And the new buyers of new properties reimburse the developer. The developer never ACTUALLY has to pay a dime.

If he owns the property he's living in, or owns other property in the Villages, then yes he is there for the firefighters. As you say - they are professional. That means they get paid. They're paid through our tax dollars.

The developer also in the end pays not a dime for the land, construction materials, plumbing, electricity, etc., that go into building new homes and commercial buildings. These developments do have an impact on services and infrastructure like roads in a community and that is why many counties have impact fees. Why should existing residents pay for all the improvements needed because of these new buildings? These one time impact fees are helpful in providing a community with some of the money they need to build new schools, roads, fire stations, purchase new fire trucks, hire more policemen and firemen, etc..

Did The Developer or the County pay for existing firehouses?

Actually that is for residential development. For commercial development it will be passed onto the consumer through higher prices on goods and services. If the taxes are too high then maybe a commercial development is not done which will make the current crowding in restaurants, stores, golf courses, and other commercial properties seem like nothing. And before you say it, the Villages developer is not the only one developing commercial properties, look at 466a.

Unfortunately there is no free lunch, someone has to pay.

The developer built and paid for them and then either deeded them over to the VCCDD (with the stipulation that they always be fire stations or they are returned to the developer) or they lease the property to the VPSD (a much more palatable cost structure than building or buying).

What I said. One convicted, the other pleaded guilty. Both were brought to us by the OP.

No, he didn't plead guilty. He made a deal for immunity from prosecution. There are conditions that he must abide by for the immunity. If he fails to abide by those conditions then he will have implicitly plead guilty. So, he just needs to follow the rules for a designated amount of time and he is clear.

The more I read about government in The Villages, the less I understand about how it operates and who is responsible for what.

Go get educated!

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Serious questions: Do you know how much the Developer charged the VCCDD for the stations he sold to that District (i.e., to the Villages Public Safety Department) and how much the Developer is charging for the station he rents to the VPSD?

Those amounts are difficult, if not impossible, for the public to ascertain. However, we, as taxpayers end up paying up paying them through our county taxes. Do you know where those amounts can be found and where the underlying deeds/lease agreement are recorded?

Are you sure he didn't plead out? I'm no lawyer and I don't play one on TV, but I do know that in many cases, prosecutors won't offer "a deal" unless the subject agrees to plead guilty as a condition of the deal.

My comments were based on what I read in The Daily Sun. What was printed was that the deal involved resigning his county seat and testifying at Miller’s trial, plus a bunch of other restrictions.

You apparently have never run a business. You assume that a business can simply pass its costs on to it customers. If that were so, no business would ever go bankrupt.

If the Developer's sweetheart impact fee (40% of the cost of his county roads and 0% of the cost of his other county infrastructure) were increased, he would TRY to pass the costs on to home buyers and the price of new houses and commercial property would increase somewhat. However, unless his finance department has left money on the table in establishing the current prices, the Developer already has priced his houses at a level to maximize profits: markup per house times number of houses sold.

Any increase in price would reduce profits by reducing the number of houses sold. Therefore, the probable result of a cost increase from reasonable impact fees would be: a profit hit for the Developer and somewhat higher prices on new houses. That outcome is fine for us, the present residents, since the cost of growth would then be paid by the persons causing the cost (the Developer and new buyers), not by us (the current residents). As a result of the Developer's sweetheart impact fee, we are currently subsidizing the Developer's business.

Why do you think the Developer paid our State Representative Hage almost a million dollars after Hage sponsored legislation protecting the Developer's sweetheart impact fee???

Hage is an employee of the developer so thought he sponsored the legislation as part of his salary. How do you know he was slipped an additional million?

Either way new meaning to conflict of interest.