Who is "we" the older folks in TV that have one foot in the grave?

There's plenty of younger folks in Sumter who are struggling and faster ambulance service is not their highest priority.

Most counties charge a fire fee to businesses based on square footage. Lake County charges by the square foot. Look up their charges. Look up all the other metropolitan areas in Florida and you will see businesses all pay much more than they do here in Sumter County. They either charge fire impact fees and/or fire assessment fees on businesses. based on square footage. I don’t know why people post alarmist statements about “overcharging” businesses when Sumter County has a ridiculous system that favors business over residents. Look it up. $124 per rooftop and no fire impact fees for businesses is one of the lowest in Florida!

No, I'm pretty sure my information about these increases is absolutely correct as it came from budget documents, Benesch study documents, and Sumter County tax documents.

The impact to businesses is a complicated issue. Absolutely, the $124 assessment to a commercial rooftop or commercial property would have increased dramatically. But, what is the actual cost to providing fire protection service to the property and who would actually pay it?

Is $124 reasonable for the entirety of the lofts at Brownwood or Grand Traverse plaza? Try thinking about it this way. Let's say $124 is reasonable for my house, my neighbor's house, and the eight other houses on my cul-de-sac. Each of us receives the same services, those services have a cost, and so we each pay $124 (for a total of $1,240 for the street). Now imagine I win the lottery and decide I don't want any neighbors so I purchase all their homes. Further, I don't like the idea of receiving separate tax bills so I legally merge all those properties into one. Now I have a single property with ten rooftops - my own little compound. The fire assessment for that property would now be $124 total. Even though the ten homes still exist and even though they require the same fire protection services the fee is reduced because they are now a single property. That's legal, but is it reasonable?

The Benesch study attempted to calculate fire protection costs and come up with a fee structure that allocated those costs based on utilization. It attempted to fairly allocate the real costs rather than simply charge each property $124 regardless of the fire protection needs. Businesses didn't like the outcome of the study but I didn't read much (any?) criticism of the methodology of the study. Perhaps the study was correct and businesses have been getting a great deal for a long time.

Who would pay for the increased fees on businesses? That depends. If a business owned its land and property then the increases would fall on business profit and could be passed to the customers. There would be a tradeoff that would take into consideration how much profit the business needed to survive and how much cost the customer would be willing to pay. It might be that some businesses simply would not be able to afford the fees and would close. Others would pass the costs to customers who would then stop patronizing that business. It could get ugly.

Inside the Villages there is the same story but with a catch. Inside the Villages there is a landlord. We know prices inside the Villages are higher than outside for most things. We have heard that rents inside the Villages are high though we've been told the rents must not be excessive since businesses keep paying them. But now not only is there the business' profit that could be used to pay the increased fee there is also the landlord's profit. If fees were increased and business' profit decreased or the cost was passed to customers who stopped coming then some storefronts would become vacant. The landlord (the Villages) may determine that they should lower rents rather than see their rent income go to zero. In other words, the "Village tax" may decrease in order to keep businesses in the Villages.

But none of this matters now. The IFD was defeated and a fee restructuring was defeated. Next up - a dependent fire district with taxing authority.

Instead of voting an increase in service standards at around an extra $40 a month per residence, they voted it down and we no longer get the increase in firefighters need for the expand villages down south, and they are closing 3 fire stations and got rid of one whole hazmat department. Way to go! Cut off the nose despite the face. You want top notch services when your house is on fire, or you have a medical emergency but don’t want to pay for it. Geeeeze….

I told people that we needed to be independent when it was on the ballot last year, but no, you people voted it down. Now we are all going to have to pay dearly!

I think it was presented poorly and folks misunderstood situation. Hopefully this can be fixed

I forget the timing of when the decision to leave AMR was made or considered. I do know AMR pre dates my time in the Villages.
How was fire and ambulance operated and paid for pre AMR? Was service acceptable? I wold guess the move to AMR was primarily to save money for the taxpayers. Did taxes go down - my guess NO.

The decision to leave AMR was made around September 2021, prior to the IFD proposal. The decision was made because of perceived poor performance (long wait times) by AMR. The fire department was arriving on scene 15-20 minutes sooner than AMR. The solution, put EMS at the fire stations since they have good response times.

There was the accusation that AMR was costing the taxpayers a lot of money for mediocre service but I don't know that I ever saw any numbers on that. There was never a calculation that I saw for how much FD-based ambulance service would cost or what the budget difference would be.

So the BoCC voted to end AMR and allow VPSD and SCFD (renamed to SCFEMS) to provide ambulance service.

Fire service has been paid for by the $124 fee plus property taxes for at least the last five years. I heard somewhere that the $124 fee had not been changed since 2017 but I wasn't here at that time to see it. You could look at old Sumter County budget documents to see how much was spent on fire protection in previous years. I know the request this year was for significantly more than last year.

A couple hundred bucks spread over the year seems pretty trivial considering where we live and what we paid/pay to live in TV. IMO, EMS is worth it! Think about the state people are in when they arrive at an MVA or fire, sometimes stomach turning. So, skip a few nights out to dinner each year for those that come to aid us at our worst of times......

Sure. Because people in their 40's and even 30's don't have cardiac arrests. Because 20 somethings don't get in serious car accidents. Because the only senior citizens in Sumter Co. live in TV. And those of us who live in TV have "one foot in the grave".

Nice post, not.:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

Where is Don when you need him

Probably exercising good judgement by staying above the fray

He has already weighed in (and very well, I might add) on a previous thread.

Independent as in paying what the govenor's/developer's appointees wanted to tax us for TVFD. We were also going to be paying for the SCFD just like we were and still are. The powers that be are too afraid of the backlash of making the 20% of Sumter County residents outside TV pay for the SCFD.

The other question papa asked was why did the villages go to AMR in the first place? That happened before our time here and we have no idea but it is an interesting question.