Sumter Landing boardwalk
 

I was expecting to see postings and opinions about the announced plan to renovate and expand the Sumter boardwalk. Nice, but wasn't it just virtually rebuilt after suffering storm damage? So, whose wallet does this bite? I hope the "outsiders" and potential buyers enjoy the improvements. I don't go there much now because of the crowds and think the current design is perfectly fine.

Amenity Fees
 

It comes out of Amenity Fees.

It was agreed a year ago to pay for an engineering report to look at the repair work and enhancements to the Lake Sumter Landing boardwalk. The Village's anticipated when they first built Lake Sumter Landing that in 20 plus years, the wooden boardwalk, would have to be replaced. A portion of everyone's monthly amenity fee was set aside in a reserve fund to pay for that future work. The future is here, the funds are available, and the boardwalk and additional amenities will be constructed. They will then reserve funds to replace the boardwalk in another 20 or 25 years. That's how everything works in the Villages. Something tells me you have never sat on a homeowners board or any of our CDD's boards. You are more than welcome to attend one of their meetings.

The current proposal is to use "Trex" or an equal composite. The replacement ($3.5M) should last a lot longer than 25 years.

The point is, the Villages will reserve funds for the future replacement of the boardwalk at Sumter Landing. As they reserve funds for all the structures, pools, roofs, A/C, recreation centers etc. It's up to the board to conservatively figure out how long the amenities will last. That is the difficult and boring work that your board has to figure out.

Doesn’t hold up well
 

We had it in our deck up north, it looks good but isn’t made for heavy traffic. The plastic clips that spaced the boards do break and after 15 years it did have faded areas where the sun hit the deck. I would think it would be cheaper just to use the same materials as before. I wouldn’t want to look at decades old Trex.

Trex and other products have improved significantly, over the last 15-20 years. Fading has been minimized and the "spacer" system has been improved.

I'm not sure which product they plan to use, but I think Azek is a better product. Azek comes with a 50 year fade & stain warranty.

Take your concerns to the next meeting. Tell them to the people who need to hear them.

I'd like to think that the District has done sufficient research to find the right product and an anecdotal experience from 15 years ago, wouldn't be very relevant.

It is interesting that people tell us that the squares are open to everyone and that we Villagers don’t own the squares. That is not true. We Villagers do own the squares that is why the amenity fees we pay each month were used to pay for the new windmill and water tower at Brownwood and the new dock at Sumter Landing. We do not own the roads around the squares (the county does) nor the stores around the squares (the developer does). I am always surprised how many people think we have no control over the squares and don’t know that we own them and are responsible for the cost of all repairs and improvements.

We, the Villagers, do not own the squares. Our amenity fees do not pay the performers. Our amenity fees did not pay for the windmill or water tower. The Villagers have as much control over the squares as a homeowner in Lake Panasofkee: we influence with our spending.

The Resident Academy, offered monthly as I recall, is a great place to learn the facts of how the Villages works.

According to Sumter County, the Brownwood square is owned by the Brownwood CDD (BCDD), the Sumter Landing square is owned by the Sumter Landing CDD (SLCDD), and the boardwalk at Sumter Landing is also owned by the SLCDD. These two CDDs along with Districts 5-13 contribute a portion of their maintenance fees to the Project Wide Fund (PWF) which is controlled by the Project Wide Advisory Committee (PWAC). In the documents creating the PWAC there is a list of common areas that will be maintained using PWF dollars; the water tower, windmill, and boardwalk are all included on that list which is why they were repaired through the PWAC using maintenance fees (PWF).

When it came time to repair the boardwalk at Sumter Landing there was a proposal to increase the size of it to support additional activities. Later, it was proposed to remove a portion of the boardwalk as a designated common area and reclassify it as an amenity. This moved the funding out of the PWF/maintenance pot and over to amenity fees. Under the last proposal I looked at, the boardwalk along the lake would still be part of CDD common area while the dock and gazebo would become part of the Villages amenities.

FWIW, Trex has a product they've been advertising lately as completely submersible. So should floods overtake the dock again in the future, a couple weeks underwater *should* cause no harm.

* Oh, and for acronym-phobic RRguyInNJ, FWIW stands for "For What It's Worth."

Oh I see now. It is the CDD’s that own the squares. That includes the Brownwood and Sumter Landing CDD’s and all of the residential CDD’s 5-13 that contribute to another entity, the PWAC, who uses both our amenity fees to fund the repairs and improvements at the squares. So who owns the squares? The county? The public? The state? The Developer? No the CDD’s own the squares. I think that one could see we Villagers along with the members of The Brownwood and Sumter Landing CDD’s together own the squares. Somebody has to own it or why would they come to us Villagers for money? If as you state only the Brownwood and Sumter Landing CDD’s own the squares then what maneuver brought all our residential CDD’s into the picture to also fund these repairs and improvements if we don’t share ownership?

Agreeing to supply funds to maintain something does not mean that you take ownership. Ask anyone who lives in a high-rise condo building.

PWAC will be explained in that class.
PWAC is also explained on its page under districtgov.org

Basically, there is a benefit in pooling money for maintenance of common areas. PWAC was created to pool funds from Districts south of 466 to maintain their common areas. New Districts through 13 were added to the PWAC.

Being part of the PWAC does not relinquish ownership of the property or facilities within the CDD. BCDD owns the land that the Brownwood square sits on; BCDD owns the square. Some of my D10 maintenance funds were put into the pool (PWF) that paid for the repair of the windmill and water tower but that doesn't give me or D10 any ownership over the square the windmilll sits on. Likewise, the BCDD contributes maintenance funds to the PWF which are used to pay for the flowers in the circles on Buena Vista at Hillsborough and Hendry but in no way does that convey any ownership of that land to the BCDD.

We Villagers along with the BCDD and SLCDD provide maintenance fees to the PWF to pay for maintenance of common areas and features but that doesn't mean we Villagers can lay claim to anything not an amenity that is outside the District we live in.