lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Like many AI products I’m actually just a bunch of people in the Philippines.
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News Reedy Creek Improvement District and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District
- Thread starter castlecake2.0
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Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
How sure are you we're not an AI model?
flynnibus
Premium Member
Disney paying it indirectly through taxes is true, but irrelevant to the thread in question. The statement was Disney is able to move projects from their CapEx spend to the District. This is true and a huge benefit.
It's not a critique of the action or it's justification to acknowledge this reality.
Batman'sParents
Active Member
For WDI or Universal Creative ?
Besides the parking garages, and public roads owned by RCID, what other project has Disney ever been able to move?
Any private roads? Limited access roads? Any resort amenities? Some other example of Disney using the District to avoid the CapEx on Disney's books.
CaptainNicko
Active Member
Beginning? I pegged them for a second cousin all along.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Again "improper" or not was never part of the comment being made.
When a new shopping center or project comes along and generates more traffic on the main road - it's still the public road, but you will often find the local government forcing the developer to fund or provide the infrastructure improvements that their project will lead to being necessary or that they benefit from.
When a new development wants to be built and get the zoning approvals to do so... they will often be forced to sweeten the deal with the local government to pay for the infrastructure impacts or provide incentives like offer land for parks, or schools, or other community interests outside of the developers own plans.
When RCID is submissive to Disney alone... the district can choose to approve projects, changes, etc without requiring any compromises from Disney and can choose to fund and built infrastructure on their own, instead of forcing Disney to do it.
Now maybe the improvements are for the greater good -- Like I said, this is not a claim that the projects are improper. But the fact the district's decisions are not independent of Disney's wishes leads to the situation where the parties can simply pick the option that is most beneficial to Disney. This would not be the same if the two were independent.
flynnibus
Premium Member
"besides the things I can't deny you are right about...." Why is that even relevant to the discussion? If I were to offer you 30% off one of your major expenses... Are you going to nickpick "well it's not all my expenses..."
When you are a major land developer - infrastructure and services build outs are a huge deal. If you have a friendly government willing to do all that work on their tax free, low interest checking account... vs making you supply it... It's a big deal. Even if it only has limited applications.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
It would have been possible for all of Walt Disney World to be private roads. Some of the utility services such chilled and hot water are typically self-generated in a campus setting or other large development area.
Except it kind of was and is. Statements about Disney can transfer CapEx to the District and this gives them an unfair competitive advantage. Along with the suggestion that this transfer allows Disney to fund Disney projects using municipal bonds which would be a large issue. All of this is suggested in the context of a reason the District should be dissolved or control of it handed over to an unaccountable appointed group.
Disney cannot just transfer arbitrary CapEx to the district.
In those scenarios, this is the local government, representing it's constituents, trying to prevent increased public expenditures caused by some private development from impacting the constituents that are not causing the impact. This scenario doesn't exist in the district. When Disney, the company, does something, say they build a new theme park expansion that will increase car traffic 30%, causing a raise in costs for the public and private roads leading to the theme park parking lot. The district that maintains the public part of that can look to fund the increased costs two ways. They can require Disney the developer to fund it through some deal and zoning and planning restrictions applied to the theme park expansion. Alternatively, the district can just use tax funds to pay for the increased public road costs. When the district goes to it's constituent tax payers and says "so sorry, evil mega corp Disney is expanding a theme park and it's going to cost us 30% more to maintain the public roads, you OK with that?", those district constituents, which is just Disney, just shrug and say "it's fine". While Disney the corporation has to directly fund increased costs to the private driveway that leads from the public road into the parking lot. They're not able to transfer that cost to the district.
To the the constituents of the district. RCID took direction based on what the constituents of the district wanted to prioritize. That sounds like a responsive form of government.
Because those two things are not Disney transferring CapEx to the district as some thing that is a generic transfer. Those are things that governments all over the country fund as public expenditures frequently. An opinion about the district shouldn't have spent it's money this way for things that governments routinely fund and everyone within and funding the district agrees was a good way for the district to spend it's money isn't some smoking gun reason to remove the district. This discussion about transferring expenses to the district was cited as a reason to dissolve the district. Those two examples don't come anywhere near supporting that argument. They barely with the slimmest margin support the idea of Disney transferring costs.
Governments all of the country support this type of spending to attract businesses. Spending they fund by taxing large constituent bases where many of those constituents would rather they not spend the money this way. At least in RCID there was no confusion, the RCID constituents wanted to spend the money this way.
I'm looking for someone who is so sure that the district was an abusive setup that needed to be dissolved because of it's many issues to point out some of those issues that rise to the level of removing the district. The one pointed out was the ability to transfer CapEx from Disney to RCID. Followed by the only examples of that transfer being to fund public garages and roads and then nothing else. That's it. In 55 years, the reason the district should be dissolved is because someone thinks they made a bad decision on which public infrastructure to fund.
Agree. The entire area would have looked different.
I've commented before that if Disney had kept everything private, one huge private compound, just pushed the ticket booth gates all the way out to the district boundaries. Put the entrance gates at Hotel Plaza Blvd and 535, the I-4 Epcot Center Drive exit becomes a Walt Disney World Resort driveway instead of a public road. Plus all the the other spots. Nobody cutting through RCID if they're all private roads, since there wouldn't be an RCID, that would be people cutting through the private Walt Disney World Resort compound.
In that scenario, municipal bonds wouldn't have been an option. Just like there wouldn't be any public access. Something like Disney Springs becomes an issue too. It's hard to have a mall in the middle of a private compound. Maybe they put that eastern tollbooth just west of the mall, making that part of Hotel Plaza Blvd from 535 just a mall access road.
If it had been built this way, the counties probably wouldn't have done as well as they did with the current implementation.
JoeCamel
Well-Known Member
No wonder you type with an accent...
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Private roads don’t have to restrict access. I believe Osceola Pkwy becomes a private, Disney-owned road near Disney’s Animal Kingdom and nobody would know.
flynnibus
Premium Member
You are taking this as some literal which you know very well is not the case. "transfer" is not a literal accounting term here - it's the concept of moving the responsibility from Disney to the District. You know this, and you're just being disingenuous here to try to nickpick word usage when it never was about the inference you are making.
Wait, we moved into a new universe where Disney is the ONLY constituent now? This isn't true and you know it. And the decision isn't purely based on 'who is impacted' -- It's a question of if its the role of government too. But again, none of this disputes that in any other situation, Disney would face different circumstances than it has.. and there are clear links between RCID's planning and Disney's.
Except we know this isn't how the process actually works - there is no public hearing on the matter, there is no open solicitation between government and it's constituients, and we know the district wasn't objectively evaluating needs independently of Disney.
Ignore the word transfer - because clearly you are hung up on it and putting head in sand about the rest. "shift burden" or "benefit because of the District's choices" -- use whatever wording you want. You're trying to hide from the obvious through grammer hoops.
So here we are again with the deflection of "well its not a lot" -- The size does not change the statement... just like your "what other examples" retort.
Disney has shifted burden to the District as its an advantageous way to do things. Not a lie. Not illegal. Not immoral. But not a lie either.
They don't have to, but they could. In a world where the district never existed and the entire area was one huge private Walt Disney World Resort, I think they might have done that.
That would certainly create an even better "magic bubble" feeling. See, you passed through the gate right off the highway, we're inside an actual fully privately owned bubble now. Instead of, we're still driving down a public road with theme parks on the left, theme parks on the right.
That there are public roads at all, that's a value that the existence of RCID created.
I'm not. Transfer the way the projects are funded. How they're paid for, the ability to use municipal bonds, that they're managed by the district. This was cited as an improper use by Disney and a reason the district should be removed. I would like examples of when this was done for an expense that any random normal government entity elsewhere in the country would not also do. Just one example of where Disney was able to offload some responsibility to the district that other governments don't also take care of the same responsibility.
Sorry, I didn't qualify this one as "majority Disney, they're not the only land owner and tax payer within the district, just the overwhelming majority one". Probably need to add "all the other land owners have agreements with Disney that give Disney significant control over what those other land owners can do and that all of them became owners after the district already existed and knew how it worked when entering the agreement". It's a huge pain to type that out every time. I thought we all got to that point a hundred plus pages ago.
In any situation where Disney was trying to convince a government to spend someone else's money? Sure, it would work different if there were 5, 50, 500, or 5,000 different families all paying taxes and voting for the government and Disney was bullying them. Totally different in that scenario. Good thing that doesn't exist in the district.
Between the district and Disney? Did RCID not have public meetings on anything prior to CFTOD taking over? I get that they would have been totally boring vs today, but did they not exist at all?
I'm not. I'm looking for something where Disney shifted the burden to the district for something that would not be normal for a government to take on. Something that would justify the reason to dismantle the district. There are several posters who continue to state that it doesn't matter why it was dismantled now, it deserved to be because it was doing these improper things. I'm looking for one of them to give an example of an improper thing. Building garages isn't one.
It's not that it's not a lot. It's not that the private public partnership is wrong or doesn't make things better for both the private and the public. It's that the things Disney has shifted to the district are things that governments routinely take on. They've shifted maintenance for all kinds of roads, power lines, garages, drainage canals, fire department, from Disney to the district. If this was one giant private property, they would need to fund those things. It's not a size question, it's a function question. All those things are things that governments routinely do for the public. And because the district does them, they've available to the public. The district is no different here.
So, what thing did Disney shift to the district that isn't normal?
There must be something. I keep reading posts that the district had to go. That it was some improper relationship to Disney. That the combination acted in a way that it should not have. So, let's hear one from someone who thinks there's an issue and the district should have been dissolved now or in the past.
To recap:
The suggestion that RCID has problems that need to be resolved.
The question asking for an example problem.
The answer providing an example problem that should be resolved. An answer that doesn't provide any context about what CapEx is being referred to.
A rebuttal that this isn't a thing that happens. Presumably reading that statement, made with no context, that any type of CapEx could be tranferred.
A rebuttal to the rebuttal. Presumably because some amount of CapEx expenditures required to manage the district are handled by the district and not Disney because the district is managing public resources and the entire area is not a private compound. A legitimate scenario where the existence of RCID and those things being public does mean the district takes on that responsibility instead of Disney. However, at this point, the things the district takes on because they are things public governments generally take on no longer satisfies the answer to the question about an example to an RCID problem that need to be resolved.
A follow-up question, looking for examples of a CapEx transfer that would represent a problem and reason RCID needed to be reformed. Looking for an example where Disney was able to transfer the effort to RCID for something that governments do not normally take on or something that was only possible in RCID, something where the transfer created a problem for RCID worth reforming or dissolving RCID.
Followed by like a dozen posts telling me that a transfer does exist and that it's totally fine and being improper has nothing to do with anything. When that was the root question that was never answered.
Which get's us back to: Can ANYONE point out some specific things about RCID they think should be reformed? Something that is an actual problem not a made up fake one.
No, I will not accept that they built parking garages to increase business at the public mall that sits within the district. The reason I will not is that governments all over the county do this exact same thing. It's a local decision, and the locals the district was responsible to were ok with it. In some areas they are, in some they're not. It's not a problem, it's local policy.
Beyond that, we've been given that RCID tried to prevent Bonnet Creek from connecting to it's public road. A situation they correctly lost in court. As it looks like the closest pubic road access to the property.
Can we get another example problem with RCID that requires reform?
(Waiting for someone to say it lets them avoid paying taxes, cause they're special.)
The suggestion that RCID has problems that need to be resolved.
The question asking for an example problem.
The answer providing an example problem that should be resolved. An answer that doesn't provide any context about what CapEx is being referred to.
A rebuttal that this isn't a thing that happens. Presumably reading that statement, made with no context, that any type of CapEx could be tranferred.
A rebuttal to the rebuttal. Presumably because some amount of CapEx expenditures required to manage the district are handled by the district and not Disney because the district is managing public resources and the entire area is not a private compound. A legitimate scenario where the existence of RCID and those things being public does mean the district takes on that responsibility instead of Disney. However, at this point, the things the district takes on because they are things public governments generally take on no longer satisfies the answer to the question about an example to an RCID problem that need to be resolved.
A follow-up question, looking for examples of a CapEx transfer that would represent a problem and reason RCID needed to be reformed. Looking for an example where Disney was able to transfer the effort to RCID for something that governments do not normally take on or something that was only possible in RCID, something where the transfer created a problem for RCID worth reforming or dissolving RCID.
Followed by like a dozen posts telling me that a transfer does exist and that it's totally fine and being improper has nothing to do with anything. When that was the root question that was never answered.
Which get's us back to: Can ANYONE point out some specific things about RCID they think should be reformed? Something that is an actual problem not a made up fake one.
No, I will not accept that they built parking garages to increase business at the public mall that sits within the district. The reason I will not is that governments all over the county do this exact same thing. It's a local decision, and the locals the district was responsible to were ok with it. In some areas they are, in some they're not. It's not a problem, it's local policy.
Beyond that, we've been given that RCID tried to prevent Bonnet Creek from connecting to it's public road. A situation they correctly lost in court. As it looks like the closest pubic road access to the property.
Can we get another example problem with RCID that requires reform?
(Waiting for someone to say it lets them avoid paying taxes, cause they're special.)
flynnibus
Premium Member
The statement was made "3) Disney shifted CapEx from its balance sheet to the local government apparatus, thus obscuring true CapEx" -- and peter said "that's an outright lie"
It's not - that's what I responded to. The rest of your posts are about "if its justified" or "abnormal". That is a different topic than if it was happening. It's clear RCID took its steerage for development and decision making from Disney.
I'm not trying to say they shouldn't have - but trying to obfuscate things with "well thats normal" or "its not a lot" doesn't change that basic fundamental point -- they did.
Batman'sParents
Active Member
Based on the agreements with Osceola county, I think it may be shared, because of that public access might be required. I don’t know for sure.
I know when they were planning animal kingdom, Disney helped part of the extension and redid the financing agreement a few years ago.