Good post!

You all should read post #77……………..

?? Post #77 doesn't speak to most of those and acknowledges a few.

I felt good about hearing of Don’s appointment,
but like you, after reading his post, he definitely will have my vote.

My view on his candidacy went to very positive after reading post 77. Maybe next time you should read all comments first.

I did.
Maybe you should reread your earlier posts…………….

Would rather have a situation where in a governor can not kick someone out of office because he they were being charged of a crime. In addition the commisioner(s) are locally elected. Our country does have law about being innocent until proven guilty. He did the same thing to a locally elected election supervisor in Broward County.

Whatever happened to local control?

Most everything was either addressed by me or previously by someone else except for the comment about my opinion on the impact fee.

If I held the same opinion on the impact fee I would not have been selected, not because I would be challenging the developer, but because I would be demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the primary issue with that approach.

Impact fees are specific targeted funds that can only be used on those items they are specifically designated for. They cannot be used to offset other expenses and revenue sources, in other words, they could not legally be applied to the general fund and used to offset the 25% tax increase that occurred. Even if the previous commissioners had raised the impact fee, it could not have been used as they wanted. Amazingly they were all well aware of this fact, perhaps not during the elections, but most certainly after they started these efforts the county staff would have educated them on the fact, and yet they continued on this effort.

Sumter County was not the only county in the state trying to go crazy on impact fees, there were several others. The state legislature stepped in and made the effort intentionally more difficult. More difficult but not impossible. There were 2 avenues it provided, either a limited increase up to 12.5% that required a super majority to approve or perform a reassessment of the impact fees through a formal study, and if justified, then it could be raised without restrictions. Either route is not impossible but requires a deliberate and well thought out process.

Amazingly, after the state took the actions that they did and provided the county with options, neither was taken. Obviously, raising the impact fee was not needed.

Looking at the current year's budget that was approved by the previous commission after the impact fee issue was put to rest, not a single measure was put forward by ANY commissioner to reduce spending and subsequently allow for a reduction in the property tax rate. Last year's budget spending actually increased 25% thanks to the infusion of state and federal funds, now this year the budget must address how to either reduce the spending or increase the revenue (taxes) to cover the spending increases in the next fiscal year. One of the first orders of business I'll be dealing with starting tomorrow.

I think I've said most of this previously in other posts on this website or in my videos.

Thank you, and you are correct, there are bad and good apples on both sides. This is however a very partisan race and is showing the discontent along party lines for the most part. Being civil will go a long way.

I did not intend to criticize you or post #77. My only point was that post #77 did not speak to the multiple quotes in post #85.

The impact fee and tax increase has already been discussed to exhaustion in other threads.

I'll be more than happy to address any issue. I'm not sure exactly what issues you are talking about in #76, I'm assuming that it was a typo.

Apologies. Post #85 included the quotes and appeared to point to post #77 to refute them.

I corrected my previous post.

Again, can you be more specific? There were a lot of comments there and as I said, I believe most had been either addressed by myself or others in the thread. If you don't like or agree with some of the answers it does not mean that they weren't answered or the answers were wrong, it is just a disagreement.
If you want, you can call me with specific questions, and I'll do my best to answer. My cell phone number is on the districtgov.org website and on my company website.

Post 85 came AFTER post 77 - How could he possibly known what was going to be said in 8 posts?

Post 85 gathered quotes from throughout the thread and then pointed to post 77 as if post 77 refuted the issues mentioned in the quotes. I was questioning why the author believed that post 77 refuted those quotes since post 77 didn't mention most of the issues and agreed with a few.

I have no questions or concerns for Mr. Wiley. It was not my intent to criticize Mr. Wiley nor to engage him at all. My only question was why the author of post 85 who included all the quotes thought post 77 refuted those quotes.

This has wandered too far off topic.