Don Wiley #3 Final cut

The Open Forum in the Villages Florida podcast discusses local community leaders and events. The show is now using AI voices for the announcers. Commissioner Don Wiley is a guest and talks about his role and the challenges of being a commissioner. He is currently collecting petitions for re-election. Don also discusses the Villages Fire Department and the addition of more ambulances. There is a funding issue for the operating costs, but response times have improved. They are considering different funding models, such as a dependent fire district or an MSTU. The goal is to protect both residents and businesses in Sumter County. The tax increase for homeowners is still being determined. Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages Florida podcast. In this show we talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in the villages to give perspectives of what is happening here in the villages. We hope to add a new episode most Fridays at 9 a.m. We are a listener-supported podcast. You can become a supporter for as little as $3 per month or you can choose to pay more. To become a supporter go to openforuminthevillages.com and click on support in the black box. There will be shout outs for supporters in episodes. In season 4 we have made some dramatic improvements and changes. First is a clarification of the podcast title. It is Open Forum in the Villages Florida to make clear that this is a regional show independently produced for folks who live in Central Florida and the Villages areas. Second is a dramatic increase in the use of AI in the creation of each episode. In fact the show's announcers are now all AI voices including me, Emily. Hope you enjoy. This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in the Villages Florida and I'm here with Don Wiley. Thanks for joining me Don. Well thanks Mike. I appreciate you having me back on. Not good. I should have said Commissioner Don Wiley. I am a commissioner for here Sumter County, yes. Right, right. How long have you been a commissioner in Sumter County Don? About 14-15 months. Okay. Are you enjoying the job? It's a new set of challenges. I do enjoy working for the people but it definitely has its challenges. Mm-hmm. Now are you thinking of running for re-election as a commissioner? I have already started that process, yes. I'm in the process now of collecting petitions. I need to collect about 1,200 petitions to get myself on the ballot. Now do you mean signatures or petitions? Pretty much the same thing. The petition, it's a half sheet of paper. You got to fill out your name, address and your voter ID number or your birthday on it and then I'll get submitted to the supervisor of elections for validation. And once we have 1,200 of those, then I'm good to go. I'll be on the ballot. Mm-hmm. Right now we're about a third done. Okay, good. Don, I know that you started a political career in the villages by working as a CDD number 10. Right. And how many years did you work on the CDD? I was a CDD supervisor for about seven years. Mm-hmm. And then, so there was an opening that came up because of two of our commissioners being removed by the governor. I followed the process of applying for the position and a couple months later, I got a phone call from the governor's office and I was appointed to the position and then I, of course, I had to run to keep that position after the primary was over. Mm-hmm. So, I did that last year and I'm completing the term of the previous commissioner. Mm-hmm. And if I get re-elected, then it'll be for four years instead of two. Oh, that's better. Yeah. Less headaches for a couple of years. Right. Doing it every two years. I don't know how our congressmen do it every two years. It's constant campaign mode. It's crazy. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, I personally think some of the U.S. congressmen should be term-limited out. You're not going to find any arguments at this side of the mic. You know, ten years in Congress seems like an eternity and some of them are there for 40 years. Yeah, I think 40 years. Career politicians, I don't see the value in it. There is some validity in continuity. Mm-hmm. And having experienced people in there. But after 20 or 30 years, it's like, no, no, no. You're an institution. You're not a public servant anymore. Right, right. Don, I brought you on the show today to talk a little bit about what's happening with the fire district here in the Villages. I know last year, a vote was taken to make the Villages Fire Department a independent fire department, which was voted down. And there was a proposal for a massive tax increase, which the commissioners, thank goodness, turned down. Why don't you fill in for our listeners in a couple of minutes where we are today? Okay, so the independent fire district, yes, it was voted down. I think it was unfortunate. I was all in favor of it, but that's ancient history. So now we move forward. Over the last year and in this upcoming year, we have added basically 16 ambulances to our fire department fleet. Used to be a contracted service for six and with six, they had enough business to basically make a profit and completely fund it at no cost to the county. Mm-hmm. With 16 ambulances, now we have a tremendous amount of overhead cost. The benefit is response times are now much lower. Mm-hmm. And you're not waiting hopefully 45 minutes to two hours for an ambulance. There's more ambulances available. So that availability is what we're paying for. Mm-hmm. And each ambulance takes seven to eight people to fully staff around the clock, 24-7, seven days a week. That cost has to be paid for. The residents demanded it. The county gave it to them. My impression is, I think a lot of people thought somebody else was going to pay for it. Well, that's somebody else who's facing you in the mirror every morning in the bathroom. We have to pay for it. Okay. So on a little positive note, the funding for the ambulances themselves. That's taken care of. Where did that come from? So Village Center Community Development District paid for the 13 ambulances that are in the Villages Public Safety Department. Mm-hmm. They have I think nine or ten in the stations and a few extras and they have some peak capacity also. On the county side, we had some, I believe they called it ARPA funds. Basically, the money that Congress passed down to the various cities and states for COVID relief, part of that was used to purchase six ambulances. We're still waiting on those. There's a huge backlog. Last email I saw, I think there's like 97 ambulances that have to be built before ours or even on the assembly line. Wow. Yeah. So there's a backlog. So right now, we're leasing more of them from AMR. We've just come to an agreement with Citrus County. We're going to rent some of theirs that they're getting ready to retire. They're still serviceable, but they're near their end of service life. But they'll still be adequate for the next year or however long we need them without having to make a substantial investment. So, you know, the money's there to pay for the ambulances. The residents aren't having to pay for the ambulances, which is a good thing. Yeah. It's a good stroke of fate. Yeah. But the increase was really about the operating cost. You're adding, like I said, seven to eight people per ambulance times 16 ambulances. Well, that's a lot. And that has to be accounted for. The plus side to it is now response times are five to 10 minutes instead of 45 minutes to two hours. So that's actually going to save some lives, isn't it? Well, yeah. That's the whole goal. So we have the new ambulances. It's got to be paid for. We had a study done, figured out what the exact cost was. We came up with a costing model. Unfortunately, during the process of evaluating the study, I'm going to stand up and take credit. I failed to ask all the right questions. I asked the initial question, how are other counties doing? The response I got was they're using a similar method. I didn't ask the question, how do their rates compare to ours? And I also didn't ask the question, how does this really impact individuals and businesses? Once the trim notices started coming out, then we saw those answers. And they were pretty devastating. It was going to have a huge negative impact on the business economy of Sumter County. And Sumter County is not just the individuals in the villages and the individuals outside the villages. It's all the residents and it's all the businesses. You can't have one without the other. So we have to protect both. On a go-forward basis, what does the tax increase look like for the individual homeowners? All right. So that's a tough question to answer. We don't have that answer yet. We're looking at several different options for how to go forward with funding. We shot down the funding model that was recommended because the economic impact was too devastating. So we're going through some austerity this year. We've cut some services. We haven't cut any firefighters. So we've kept our staffing good, kept all our fire stations manned. So that's a good thing. But it's definitely some tight budgets. We're going to be brown bag lunch in it for a while. But we're looking at different models. One of them is called a dependent district. There's also what's called an MSTU, Metropolitan Service Taxing Unit. Why don't you start with that first thing you said, which was? The independent district? The dependent fire district. Dependent fire district. Exactly what does that mean? So dependent means that they don't have the ultimate authority in taxing. They're going to be given a certain percentage of the total property tax bill that's allowed under the state legislature, which is 10 millage points. They'll be given a certain number of millage points that they can use for assessment. They will come up with their budget and they will submit it to the county board of commissioners. And then it's either a thumbs up or thumbs down vote. It's a thumbs down vote, they got to go back to the drawing board. If it's a thumbs up, then it's a single line item in the budget for fire for that dependent district. The current thinking on the dependent district is that the villages would be a dependent district and then the rest of the county would continue under the current plan. Basically, we would take all the cost for fire services out of our budget. We know those numbers now. We have a very clear picture on what those are. And that would reduce our millage rate. And then this MSTU, this basically a fire tax, if you will, would replace it. And it would be different for inside the villages and outside of the village. Was it the second option you talked about for a second? Second option. So that's, again, just taking out the dependent fire district out of the picture altogether and just having the taxing unit, the MSTU, that would be controlled by the county commissioners for all of the fire departments in Sumter County. Right now, we have what's called an MSBU, Metropolitan Service Benefit Unit. This is the $124 that most people are thinking is what they pay for fire service. But it's not. It's not what they pay for fire service. How do you calculate what your actual cost is for fire service? So it's the $124 plus go into your tax bill for your property. And the very first line item is the county tax. It's right above the school tax. So for me, it's about $1,300. I think we looked at yours as well. We just looked at mine. About $1,500. Take about a third of that and add those two together. That's what's going to pay for fire service in Sumter County. Okay. So currently, in the $1,500 example, it's $500 plus the $124. Right. $624. Yeah. That's $624. For me, it's $500 and change, whatever. And that's typical of a homeowner. If your home has less of a value, you're going to pay a little bit less. You're still going to always pay the $124. That exists to make sure that everybody pays because there are some properties that have lower values throughout the county and the homeowners pay sometimes zero in county property tax because of the exemptions, the homestead exemptions. Maybe they have disability exemptions, whatever they are. So a lot of people have zero property tax. They still have to pay a school tax and they're still going to pay $124. Same thing goes for businesses. The businesses... How is that going to be calculated for a business? Well, we don't know. We had a plan and that was what got shot down on the 22nd of August. That was to tax it based on square footage and there were three different categories. There was commercial, industrial, and institutional. Institutional would be like hospitals and nursing homes and things like that. Industrial would be some of the factories like what's out at the Governor Rick Scott Industrial Complex. Sure. And then commercial was about $0.52 a square foot. It doesn't sound like much, but you get a business with 30,000, 40,000 square feet. All of a sudden, that's a huge addition. Well, they were already paying not only the $124, but they also have to pay that same third of their ad valerum tax, their county tax towards fire service. So nobody was paying $124. A few people were in smaller houses, but businesses, residents, nobody was really paying $124. Common misconception, it's one of those what's called an urban legend or an urban myth that's being spread by certain sources. That's just simply untrue. Right. It came from a different pot. Right, right. A different line item. That $124 generated about $9.5 million last year out of a $38 million budget for our two fire departments. The rest of it came out of the general fund. And the general fund is primary source is our ad valerum tax. So where do we go from here? We got to try and figure out a way to fairly charge everyone for these additional ambulances. Actually, it's not the ambulances, it's the crews for the ambulances. You're right. Let's correct that. I guess we need to back up and understand what happened with our fire budget. Two years ago, there was a huge outcry that people wanted faster response times with our ambulances. They wanted better service. We had a commercial contractor that was running six ambulances on average that cost the county nothing. Well, unfortunately, with that few of ambulances, yes, they were able to turn a profit, but their response time was real slow, sometimes 30, 40 minutes, sometimes an hour, two hours. I know when my mom fell once and we waited for an ambulance to get there, it seemed to take forever. Now, if somebody takes a fall or maybe has a coronary condition or something like that, you're in the villages five, six minutes and there's a fire truck and an ambulance out in front of your house. So what we're paying for is that availability to have the capacity. So if there's, let's say, a big accident on I-75 and it ties up three of the ambulances, there's still plenty of other capacity to handle the normal day-to-day emergency. So all of that created new costs that got rolled into the general fund budget. In an effort to try and balance the budget, we took the cost for actual firefighting out of the budget and we put it into the fire assessment. And that's what made everybody think, well, costs went up. Fire department costs themselves didn't go up. It was the operating cost, the staffing for all these ambulances. That was the principal driver in driving up the cost and the budget for the fire department. So we're, again, on the 22nd, that plan for- Evaporated, let's say. Yeah. It was voted. I made the motion because it was going to be a huge economic impact to the county. Most people think, well, let the rich business owners pay it. Businesses don't pay taxes. I own a business. I don't pay a dime in taxes. I collect taxes and I pass them on to the government. Same thing with any other business. People say, well, the villagers can afford it. The villagers isn't going to afford it. They're going to raise the rent on their merchants for those properties and those merchants are going to charge you more. Or they're going to go out of business. Well, if their prices go too high and it causes them to go out of business, you're right. We have a lot of businesses along I-75, okay, at the various interchanges in Sumter County. There's a rather robust commercial district. It's driven by I-75 traffic. Sure. People are stopping for gas. They're going to get something to eat. Well, if you raise the fire rates for the gas station, they got to raise their price. So you come into Sumter County, hey, look, gas is a nickel a gallon more. Well, we'll just wait till we get to Citrus County or we'll wait till we get to Marion County and get gas. That not only affects the gas station, that affects the restaurants and all the other services there and the people that work there. And this was just too huge of a negative impact. We're talking people's lives, their jobs. Okay. So we're talking, we did a little bit of long division before the show started to try to figure out what the average homeowners increase would be for the next tax year. You said it was like $26 million. Yeah. So with the defeat of the initiative to raise the fire assessment, we had to cut $26 million out of our budget. And the brunt of that came out of fire department costs. We had plans for growth. We had plans for adding additional people. All those have been axed. We have a very good working relationship with the union. I don't remember the name of the union, but it's 5131 that represents the firefighters here in Sumter County. And they've really come to the table and they've been a real good partner in that with the county. And so that's helped us tremendously. Their concern was they didn't want jobs to be lost. Right. So we had $26 million that we had to cover and we have 100,000 payers. Yeah. Basically 100,000 pieces of property. So that meant about $260 per unit. Right. Which is much more reasonable. Well, I mean, yeah. Again, the misconception is that businesses were only paying $124 and they weren't paying $124. You might have a $10 million facility and they're paying half a million dollars a year in property tax. And a third of that goes to the fire department. So it's $124 plus $130,000 from your general assessment. I can look at it and say, we need more commercial development. We're working on it. We're working on it. There's some initiatives going forward. The I think it's Marlene. I can't remember her first name, but the south end of the Coleman Ridge development, which is right across from the Governor Rick Scott industrial complex. That's scheduled to be all industrial and commercial property. So there's going to be some really good growth in there. Right now they're working on a deal with Monarch Ranch. I don't know. Maybe many of our listeners don't know what Monarch Ranch is. So Monarch Ranch is the property that if you're on 301 and you're heading north, okay, before you get to the turnpike, there's a massive amount of property there on the left. And this is just north of the old motocross track. Okay. That's the Monarch Ranch property. And that goes from 301 all the way to I-75 and north all the way to the turnpike. We're looking at more industrial there. So that's good. Warner Trucking is building a new facility up on 229. There's a lot of industrial and commercial coming our way. It would be nice if we could do like Groveland has done and attract a warehouse for Amazon and UPS. These are huge, huge revenue drivers and they also bring good job. So it just takes time. Suffolk County is a different kind of animal. We have a different kind of population. The majority of the population is definitely older because of the villages. It changes the demographics. It changes the workforce. So it's kind of difficult to attract businesses, but when we do, they become very, very successful. Yeah. Depots for FedEx or UPS would be welcome additions, I think. That would be great, except Marion County already beat us to it. Just on the north side of Ocala, there's a big depot for FedEx there. Well, let's take a quick break. Let me put in a joke for my grandson, Evan. Don, what kind of pizza do dogs eat? I know you like dogs. What kind of pizza do dogs eat? All right. I give up. Go ahead. Pepperoni pizza. All right. Okay. That was for Evan. All right. And now let's take a quick break and listen to a short Alzheimer's tip from Dr. Craig Curtis. My favorite tip involves a change in eating patterns, but it's not a drastic change. It's simply increasing the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, other white meats, and lowering the amounts of red meat, sweets, and sugars, and also carbohydrates. It's essentially following a Mediterranean type diet plan. To get more information about what you're doing for Alzheimer's, is there a website that they can go to? Yes, sir. My website, www.craigcurtismd.com is the best place to go, and it's a great resource for patients and a great way to get in touch with my office. Is there a telephone number they can call? Yes, sir. 352-500-5252. And there's a way for them to leave a message 24 hours a day. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Welcome back, and let's talk about some more positive stuff that's going on here in Sumter County about the roads. Okay. We've heard stories of congestion on 301 in the county areas. Why don't you bring our listeners up to speed as to where the county is on solving some of these congestion problems? Okay. So 301 actually is not... Well, it is a county. It's a state road. It's a problem for the county, but it's not one that the county can solve. The state has funded and is moving forward with the widening to four lanes of US 301 from basically the turnpike all the way down to 471, which is about seven or eight miles south of the turnpike. So the plans right now are at about 60%. The last email I saw earlier this week in my county email box was that we're looking at a traffic circle at the north end of Marsh Bend where it meets US 301. We're looking at a traffic light at the Warm Springs and US 301 interchange, another traffic light where 301 will continue on its present course under a different name, just as Warm Springs Avenue into Coleman, and 301 would then split the area between Hammock at Finney and the Coleman Ridge development, and that'll go all the way down south, going generally southwest for about another mile and a half, and then it'll turn to the west and eventually meet up with 301 again. It'll meet up at 301 where 525 East meets in. 525 East is the road that goes over to the Governor Rick Scott Industrial Complex. I believe it's called Industrial Drive now. They'll put a traffic light there. It will stay four lanes for the next couple of miles until it gets down to 470. At 470, there'll be another traffic light. Again, these are based on the 60% plans that we have. We've got a couple more months before they get to 100%. It'll probably be another year before they actually start working the road, but it's funded. That was a great thing that happened a couple of months ago. The MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is a group of the municipalities and the counties that work together in this area to drive improvements in our roads and construction. So those traffic circles, the new traffic circles, are going to come in. Are there going to be two lanes or one lane in each? Generally, there are going to be two lanes like we see throughout the villages because 301 is a- Four-lane road. Will be a four-lane road when this is done. So that's coming. Again, it's down the road a little bit. Sorry for the pun, but these things, it's a big project. Will it be commercial development on each side of 301 as it's redeveloped? That's hard to say. Obviously, at the north end, that's where the Monarch Ranch is going to be, the Monarch Ranch property is. So we expect to see some industrial, maybe some commercial development there. What I've seen in some drawings is some commercial development on the north side of 301 as it goes into making the left turn there at 525 East. South of that, who knows? There's a lot of room for development. That's going to be up to the individual landowners, just like anything else. They may want to develop into something commercial. They may sell to some commercial entity. Who's to say? So Don, can you tell our listeners what the website is to see your drone videos if a listener has not accidentally found them? Well, the easiest, it's YouTube. Go to youtube.com. If you go to youtube.com slash goldwingnut, that will take you directly to my page. Or you can just use the search function in YouTube. Type in goldwingnut. You can type in my name, Don Wiley. You can type in the village of construction, and my videos will ultimately show up. And they're numbered from one to, like I said, 132 is what I'm working on now. How many people have watched your videos? Oh my gosh. Round numbers. About two and a quarter million people have watched my videos over the last couple of years. The first one came out right after Irma hit us. And I think I have, I just flipped over 18,000 subscribers. Typical video might have 15,000 to 20,000 views. Obviously, a lot of people are watching. I get a lot of comments when I'm out on the street. People see my truck. So what was your biggest surprise after you started producing these construction videos? Biggest surprise? How much work it turned out to be. Really? Oh my God. I mean, if you see a minute of my video, I've got at least an hour to an hour and a half of editing time. The easy part, the fun part is actually flying. Flying the drones. Oh yeah. I mean, I might have four or five hours of actual flying time in there. And then I got to edit out the sections that I want. Don, do you have anything else to say before we close out this show? Well, just make sure that come November, you guys have a new improv show coming. It's November 7th. It's going to be a fantastic show. We also have a show coming up on February 4th, 24 at, yeah, that one is at Rohan. The show on November 7th is at Israel Rec Center. And as we record this today, over 50% of the tickets have been sold. Well, that's good. I hope you sell out again. Oh, it'll sell out probably in another two or three weeks. Excellent. Good. Don, thanks again for being with us. Thanks for having me, Mike. Remember our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 a.m. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike at rothvoice.com. This is a shout out for supporters, Greg Panjian, Tweek Coleman, Dan Cappellan, Ed Williams, Alvin Stenzel, and major supporter Dr. Craig Curtis at K2 in the Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mike at rothvoice.com. We thank everyone for listening to the show. The content of the show is copyrighted by Roth Voice 2023. All rights reserved.