COURTESY : The Daily Commercial

By AMANDA KOONCE and JACOB OGLES
Published January 6, 2005

THE VILLAGES - The governor-appointed North Sumter County Hospital Tax District met in frustration Wednesday after learning second-hand that state Rep. Hugh Gibson, R-The Villages, no longer intends to file legislation authorizing a new tax ballot issue for The Villages Regional Hospital.

“We had revised the bill, but the people are still very upset about it. There is no way they are going to go for this,” Gibson said in an interview. “I’m not going to change their mind. I supported it, and it was defeated with 75 percent. It should have been a wake-up call.”

He said he had talked with constituents about changing some provisions of the bill, but that the message he heard the most was that residents just did not want to pay the tax.

The district’s Board of Trustees, appointed in September, wondered whether there was a point in continuing to meet. They considered resigning en masse, but by the end of the meeting, only Chairman Rena Marchand had officially declared her intention to quit.

The tax district was created to oversee a property tax that failed in the Nov. 2 general election by 12,704 votes to 4,409.

The board reconvened in December to look over changes with the understanding that Gibson intended to take a new bill back to the Florida Legislature in the coming session.

But Tuesday, members found that their efforts since November had been in vain when they learned of a statement by Gibson that he intends to withdraw the draft bill.

Board member Robert Nelson was openly angry over Gibson’s decision, or at least the means by which it was made known.

Nelson was tired of speaking on behalf of a tax proposition that he considered poorly drafted, especially when its sponsor had never communicated with the board.

“Certainly this bill was put together hastily,” said Nelson. “There are so many things wrong with it. Of course the voters didn’t go for it.”

He was also frustrated with Gibson’s participation leading up to the election.

“To my knowledge, the sponsor of this bill made no attempt to attend any of our meetings,” Nelson said.

To board members, there was still the question of whether to continue to meet for the duration of their commissions, which last until 2010. For the answer, they decided to meet with Gibson, or at the very least, to write to him.

Another question was who would settle the district’s $2,400 debt, since the board has no income.

To The Villages Regional Hospital and its owner, Leesburg Regional Medical Center, the question is how to expand without the money administrators hoped would be paid through a property tax.

Gibson said the hospital will have to find another way to fund the proposed 180-bed expansion.

If approved in November, the initiative would have given the hospital district board the authority to determine whether and what percentage of up to $1 per $1,000 of taxable property should have been collected to pay for the construction costs.