[Goldwingnut]

Originally Posted by BrianL99

Admittedly, I'm not a financial genius. Especially when it comes to a budget as complicated as the Districts'.

I was responded to another post on here about increased maintenance fees and as I looked at this year's budget, I was appalled. I must be reading it wrong.

It appears that "Salary & Wages" budget item for the District, is increasing 90% this year, from $24,000,000 to $43,000,000.

Community Watch is increasing 50%.

They're carrying $9.6M for maintenance for: Equipment, Buildings, Landscaping, Vehicles, Pools, Gates & Irrigation (up 33%). Along with that $9.6M, they're carrying another $4.1M in "other" (miscellaneous) maintenance? How do you spend over $4M in non-specific maintenance?

The District is paying over $5,000,000 in interest. Based on what I think I heard at a budget meeting last year, they're taking after the US Congress and deficit spending is becoming a way of life.

Again, I admit to not being great with budgets or accounting, especially when involves numbers this large. I did attend 2 budget hearings last year and as lost as I can get with this stuff, most of our District Representatives seemed completely lost in space.

Is there anyone out there with the inclination to look at the budgets tell us what's really going on? It's not like we can get the straight story from any of the local news providers.

You ask some very good questions that need addressing. For clarity, when you say The District, exactly which budget are you looking at? The District and The Villages are terms that are thrown around by a lot of people that are referring to any of the many entities that are lumped under these name. This unfortunately leads to a lot of confusion and misinformation being propagated.

Give me a day or two to glean some additional information and I’ll go over some of the issues. There is one point you are wrong on, the State of Florida requires all government entities to have a balanced budget, so there is no deficit spending in the CDD budgets.

I have been involved with the CDD, amenity, project wide, and county budgets for the last 10 years so I have a very good understanding of what all the moving parts are in them. This budget season however I’ve not spent much time looking at CDD/Amenity/PWF budgets due to other pressing county issues.