[manaboutown]

Originally Posted by Advogado

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.

I agree. The Developer essentially controls the commercial property CDDs which have no residents and control the residential CDDs. The intent of my prior post was to provide a short hand version of the reality of the extent of the Developer's control as it is complex, and literally absolute in much of The Villages.

Anybody remember One Sumter which literally gave the Developer control of Sumter County? ONE SUMTER ONE HOT ISSUE - News - Ocala.com - Ocala, FL

As to the bonds: https://www.districtgov.org/images/I...%205-21-14.pdf