Impact Fees: Did Sumter County Residents Win the Battle but Lose the War???
 

The Landslide Vote to Roll Back the Property-Tax Increase by Increasing Impact Fees. The subject of impact fees and property taxes is complex and not very sexy. However, the combination of a sweetheart impact fee for the Developer and higher property taxes for Sumter County residents to pay for the Developer's county roads and other infrastructure results in each of us giving the Developer an annual gift of hundreds of dollars. The residents woke up to that fact last year. We tossed out three developer puppet Commissioners (Butler, Burgess, and Printz) and elected County Commissioners Estep, Miller, and Search (the “EMS team”) in a landslide, resulting in the EMS team having a majority on the 5-member Commission.

That landslide occurred because of the EMS team's campaign promise to roll back the massive 25% property-tax hike. That tax hike had been enacted, in 2019, by the Developer's puppet Commissioners, in order to protect the Developer's sweetheart impact fee (which is about 5% of what he would be required to pay in Collier County, where developers don't control the County Commission). The EMS team proposed to roll back the tax hike by requiring the Developer to finally start paying for the County infrastructure necessitated by the massive expansion of The Villages, instead of continuing to offload that cost on to the current residents. In other words, the impact-fee increase would finance the property-tax rollback.

The Developer's Frustrating the Will of the Residents. It now looks like the Developer may have been successful in frustrating the will of Sumter County residents, thereby potentially saving himself hundreds of millions of dollars at our expense. The Developer's apparent success was accomplished via the following actions:
Lobbying. Successfully convincing Commissioners Estep and Search not to immediately push forward with their promise to increase impact fees and reduce property-taxes. (Commissioner Miller stood his ground.) The delay gave the Developer time to marshal his campaign to preserve his sweetheart impact fee.
Propaganda Campaign. A propaganda campaign in the Developer's Daily Sun to distort the facts, attack the EMS team, and oppose the impact-fee increase-- falsely labeling it as a “tax increase”, rather than as a tax shifting from current residents to the Developer. The Daily Sun's propaganda campaign has been abetted by the little group of Developer loyalists who still control the local Republican Party. They have launched a series of personal attacks on fellow Republicans Estep, Miller, and Search-- despite the fact that we rank-and-file Republicans overwhelming voted for those three.
Packing Commission Meetings. Packing the County Commission meetings with employees of his suppliers and with his other cohorts and filling the parking lot with their heavy equipment.
State Legislation Co-sponsored by an Employee of the Developer. Finally, playing his ace in the hole by having the Florida legislature pass statewide legislation (co-sponsored by the Developer's employee-legislator, Brett Hage) that handcuffs local governments that attempt to require developers to pay for their own infrastructure. The legislation was unsuccessfully opposed by the League of Florida Cities and the Florida Association of Counties because it will devastate local governments' ability to finance new schools, police and fire facilities, parks, libraries, sewers, etc. However, cities and counties don't make campaign contributions. Developers make big ones. For more details, click here: FL legislators bigfoot local government to benefit big-money developers | Florida Phoenix

The Angeliadis Fishing Expedition. Those actions by the Developer were supplemented by a public-records-request fishing expedition conducted by attorney George Angeliadis. That fishing expedition was obviously intended to try to turn up dirt on, and harass and intimidate, Estep, Miller, and Search--as well as their supporters. The fishing expedition failed to turn up any dirt because there is no dirt to turn up. Angeliadis still refuses to identify his well-heeled client who paid him for his efforts, and the remaining two Developer-puppet Commissioners (Gilpin and Breeden) refuse to reveal what they know about it. Could the mysterious client possibly be the Developer? For a video on the fishing expedition, click here: George Angeliadis Open Records Request - YouTube

So, Did the Residents Win the Battle but Lose the War? The residents of Sumter County clearly won the first battle by tossing out three of the Developer's puppet Commissioners in the last election. However, as a result of the Developer's actions, culminating in the new state legislation, it certainly looks like we, along with other residents throughout the whole state, have lost the war to roll back our tax increase. But next year, the remaining two Developer puppet Commissioners are up for re-election, as is the Developer's employee, State Representative Brett Hage. Maybe the war isn't over yet.

This one part here:
They're not entirely handcuffed. They have options. They can reject permits. They can change zoning requirements, and then reject a developer's plans based on new zoning requirements that forbid whatever it is they're trying to do. They can reject any request for exceptions or setbacks. They can tell them "sure, you can built this and that and the other thing. And no, we can't make you pay for the road leading to it, or the retention ponds needed to keep it from flooding. But - WE aren't going to pay for that either. Oh and by the way, we also now require sidewalks, which we will also not pay for."

I believe the impact fee the developer pays can be raised each year so if this is done will bring up the amount in a few years.

And the developer could raise the rent on the millions of sq feet of commercial real estate it owns and rents - which will mean the tenants will raise their prices.

I don’t think a 25% real estate increase makes sense either.

Next, vote out the EMS team.

I suspect the last two puppets go next.

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
The giant wanted to negotiate and it was slapped in the face. Like it or not, it is the way things work and if you do not believe it you are naive. Look at any stadium built for a sports team and you see what happens. Negotiation gets you some of what you want and trying to slap your adversary down can get you an ass whopping. I do not agree or totally disagree with the process but understand the process and how to best work in and around it. Obviously the new guys do not understand or want to get the best for the constituents they are suppose to represent. As many have said, still waiting on the 25% rollback they promised!! No answer to this question every time it is asked.

I think that my original post answers your question.

As explained in detail in that post and, as was made clear in the last election campaign, the property-tax rollback can only happen if there is a corresponding increase in the Developer's sweetheart impact fee. (The revenue to pay for County infrastructure necessitated by the Developer's massive expansion of The Villages has to come from somewhere.) It now appears that the Developer has been successful in preventing that impact-fee increase from occurring. Ergo, it appears that, because of the Developer's actions and despite the overwhelming vote of Sumter County residents, a property-tax rollback is NOT going to occur-- at least not in the immediate future.

Developer: 1 Current Residents: 0

Remember, every time that you pay your property tax, you are, in essence, writing a check to the Developer in the amount of your tax increase. This is because you are paying for roads and other county infrastructure that he should be paying for via a reasonable impact fee.

The limits and restrictions prevent a significant increase in impact fees, which is why cities and counties opposed the House and Senate bills and why the developers pushed it.

I agree with you. The Developer offered 40% Impact Fees. I feel the commissioners should have tried to negotiate. Maybe they could have gotten a better deal. We will never know. The new commissioners ran on a "stick it to the Developer" platform, so they could never try to negotiate. It would have been viewed as "giving in" even if it would have been a better outcome for Sumter residents.

The new commissioners have to realize The Developer is a very wealthy adversary that has a lot of "assets/connections" at his disposal. So figure out how to work with him so each side can feel good about the outcome. If they continue to try to stick it to The Developer I believe it will be Sumter residents (specifically Villagers) that will suffer.

I guess my view is: Developer 1 Commissioners: 0

You have to know your adversary. It's like playing against the Patriots (and trust me... I hate the Patriots so I'm only using that analogy because they have dominated football in recent history), You can either bury your head in the sand and whine because you lost... or you can understand what you are up against and realize you have a formidable foe.

As you said... Developer 1. So commissioners have to figure out how to win in this environment. Whining that the adversary is bigger or stronger probably isn't going to work in the long term.

Getting the three out was good. Replacing them with these guys doesn’t look so hot. Costs have to go up over time but the 25 percent increase all at once was stupid. If they were stupid in this judgement made, could they be just as stupid making others judgements? May be this pendulum will swing back to the middle but only if we can vote for people who are committed to doing so. By the way, these jobs are not as easy as you might think and there are rules to play by.

Short Sided
 

The legislation signed by the governor does limit impact fee annual increases but allows counties when meeting certain criteria to raise impact fees above the limits of the law.

To invoke cost prohibitive requirements of developers with the actions quoted is non productive and childlike. Such actions will create a legal nightmare for the county. Once precedents are set, (sidewalks, setbacks, roads, etc...) this will be have to be applied forward to all development in the county.

New tax revenue resulting from 2500+ new homes built by The Villages will be a huge revenue stream for Sumter County. Not to mention the additional tax revenue from the commercial development that supports the growth. These revenue streams will continue to provide funds for the county coffers annually at an ever increasing amount. A 50 million investment in road infrastructure will create a huge return in years to come.

A common sense perspective was to negotiate the impact fee deal offered by The Villages and move forward. Since our commission decided that was not in their constituants best interest, they now must work with in the new law to make any progress on impact fees.

It is better to work for the best interests of all parties involved, keeping focus on the issue at hand, lowering property taxes.

Hopefully our commission has learned from this experience and will be able to proceed better equipped to address similar situations in the future.

When decisions are made from a personal agenda instead of a professional agenda the end result falls far short of the mark.

Stop the excuses, EMS, and roll back the 25% tax increase like you promised. Stop listening to your controllers and work for the people. I never believed the three of you and didn't vote for you.

QUOTE=Stu from NYC;1947283]I believe the impact fee the developer pays can be raised each year so if this is done will bring up the amount in a few years.[/QUOTE]

Do the math, Lake county fees run about $12,000 while Sumpter County is about $2,000
Most villagers will not live long enough to see it balance out at the rate of 3 percent per year.

Continued half truths and misrepresentations reposted from Mr. Scott Fenstermaker V-N article.

The other side of the story as summarized previously by Mr. Don Wiley:

“ Continuing to portray the 40% number as a "sweetheart deal" that somehow only The Villages developer is getting is both dishonest and neglects the rest of the facts of the situation.

As far as the road costs that were a part of the 2019 25% tax increase, the majority of that was for resurfacing of Morse and Buena Vista Blvds and the result of poor planning by the county, a failure to put money away for repair costs they knew were coming. They were too busy touting "no tax increase for 14 years" to take care of business. The real question one has to ask but nobody is (except me) is what happened the next year. The road resurfacing was a one-time cost and represented about 50% of the tax increase, we should have seen a 10-12% decrease in 2020 but didn't. Why you may ask. Because for 2020 every department in the county fattened up their budgets with 10 to 20% increases. Of course, you can't see these increase in the 2020 budgets because they only forward when they present the budgets, they don't show how much it increased from the previous year. To see this, you have to pull the 2019 budget proposals and painstakingly compare it line item by line item to the 2020 budget, only then does the truth of the mismanagement of the county come to light.“

This is an excellent description of the county council issues over the last few years. The developer will continue to distort the facts and attract the new commissioners because they are a threat to his sweetheart deal he had with the original five commissioners. Maybe someone should investigate the original five to see what kick backs or other rewards were received for their votes. The no bid contract the developer has to build the roads at county expense might be a place to start. Remember, we still have to get rid of the two remaining "developer commissioners" with the next election. The developer will spend the rest of this year spreading misleading and false stories about the EMS commissioners through the Daily Sun in an effort to defeat them and continue his raping of the citizens of Sumter County.

Maybe It’s Not All Bad
 

If the county can’t raise impact fees on further Developer-proposed commercial and residential expansion to the south, then without increased property taxes, there would be no way Sumter County could build the roads and infrastructure necessary for the proposed new development.

If the Developer decides not to pay for the roads to service his development as he has in the past, then it follows that the pace of development to the south will slow, maybe dramatically.

So how much will that effect residents who live 10-15 miles north of the new planned expansion of The Villages? That would include me and the answer is not much at all. In fact, if further construction to the south stopped immediately, that might be a ‘positive’ result on our community which many of us think has gotten way too big, way too fast.

What do you think?

If expansion/growth becomes limited - where will the increased cost of govt operations fall without it being shared with the new development - on existing residents and businesses? Will that not mean property tax increases? Maybe those residents in the Southern areas would prefer higher taxes if it meant lower building impact? But not so for the rest of the County!

Billy1, you aren't following the thread. The tax rollback would be made possible by the increase in impact fees. It takes $X to run the county...now you can get them in multiple ways like lowering this and upping that in an equal amount, but you still have to come up to $X. EMS was going to make that adjustment...and tried to. That got TV to pull their strings in Tallahassee and frustrated the process. Gads, give them more than 6 months to figure this all out. They are a FAR better alternative than TV hacks that were there. We just need to replace 2 more. These guys are trying...and no one more than Miller!

I think the new development south of Route 44 has helped us enjoy life much more.

We live in Osceola Hills just north of Route 44 but we go down to the Southern Area a lot to enjoy their many amenities.

For example, on Tuesday we went down to Marsh Bend and parked at Cattail Rec Center. My wife went for a 2.5 mile walk around Hogeye and I played 9 holes of golf at Marshview. We finished at about the same time. Afterwards we sat in the shade at Edna's, shared a beer and a coke, and listened to some music. Life is good.

The tenants will only raise their prices as high as the customers are willing to pay. Eventually, the tenants will say "mmm....nah" and either go out of business, or open up outside Villages Holding Co's domain, where they can get the same customer base for less.

Where I come from, a town government doesn't "negotiate" bond fees with developers. The town has a specific structure and schedule of fees, and if you want to develop in that town, you pay those fees. If you're not willing to pay them, you develop somewhere else.

This problem exists because the county and the developer share some of the same people, and there is a conflict of interest creating the opportunity for negotiating, where none should exist.

The County is at an advantage. The Developer already owns the property - so they're stuck with it, whether everything they want is approved or rejected. They are paying taxes on it either way. They can either pay the fees, or they can not build, and still pay taxes on unused land. That is how it SHOULD be. But that's not how it is, down here. Instead, everyone is playing politics, because the state is set up to accommodate politics.

Is that true? I haven't checked, but maybe someone else already keeps up with this and can just tell us here. There's no legal announcement of proposed budgets showing comparisons between current budget and proposed for the following year, line by line (or at LEAST department by department with a *footnote explaining the change)?

How are voters supposed to know WHAT they like and don't like about the current representatives, if they aren't even presented with the full budget comparison from year to year? If my board of education wants more money, I should be able to see on a line in the Bd of Ed budget sheet what the exact increase is, the percentage difference over the previous year, and which thing(s) is/are increasing. If it's office supplies increasing by 10%, I should be able to see that right there in the proposed budget. If the county's total contribution to all participating teachers' 401K plan is increasing by 1%, I should be able to see that. If they need an additional 4% to cover the insurance company's requirement of a buffer for the roof fund, I should be able to see that.

Without having to go to the previous year's line-item budget and compare with the current or the proposed.

That should be columnized.

Impact Fee threads are always entertaining.

The Three ran on one thing and only one thing......Increase Impact Fees & Reverse the 25% Property Tax Increase. Day One, they decided to pick a fight. Problem: they came to a gun fight with a knife. No plan, No experience, No knowledge. Doomed to fail prior to getting elected. The Three got an education and got their a**es kicked.

Unfortunately, Villagers didn't stop and realize The Three had No plan, No experience, No knowledge and voted for a guaranteed failure. Empty campaign promises.

Thanks for the entertainment. :coolsmiley:

Where did all the additional taxes collected from new residents go ??

When you vote someone "Out". You are voting someone in, who could be a total puppet of the developer.

Take away golf cart access and the customer base is seriously reduced.

I don't think the entertainment has ended? I think there are legal considerations under way, in respect to this new state legislation. And TV isn't alone in this, as I think there are other local municipalities considering challenges to this.

The Impact Fees issue was only a part of the 25% tax increase, so I don't think a complete rollback was ever promised. HOWEVER, with all the propaganda being spewed about how perilous this Impact Fee(being sold as a Tax Increase) would do to the local economy, I now feel the Commissioners should COMPLETELY remove the 25% increase, restoring/resetting all budgets to pre-2019 levels, then start over! THEN, we'll see what all these expert economists say(i.e. The Daily Rag), when they have to come back to the well for more money(i.e. tax increase)?!!!

IMHO, the three new Commissioners began to enact their campaign promise by raising the impact fees. Unfortunately, and I don’t see how anyone could have expected 67 counties in Florida to relinquish one of their powers to collect fees, the developer and developers all over Florida were able to pass a law retroactively to undo the county’s laws. Our recourse in Sumter County should be to vote out of office the two Commissioners up for election in 2022 along with State Senator Baxley and State Representative Hage.

Sams, Home Depot, Best Buy all seem to be doing well despite the KIng and his court fighting no golf cart access but carts can cross 472.

Impact fees
 

Impact fees can only be used to finance road construction or improvement. Why not have the limit apply in both directions, and limit expenditures for these same items to the road development fees collected?

The issue with stopping growth is you will create a significant level of unemployment to thousands and thousands of people who work for the developer or people and companies that support the developer. This will impact the entire county because of revenue shortfalls leading to raised property taxes not to mention the suffering of families of the unemployed.

I wish people would read Don Wileys comments about impact fees and watch his videos. He has done the research and can explain how it works. Basically, if you raise impact fees Sumter county will lose some of our gas tax revenue generated by the thousands and thousands of vehicles that drive the turnpike and 75 and stop for gas in our county. Don can explain it much better, but it isn’t as simple as raising impact fees and getting that amount back in a property tax reduction. Don commented about this a few weeks ago in another of the endless posts about impact fees.

Or someone who knows what they are doing.

Good honest post
 

Your post makes a lot of sense. Politics isn’t rational... :clap2:}

20,000 hard working, tax paying development employees, contractors and construction workers would lose their jobs...

That many? Seems like to high a figure

Great post!!!!!
 

:a040::a040: Dond great post of what the majority of people miss, there are multiple sides to a problem and most things are interconnected to something else. In our world there are few things that are black and white.

How very true!! Could the OP, the Three Amigos and their supporters PLEASE cite the legal authority that permits funds raised from Impact Fees to be used to lower the General Budget of the County in order to Refund the 25% Real Estate Tax Increase? I bet they cannot!!! They didn’t even bring a knife to the fight!!!

Why, they didn't do it in the last election....voted out three guys and put in three with no experience, knowledge or ability. When you vote with emotions it's what you get.