Proposed County Budget
 

At the July 13, 2021 BOCC budget workshop, the proposed budget for the County showed a rolled-back rate of 3%. However, the budget did not include any revenue for the anticipated $229.5M increase in sales tax from Senate Bill 50. This law requires out-of-state retailers with no physical presence in Florida, to collect Florida sales tax. The Sumter County revenue from this $229.5M could be 2 million or more. Why wasn’t that included in the budget? Today’s Daily Sun front page headlines under Florida News reads, “Online Retailers, Seminole Tribe Contribute To Revenue Boost.”

Another item not considered is the estimated $25M for Sumter County from the American Rescue Plan Act. Although the U. S. Treasury has not completed its rules for the uses of the funding, they should include one time purchases of fire trucks and equipment and some other expenditures included in the budget. Yet no receipts are included in the budget proposal.

Additionally, the budget proposal does not include all the additional revenues received in impact fees this year to date. If all these items were included in the final budget, I believe that the rolled-back rate would be 10% or more. That rate would begin to offset the outrageous 25% tax increase imposed upon all County residents in 2019 and show that the three new Commissioners are keeping their campaign promise to roll back the increase that was due to the development below Rt. 44.

The promise of rolling back our massive property-tax increase was premised upon increasing the Developer's sweetheart impact fee so that he, not the current residents, would pay for the infrastructure necessitated by the Developer's massive expansion of The Villages. The Developer, through state legislation sponsored by the Developer's employee Brett Hage, made it impossible to accomplish this. Every time that we pay our county property tax, we are, in effect, writing a check to the Developer for the amount of the tax increase.

Thank you, Representative Hage, and also thanks to the remaining two Developer-puppet Commissioners (Breeden and Gilpin) who enacted the tax increase in 2019. Hopefully, all three will be ousted next year in the Republican primary.

How does Rep Hage get away with such a massive conflict of interest?

Wow, Never
 

Any additional taxes always trickle down. What makes you think the Developer in any way shape or form would absorb any additional costs. Just raise prices and if you get something back from the state, that’s even better!

I agree, we should thank Representative Hage and all the other legislators who did the right thing by passing the legislation. When you vote in inexperienced and patronizing Commissioners who are adept at making promises they knew they couldn't keep you need the Hages of the world who understand the negative impact they bring.

So you are ok with a guy who is an executive working for the developer to not recluse himself in voting for this legislation?

I do have my doubts now about the new commissioners but what Hage did was very wrong.

Most of the people I want Hage gone. He is a Morse puppet.

To think impact fees paid by all businesses, not just the developer, will offset the tax increase is a fantasy. The commissioners who were elected know that and it is why they have not said a word on the main thing they ran on. Here is a novel idea, why not look for areas to reduce expenses in the county budget instead of increasing all categories.

They bring in 4.2 million in impact fees each year and it all goes to pay for the new roads that cost $110 million over 10 years. The short fall is covered by gas taxes which were used for maintenance of the roads so the next 10 years less road maintenance. The previous year there was a 4% roll back and now the 3% roll back so 7%.

ethics
 

How many concerned citizens wrote to the head of the legislature to throw this bum out

The tax increase was 50 million dollars

Just vote him out in the next election!

No matter how many would write doubt they would get him out of office.

Best way is via the ballot box.

Increased taxes
 

Taxes always trickle down to final pricing. Businesses aren’t out to lose or suck-up losses. The cost is always passed down to the final user from the top down.

County Budget
 

The failure of the county commissioners extends beyond impact fees. The Villages developer sells roughly 200 new homes a month. Using basic data from the tax rates web page this results in approximately $1500 on a home valued at 184K. The median home price in The Villages is 318K that translates to $2600 per year for each home. The average number of new homes sold each year is slightly over 200 per month. This works out to be over 6 million dollars per year in new tax revenue. This compounded over the years since the tax increase now is effectively 18 million a year in new revenue from just new homes sales. Each new home owner pays a bond to the county for the infrastructure to build the homes in an area. We haven't added revenue from new commercial property. Instead of focusing on the impact fee issue (even though the commissioners can increase impact fees beyond the limits in the law by meeting criteria) we should be pressing the commissioners on how they are using the new revenue.