Quote:
Originally Posted by biker1
The Developer is not responsible for maintaining what it built years ago (I am assuming you were referring to the various amenities). The CDDs own the amenities, with the exception of those south of 44 that have not yet been turned over to the CDDs, and are responsible for maintaining them. The Developer does own the Championship Courses and the commercial property. I do agree that the POA does good work. I view them as responsible media.
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You seem to imply that the resident-controlled CDDs own the amenities. That is not the case and never has been. The three Developer-controlled commercial CDDs own most of the amenities, having bought them from the Developer. The Developer has not yet sold his CDDs the amenities in the newest areas. Due to the class-action lawsuit settlement, residents have a degree of control over operation of the amenities.
Until the IRS cracked down on the Developer's abuse and ordered it stopped, the Developer had been having his CDDs issue purportedly tax-exempt bonds to raise cash to pay himself. This scam forced the US taxpayer to subsidize his business operations. Fortunately for the residents and for the Developer, the IRS did not impose its order retroactively and tax interest on the bonds already issued or our whole amenity system could have gone down the tubes.
(The Developer-controlled CDDs now have to issue taxable bonds to raise the cash, so we, as US taxpayers, are no longer subsidizing the Developer's business. However, we continue to subsidize it as Sumter County property-taxpayers as we pay for his county infrastructure though our 25% tax increase.)
During the multi-year IRS investigation of the Developer's abuse of tax-exempt bonds, the POA kept residents informed about what was going on. The VHA (a shill for the Developer) and the Daily Sun (owned by the Developer) downplayed the potential severity of the situation and spun the facts.
In addition, the POA wrote the IRS asking that any adverse ruling only be applied prospectively because of the disastrous impact that a retroactive ruling would have on our amenity system and life style. We will never know if the POA's letter affected final IRS non-retroactive ruling, but the episode is just one more example of the volunteers in the POA trying to look out for the interests of the residents.
The IRS incident is extremely complicated; so I won't get into further details, but if you didn't live here and follow the story as it was unfolding, you can read about it in archived POA Bulletins.