County Commission Day

It is County Commission day.

This should not be a crazy day. Nothing huge on the agenda that I see, but let's go through it a bit to see what to expect.

This item caught my attention. Not because it is controversial or anything, but it reminds me of Inverness Villages IV.

This is what happened in the 70s. The developer for IV4 paid a bond to Citrus County for the roads. They went bankrupt. Citrus kept the money and did not do the roads. Now, we all know their "roads" have issues.

I doubt this developer goes bankrupt, but worth noting the similarities.

Right Rudder is on the agenda. Commissioner Bays will ask the board to dismiss the counter claim (eviction) in the lawsuit in exchange for Right Rudder dropping its complaint.

As I mentioned before the timing of this is interesting. Right Rudder made a discovery request for a lot of information on May 13th, but notably private texts/calls/etc from the commissioners related to various things with the airport. Each commissioner had a different request. Bays had the largest request for information.

Then at the next meeting, Bays mentioned dismissing the lawsuit? Interesting timing. Where was this request months ago?

Notably, the county has spent upwards of $60,000 on litigation for this case so far. That does not count the amount of money the county paid the aviation attorney Chris Wilson for his work on the termination. That was around $30,000 when I stopped counting over a year ago.

The county has spent close to $100k on trying to get rid of Right Rudder and now they want to stop and get nothing in return? Just ignore it like nothing ever happened?

If I am Right Rudder, I am asking for attorney's fees in exchange for this sudden move to dismiss. They were asking for attorney's fees if they won the lawsuit, so why not ask for them to dismiss it? Remember, it is their lawsuit to drop, not the county's. If the county is so keen on dropping it, make them pay the attorney's fees as well.

Worth mentioning... There is an eviction hearing in July. That litigation is largely paid for already. The county may want to continue through that to see how that goes since it has been paid for and does not really cost additional tax dollars. That may render the whole thing moot as well.

It appears that Commissioner Davis will be the swing vote on this.

Hiring freeze is being floated. I do not expect a ton of discussion on this. Seems like it would go through. One thing to watch though is that they want Steve Howard to play Economic Development Director as well and not hire a new one.

That brings us to property taxes. This was updated yesterday in an email. I expect a bit of conversation about this.

The county has calculated what the property tax reform will look like should it pass in November. It shows the reduction in the various budgets. I expect a bit of talk on what that will look like in the future.

Here are the slides that are attached that show the various budgets and how they would be affected by this change.

So it appears that the county will see a roughly 20% reduction in tax collections in year one and a 30% reduction in year 2 (and beyond).

Transportation will get the most talk I think because that is the roads and things like that. People want their roads done, so a 20% and 30% reduction in those collections will impact roads.

Expect to see something like a MSTU/MSBU being floated to bring additional road funds. A MSTU would be based on property value and would be affected by a reduction, but since we do not have MSTUs here for roads, this would be new money collected.

A MSBU would be a flat fee applied to the property tax and is not based on property value.

Do not have time here to go into all the differences, but expect the board to start looking at those things. They have been mentioned in the past, but will get more traction now as there will be a push to offset the revenue loss.

The General Fund would shrink approximately $24 million in year one and $36 million in year two.

Go through the Capital Improvement Plan and pick some projects to cut. That is likely what will see the biggest cuts and many of those projects do not have funding sources as it is.

Going to be interesting to see how local governments navigate the shortfall in their revenues and what projects/services/jobs end up getting cut as a result.

That is it for today. Enjoy the meeting!