got a little carried away in their anger and and didn't lay out the facts as clearly as they could have. But such anger is justified. What the Developer and his toadies on the Sumter County Board of Commissioners did to the taxpayers of Sumter County should infuriate anyone who understands what happened.

My criticism of the October POA Bulletin is the following: It asks the question: Is the tax increase due to “Poor Planning” or “Poor Management” and then answers it as “both”. The correct answer is that the tax increase is due to a conscious decision on the part of the Sumter County Commissioners, all of whom are supported by the Developer. The Commissioners decided to to load the infrastructure costs of The Villages massive expansion on the taxpayers of Sumter County, via a 25% tax hike, instead of on the Developer, via an appropriate increase in the impact fee paid by the Developer each time he builds a house.

Right now, the Developer pays an impact fee of only $901 per house, versus a $2,600 per-house fee paid by a builder of a single-family house in Sumter County, and versus a $20,000 per-house fee paid by a builder of a house in a 55-and-older community in Collier County.