Article Courtesy of The Ocala Star Banner

By Bill Thompson

Published September 21, 2011

If the County Commission approves the plan, the homeowners will each pay somewhere between $1,250 and $2,500 to pave roughly four miles of streets, Tedder said.

The future of Majestic Oaks, though, could have wider implications, since County Administrator Lee Niblock has indicated that he sees the program utilized there as a way to generate road maintenance funding.

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During the past quarter-century, Marion County has created roughly 200 special tax districts such as the one causing the stir in Majestic Oaks. These tax districts, known as Municipal Service Taxing Units (MSTU) or Municipal Service Benefit Units (MSBU), allow residents of certain communities — not all taxpayers in the county — to pay for their specific infrastructure needs.

The tax districts were first established under a 1985 state law applicable only to Marion County. In almost all cases the projects have gone off without a hitch.

Yet since 2007, the County Commission has lost three lawsuits brought by homeowners disgruntled by a vote-counting controversy such as that now roiling Majestic Oaks.

The law, which was repealed in 2010 at the County Commission's request, mandated that 51 percent of the property owners in the area designated for a road-paving program must approve the project.

Since 1996, however, the board had relied on an internal policy that said projects could be ratified by 50-percent-plus-one of the total respondents — and not all landowners.

Lawsuits filed by homeowners in three west Marion subdivisions — Rainbow Springs, Timberwood and Lake Tropicana Ranchettes — maintained the County Commission had wrongfully approved projects for their neighborhoods by relying on the policy instead of the law. In those instances, the board proceeded with a project even though support for them ran between 17 percent and 49.8 percent of the property owners, as based on the tabulation method spelled out in the 1985 law.

Judges agreed with the property owners and have ruled that the county must issue refunds. Yet the County Commission has not given up.

In June, the board dropped its appeal of one of those rulings, but commissioners have invoked a 2009 county ordinance that declared whenever an assessment is "annulled, vacated, or set aside" by a judge, the county can take "all steps necessary" to impose a new assessment — or a reassessment.

The same judges who ordered the refunds have subsequently determined that the county can charge the reassessments.

The property owners are appealing. Legal filings from both sides in the appellate case are due by early October.

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On Aug. 1, a group of 30 Majestic Oaks homeowners sent Tedder a letter asking her to remove Section 4 from the equation.

Tedder did so, bringing the County Commission the revised plan on Sept. 6.

It was unanimously approved, and Tedder's department will now begin the work of designing the project.

The County Commission, she said, will hold a public hearing to adopt the plan, likely in about six months.

Tedder defended the decision to retool the project on several grounds.

For one thing, she said, the vote tally was still fresh, being less than six months old.

For another, their request did not seem unreasonable, she said.

"That's my job — to help people who come in" wanting their streets paved, Tedder said.

Tedder added that she has taken similar actions in other areas in the past. Sometimes the finished product motivates people to do more roads, and sometimes it doesn't, she said.

But Majestic Oaks needs help sooner rather than later, Tedder suggested.

"If they wait much longer they'll be looking at reconstruction (of the streets) and it will be much more expensive," she said.

The county does stand to benefit from the new plan.

The roads in the three sections of Majestic Oaks slated for paving are now maintained by the county, while those in Section 4 are privately maintained by the homeowners.

According to county records, the county has spent $14,000 over the past three years on maintaining those streets.

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That aside, the county has struggled to fund the maintenance of subdivision roads it is responsible for.

County Engineer Mounir Bouyounes told the board last year that crews struggled just to keep pace with pothole-filling and that a mandatory assessment in those subdivisions might be the only way to generate revenue.

That is one reason one proponent inside Majestic Oaks thinks the project there should go forward.

"If the county wanted to, it could come in and fix the roads and then assess the homeowners, but nobody wants to do it that way," said Tom Howard, a supporter of the paving project.

Howard noted that the majority in the three county-maintained units supported paving and that the opposition is primarily limited to "a few choice" residents in Section 4 who don't consider the needs of the community as a whole.

Under the revised plan, Howard pointed out, "there is no impact on them. They won't be assessed one dollar."

He added that opponents had the opportunity to register their discontent at the commission's Sept. 6 meeting but chose not to, while 15 supporters were on hand to see what happened.

"Some of the homeowners would like to move forward with this, and a lot of people are starting to understand," Howard said.

Michael McCoy, a leader of the opposition who lives in Section 4, said the issue is about process, not results.

McCoy pointed to some minor glitches, such as the ballots not having pre-stamped return envelopes as advertised.

But one was major, in McCoy's mind.