peter11435
Well-Known Member
Disney is the the tax payer
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News Reedy Creek Improvement District and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District
- Thread starter castlecake2.0
- Start date
It has become more and more apparent that the only thing Gilzean, Garcia and the CFTOD board are good at is fabricating things to attempt to legitimize their cause. The facts are, that Desantis' agenda and the board are taking a well run district and destroying it. Hopefully, Disney will prevail in its legal battle and attempts to restore Reedy Creek to it's original configuration are successful.
They're actively trying to imply incorrectly that its everybody and make people think that it's John Doe FL resident that is paying for stuff. When they say "tax payers" they're typically misdirecting on purpose to imply something false.
Likewise, they'll say something like "Disney has control" instead of "tax payers have control" for the same reason, to imply something incorrectly.
Something like "Disney has all the control and tax payers have all the burden". Sound nefarious. What if we change it to "Tax payers have all the control and Disney has all the burden", then sounds like Disney is getting a poor deal. Both those statements are the same.
A better one would be "Tax payers have all the control and tax payers have all the burden" to represent how the district used to work. Of course today it is "Unaccountable appointed board has all the control and tax payers have all the burden".
So your issue is with Special Districts as a whole where voting is based on property ownership instead of residency? Just do away with them all then, since that's how most of them are structured. It is certainly not unique to RCID.
That voting difference of property ownership instead of residency is reflective of the powers these government entities have.
Marionnette
Well-Known Member
And why is that? Because when Celebration and Golden Oaks were built, the RCID de-annexed those developments in order to prevent those residents from voting in the district. There was supposed to be an actual town built when the RCID was created. That town (the original EPCOT plan) was never built.
References to this goal?
(There's a whole bunch of references throughout this thread that say this goal wasn't in the agreement or RCID legislation.)
So you're not upset that the 53 actual residents in the towns of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista (ie RCID) live in an area governed by political appointees, when they previously could vote for who represented them.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
This has been covered extensively. The district was not conditioned on the building of EPCOT. Even then, being residents would not have given the people of Celebration and Golden Oak voting rights in the district. Being landowners is what would have made them voters but EPCOT as envisioned by Walt was only going to offer housing for rent.
Every other week someone chimes in that has no idea what they’re talking or fighting about
flynnibus
Premium Member
There is something to be said for 'not operating as an island'. In reality, we expect entities to interact and work together with their neighbors. We don't expect entities to take NIMBY to the extreme, but expect them to work for the 'common good' even if that means tradeoffs or consequences for their own interests if the net gain for the union is better.
Example, counties working together to build infrastructure and sharing costs, even if not exactly proportioned to their own physical presence. Or planning infrastructure together - to create systems instead of disjointed messes. Or counties/cities collaborating on where things should go... in relation to other comparable or inter-dependent services.. instead of looking at their boundaries as uncrossable lines. Example: Where a hospital may be placed.
That said, that doesn't mean it's all charity... it doesn't mean we should expect entity A to carry entity B's bag for them.
The problem with the narrative being spun by the CFTOD board now is... they are taking these ideas to the extreme and painting the absence of something within the district as an abuse on it's neighbors. Instead of saying "creating jobs was good for the region" - they are spinning the story that RCID empowered Disney from paying it's share of it's impact to the area because the district didn't build the elements to support those jobs and allowed Disney to escape paying it's share to provide those services. Like social services, housing, etc. That the district didn't plan for supporting the burden of that development, but instead laid out a plan that served only Disney's development needs.
I mean, yes, there is a side of truth in that - the land management is setup to support Disney's initiatives - not general community development. But if that is "wrong" or not, is where the board's conclusions are completely slanted and presumptuous. Should Reed Creek have been a self-sustaining community with housing, community needs, hospitals, schools, etc? If this were just unincorporated land with a local goverment setup trying to drive growth of the population... maybe? But that's not what Reedy Creek was, and not what it's actual landowners were trying to do.
This is where the disconnect between governance and representation in the CFTOD is fatal and problematic.
What do you want your area to be? Rural Farmland? Thriving Suburbs? Urban metroplex? Every area of the country faces such debates all the time, and local governments manage these topics based on the idea of providing sound representation of their constituents and their desires. Their job is to be stewards of the common good of their constituents and that includes interacting and often interweaving with their adjacencies and inter-dependent governments. If they try to shape your region into something the residents don't want.. residents will replace them.
Reedy Creek was never a general purpose area that would be develped into general purpose self-sustaining communities. It's absurd that the CFTOD is painting that picture that RCID failed to deliver on that... because it's a false premise to begin with. And it's not what the actual constituents of the district wanted for the area either.
The whole impact fees and other planning omissions they are trying to spin into failures now are all based on false assumptions from the get go. And being done so to paint the idea of developing RCID into Disney's kingdom as an abuse -- instead of accepting it was an execution of a plan that served the audience as actually intended.
No one had ever been asked to leave either town by “the Company”. There’s actually some sentinel articles out there with interviews with the residents who said they don’t just rubber stamp things.
Brian
Well-Known Member
That's correct. My only point was to clarify that Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista were not some emblem of American democracy that suddenly got ripped away from the voters by DeSantis' actions.
flynnibus
Premium Member
It is - you're just fixated on the wrong constituents. Even if the residents are purely proxies - their representation is that of a private entity... who is now being governed without representation.
Yes, and while I haven't seen recent reporting about it, didn't RCID have relationships in good standing with both Orange and Osceola governments?
Good relationships and cooperation between the governance entities is not the same as residents of Orange and Osceola counties that live outside the RCID boundary having direct influence on the RCID governance. That seems to be what the post I replied to was inferring.
If I look at say, Salem NH. A community some choose to live in, just over the NH boarder to take advantage of no income tax, and then commute into Boston for work. (A horrible commute I would not want.) Should those residents of Salem NH get to vote and have input into the Boston city government, into the MA state government, into all the town governments on the route between Salem and Boston?
That seems to be the suggestion for how it should work for RCID from the post I replied to. Not that RCID should just work cooperatively with it's neighbors but that the entire state of FL should have direct influence on how RCID works instead of only those within the boundary. If you extend that pattern, FL should just eliminate all local governments of all types. Simply elect the state government and have them appoint the local control. That people get to vote for the state government is enough accountability for the rest.
flynnibus
Premium Member
History has said yes. Which is why the narrative being spun by the CFTOD is a mockery.
Not direct representation. But this is where things get mushy. In your example, the onus is on the governing bodies to acknowledge that is the actual situation and not be abusive towards each other. For instance, acknowledging the traffic patterns and incorporating those into the plans - rather than denying the flows exist. How inter-agencies fund things is complicated. But an example of this type of cooperation or even co-governance is regional transportation boards. Where entities are setup with representation from all the areas. For instance, the DC metro is lead and funded through a regional entity made up from MD, DC, and VA.
And there are other solutions to such 'shared' burdens/needs too. This ties back into my 'no one is an island' point. The CFTOD is now claiming the District abused the region by giving Disney a pass on paying impact fees, and burdened it's neighbors by not providing key services of its own. Unfortunately this is not a black & white kind of topic - because the relationships and burdens are complex. It's even more complex because there are several layers involved... it's not like Disney wasn't paying for regional things through it's federal, state and county collected taxes either.
So this is an easy finger pointing exercise that someone can't point out as a 'lie' because it's true... the ugliness is in the conclusions drawn from it and the OPINION of if the choices were the right ones.
But to my knowledge, I don't recall the neighbors screaming RCID was a leech as the new board believes they were.
It kind of did though…
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
It is an outright lie because impact fees go to specific services and have a set value. I did some of the math earlier in the thread to show what a pittance impact fees would generate. Doing some rough estimates you’d probably be looking at about $1 billion in impact fees at current rates if you were to build all of Walt Disney World as it exists.
That’s a best case scenario using current fees that doesn’t even get into the fact that the vast majority of the impact fees, just like the taxes that are levied, would have gone to Orange County and not Osceola County which definitely bore more of negative brunt with how Walt Disney World and the region in general developed.
GrumpyFan
Well-Known Member
By a tiny man with big dreams of being President someday all in the name of "protecting the children" while blatantly disregarding the Constitution.
Reedy Creek was established and run by the Disney Company, wholly funded out of their own pockets, at no cost to Florida taxpayers. It was a very well run district with roads, utilities, building codes and water ways built and maintained by Disney to much higher standards than the majority of cities and districts throughout the state. At no time was it anything but a major boon for Florida, providing thousands of jobs and bringing in Billions of dollars in revenue, at little to no cost or burden on Florida taxpayers, until now, all thanks to that tiny man who sought to show them who's boss.