[Goldwingnut]

Originally Posted by Pugchief

Why is that? Why would villas be private, but everything else county?

They are not county maintained, and they are not private, they are owned by the CDDs. Why?

Because Villa roads have an inverted crown - they are lower in the middle and have storm drains in the middle of the roads, the opposite of standard roads which are crowned and the storm drains are on both sides.

The county standard is for a road to be crowned as it provides a higher drainage rate and minimizes the water pooling on the road making it safer for traffic flow. The roads in villa communities are all very low utilization roads - a limited number of houses and no through traffic, and all low speed - 10 MPH in ALL villa communities; because of the volume and speed differences they are considered an acceptable alternative.

The Villages villa community roads in unincorporated Sumter County are maintained by the CDDs because of their non-standard configuration.

Why the inverted crown? Because it is less expensive to build as the storm drains do not have to be built on both sides of the road. Looking at the history of the villa communities, they started out as a lower cost alternative to the more traditional home designs in the early days of The Villages. Villa homes built today have changed significantly from the early days and are now similarly priced to many designer and cottage homes but still remain in demand due to two aspects – pets and privacy. These same two factors have also fueled the high demand for the Veranda series of homes that The Villages started making about 10 years ago. The community layout for Veranda subdivisions is nearly identical to the villa communities, so the inverted crown road designs have remained.

Villa & Veranda roads within the city of Wildwood are maintained by Wildwood and not the CDDs or the county. The folks in CDD4 (Marion County) have the financial responsibility for all the roads (villa and non-villa) in that section of the Villages, a very expensive burden.