I am going to start with a riddle: How can five guys screw 125,000 people? Now I mean screw financially, not physically.
The answer to the riddle: Five guys can do this by getting elected to the Sumter County Board of Commissioners, with the support of the Developer and then financially screwing everybody in Sumter County– except the Developer and the Developer’s cronies. More specifically, these 5 guys are screwing Sumter County taxpayers by giving the Developer a sweetheart deal on IMPACT FEES, thereby offloading the costs of The Villages expansion on to Sumter County taxpayers and saving the Developer an incredible amount of money. That is what we saw happening on the evening of Sept. 24 when the Developer toadies serving as County Commissioners screwed the Sumter County taxpayers with a 25 percent tax increase in order to benefit the commissioners’ patron, the Developer.
Remember the Developer put the county commissioners in office via his “One Sumter” 2004 legislation; his campaign contributions; his propaganda organ, The Villages Daily Sun; his influence, and his promotion of directors and presidents from his front organization, the so-called Villages Homeowners Advocates (the VHA), to political office.
Until recently, I didn’t know what an impact fee was. Now I do — no thanks to the Sept. 24 front-page article in The Developers’ Daily Sun, which purported to explain property taxes, but never mentions impact fees.
According to Sumter County’s own website: “An impact fee is a one time charge applied to new construction. The purpose of the fee is to fund capital projects for roads (such as construction, land acquisition, [sic]). Impact fees can be charges for parks, schools, jails, ambulances and other infrastructure needs that may occur due to new development.” An impact fee is paid by the builder of a new house when he gets his building permit.
If you are on a county commission, and you want to do a favor for the guy who put you in office and that guy is a big developer, you set a REAL LOW impact fee. To put what’s going on here in perspective, let’s look at Collier County. In Collier County, where the Developer doesn’t have the County Commissioners in his pocket, the builder of a house in a retirement community pays an impact fee of about $20,000 per house.
In Sumter County, the Developer pays an impact fee of $901 per house. I repeat $901 or about $19,000 per house less than he would pay if he built in Collier County. Stated differently the Developer is paying an impact fee of less than 5 percent of what he would pay in Collier County.
This sweetheart deal in Sumter County has been in place for years. Who has been making up for the lost county revenue, i.e., who has been making a gift to the Developer? We have, through higher county taxes.
Now the chickens have now REALLY come home to roost. The Villages is massively expanding, which is necessitating a corresponding massive expansion in roads and other infrastructure. Sixty-thousand new homes times $19,000 per home (i.e., the difference between the Sumter County and Collier County impact-fee rates), means that the Developer will be paying impact fees of One Billion, One Hundred Forty Million Dollars less than he would pay in Collier County. BUT rather than increasing the Developer’s low impact fees to cover the cost of the infrastructure expansion, the County Commissioners are increasing OUR taxes by 25 percent. (Incidentally, the One Billion, One Hundred Forty Million Dollar figure doesn’t include the amount of the gift that the Developer has already received with respect to houses already built.) The Developer is certainly getting a good return on his campaign contributions — at our expense.
The Daily Sun cites $348 as a typical tax increase. So remember, when you pay your taxes, you are essentially writing a check to the Developer for $348 (or whatever your actual tax increase is.)
Please mark your 2020 calendars on Aug.18 (the date of the Republican primary) and on Nov. 3 (the date of the general election) as follows: Vote out Butler, Burgess and Printz.
Let’s clean up Sumter County government.
Scott Fenstermaker is a resident of The Villages.
