[JoMar]

Originally Posted by Advogado

Music on the Squares is not going to disappear, and the $120,000 the Developer's puppets give to the Developer to subsidize it is chicken feed. Voters need to focus on the main issue in this year's County Commissioner race. The main issue is that the current County Commissioners are representing the Developer; they are not representing the residents and that is costing the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

This relationship between the Commissioners and the Developer has only recently gained wide attention due to the puppet Commissioners' enacting an incredible 25% County Tax increase. They did that for one reason: to offload on to us, the residents, the costs of the county infrastructure necessitated by the Developer's massive expansion of The Villages, which massive expansion has been rubber-stamped by the Commissioners.

That infrastructure should be paid for by increasing the Developer's sweetheart impact fee. For those residents who still don't know, an impact fee is a per-house tax on a builder that is SUPPOSED to pay for the infrastructure necessitated by the new construction. Infrastructure includes not only roads, but also such things as additional parks, police and fire stations and equipment, government buildings, and libraries.

By raising our taxes, while keeping the Developer's impact fee at an incredibly low level, the puppets are, in essence, giving the Developer hundreds of millions of tax dollars at our expense. Keep that number in mind when getting wrapped up in a debate about the County's subsidizing the Developer's music on the Squares for $120,000. It is the hundreds of millions of dollars that is causing the Developer to spend whatever it takes to keep his puppets in office and to run fake candidates to disenfranchise 45,000 voters.

In fact, the Developer has contributed about $250,000 to the incumbents' campaign. The Developer didn't do that for the $120,000 music subsidy.

The Developer contributes 50% of the expense for the entertainment.