If you are a current homeowner in Sumter County, you are paying for new fire/rescue infrastructure (firehouses, fire trucks, and ambulances) to support the expansion of The Villages.
Rather than taxing current homeowners, most counties surrounding Sumter have a Fire Impact Fee to pay for new fire/rescue infrastructure. However, if the voters approve The Villages Independent Fire Control and Rescue Referendum, the new independent fire district cannot impose a fire/rescue impact fee. Instead of making developers pay for this inherent cost of growth, the current property owners will be taxed. That is one more reason to vote NO on the referendum. You can read other reasons in the October issue of the POA Bulletin using this link.
Impact fees are one-time fees paid when a building permit is issued, and the builder typically includes the impact fee cost in the price of the completed building. For example, the builder would add any impact fees to the price of a new home. The Sumter Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) can, within legal limitations, ensure that the burden of new roads and fire/rescue infrastructure is not placed on the existing property owners by imposing impact fees. The Florida legislation for the Independent Fire District does not contain the words “impact” or “fee”; therefore, the independent fire district cannot collect fire-related impact fees; at the October 18 POA meeting, a spokesman for the fire department verified that the Independent Fire Department would not have authority to impose impact fees.
In 2019, the property taxpayers in Sumter County were shocked when all five county commissioners, who appeared to be puppets controlled by the Developer of The Villages, voted to increase the property tax rate by 25% to help pay for roads in the expansion of The Villages. In the 2020 election, 3 of the five commissioners were up for re-election, and the voters defeated them by a 2/3 vote. In 2021 the three new commissioners tried to increase road impact fees. Unfortunately, our elected representative to the state legislature, who is a $900,000+ employee of The Villages, succeeded in passing a new state law that makes it more difficult to increase impact fees and now requires a 2/3 majority of the BOCC. Since there are only five members of the BOCC, four must vote yes to increase impact fees. Sadly, two developer puppet commissioners remain on the BOCC until November 2022.
For a single-family home, the fire impact fee for Lake County is $390., Citrus County is $343 (Fire + EMS), and Hernando is $209. All have fire impact fees for commercial buildings and multifamily homes that are higher than a typical single-family home.
The Lake County single-family home fire impact fee is $390. If Sumter County had the same fire impact fee as Lake, and if the Developer added this $390 to the price of new homes, what would be the result?
In a recent edition of the Daily Sun, the new homes shown ranged from $229,603 to $458,430. Adding in a fire impact fee would only increase these prices by 0.17% and 0.09%, respectively.
In The Villages Daily Sun (March 14, 2021, page C3), there was an article about the new special fire vehicle for Station 45, “which cost about $1 million” to “easily get to the top of the tallest structures in The Villages.”
Today, the tallest building in The Villages is the Brownwood Hotel. Per the Sumter County tax records, parcel G08-115C contains both the Brownwood Hotel building and the adjacent medical office building; the total number of square feet is 427,460. The Fire Impact fee for Lake County is $1,301 per 1000 square feet for commercial buildings. If the same hotel and office buildings were built in Lake County, the fire impact fee would have been $556,125.46. A similar analysis of The Villages- owned apartment complex, the Lofts of Brownwood (parcel G08D102), yields an additional $357,650. If Sumter County had the same fire impact fee as Lake County, then the new fire truck would have been funded by fire impact fees and not by the current property owners in Sumter County.
Per the Proposed Fire District Boundary Map, there is currently only one firehouse south of highway 44. It is not clear how many new firehouses, fire trucks, and ambulances are required for the expansion of The Villages. It is unclear if some fire trucks need to be million-dollar units. It is clear that if the proposed Independent Fire Control and Rescue Referendum pass, the cost of new firehouses, fire trucks, and ambulances will be paid by current property owners and taxpayers and not by the people who profit from the growth.
John Kastura is a resident of the Village of Belvedere.