Where do you get a guarantee that your taxes won't go up if it does not get created? How do you know Sumter County won't raise your taxes? Also the chances that you will eventually need them is very high, they don't just put out fires.

You are mistaken.

You will not pay twice for the IFD/VPSD. If the IFD passes, Sumter County will no longer fund the VPSD, they will no longer take ad-valorem taxes to send to the VPSD.

But there is no guarantee that we will not be paying for the SCFD. There may be a verbal commitment by one Sumter County Board Member, but nothing in writing about funding SCFD.

The county will have to reduce funds for Fire Protection in their budget unless they have HUGE expansion plans for what would be left of the county fire department. The only way they could keep the taxes the same would be to add those funds to other budget categories which then would result in keeping our county taxes the same. However, I am sure there will be residents and/or the press watching the budget closely to make sure this would get exposed.

You must have missed the last big tax hike, the subsequent county commissioner election, and the whole impact fee mess. The residents wanted the higher impact fees and the developer's minion did an end a round. There is no press here, except for the Daily Sun.

As a wise man once said what the Developer wants the developer gets

Ok, great. Then the rest of the county, non-TV residences will pay the bulk of the CO's IFD/VPSD? How will that go over? Something doesn't quite seem right here. That means, even if they don't make it up in some other manner, a large chunk of revenue coming from TV to the county will cease and the remainder of the Sumter Co. residents will have to make up the deficit. Or, am I missing something?

Don Wiley is the expert on this, I am not. However, I interpreted his statements to mean that residents of TV in Sumter County will pay for the VSPD and not the rest of the county, and the residents of the non-Villages part of Sumter County will pay for their part. His numbers showed the costs to be about the same, about 25% coming from the per parcel assessment and the rest out of the general budget. When split off, all of the 18-19 million costs for the VSPD will come from the "fee", so that part will go up---someone calculated from $124 to $516. That increase should be offset by a reduction in county tax, since they will no longer be paying that 18-19 million. Of course, you will still pay general county taxes, and therefore your total tax bill will be dependent upon the county doing the "right thing"

Can we trust the county to do the right thing? Only good thing is I believe most of the commissioners for Sumter are from TV.

You know what happened to the last commissioners that did NOT do the right thing………

If it’s too complicated it can’t be good

As a sidenote, former Commissioner Miller has endorsed the TVIFD on FB.

The fact that this referendum has generated such a voluminous amount of posts which contain both accurate and inaccurate information, strongly suggests to me that it is not ready for prime time. If the pros and cons and costs cannot be clearly articulated, I will have a hard time supporting it.
The following questions deserve a precise answer:
Let’s assume a home has a 2022 (current) TRIM notice of “X” dollars which includes all ad-valorem and valorem taxes.
1. Assuming the lowest variable fire fee(s) proposed, what would my new “X” be?
2. Assuming the variable fire fee(s) are at maximum, what would my new”X” be?
3. What specific advantages are there to vote “yes”?
4. What are the specific disadvantages to vote “no”?
If these questions cannot be clearly answered without ambiguity due to so much variability in the calculations then the proposal needs more work.

1. and 2. cannot be determined because they are dependent on changes to the property tax rate that will be made by the BoCC. I can tell you exactly how much you would pay to the IFD/VPSD but I can't tell you how much less you will pay to Sumter County.

If you used the same standards for purchasing a home then you would still be living with your parents. A realtor can tell you how much you would pay in property taxes today but there is no way to predict what the assessed value or property tax rate will be next year. There is ALWAYS ambiguity in these numbers until the final quarter of the year.

For 3. there is a lot of information on the Public Safety page under districtgov.org. Much of it boils down to preventing the possibility of bad things happening if the IFD is not created.

For 4. there are no specific disadvantages. There are *possible* disadvantages if the IFD board does this bad thing or the BoCC does that bad thing but if you assume noble intent then these bad things won't happen.

:shrug: Are we talking about following the state's "Sunshine Law"? Or maybe the new probe by the state's Commission on Ethics that has found probable cause that the ex-commissioner awaiting trial may have violated Florida's gift law? Amazingly I didn't see that mentioned after yestersday's front page story in the paper. Don't think the online rag mentioned it either. :confused: