Leisureville Page 15

  After completing the community, Webb handed these amenities to Sun City residents by creating this nonprofit organization, thereby freeing himself from a giant burden: 340,000 square feet of indoor recreation space, 122 holes of golf, and thirty miles of paved golf cart paths that all required maintenance. In the process, Webb created a laudable and fair-minded method for turning over recreational facilities and responsibilities to his residents.

  Inside the RCSC offices, Norm Dickson, a retired schoolteacher who serves on the board, greets me. Although he is in his seventies, this athletic midwesterner represents the new progressive face of Sun City—people who are working hard to ensure that the community has a future.

  The generational warfare that plagued Sun City’s dealings with its youthful neighbors has turned inward, with older Sun Citians now at odds with younger Sun Citians. Aside from retirement, the two groups don’t have much in common. And as the average life expectancy increases, the RCSC is finding the generation gap all the more difficult to bridge.

  “We’re basically a big country club and our job at the RCSC is to make everyone happy at the lowest fee possible,” Norm tells me. “But that’s like changing a wheel on a moving car. We have residents here in their mid-fifties and others that are over 100. There are folks who have lived here for thirty years and others who arrived yesterday. The older folks don’t want their fees raised, because they hardly use the facilities anymore. But the new younger retirees want all the bells and whistles, and they’re willing to pay for it.”

  Norm and his fellow board members are in the process of overhauling the community’s recreation centers, in the hope that updated facilities will encourage the gentrification of Sun City. To pay for these projects, the RCSC charges new residents a onetime impact fee of a few thousand dollars when they purchase a home. Even though the snazzy renovations don’t cost veteran residents a penny, the several-thousand-strong Sun City Taxpayers Association has filed several lawsuits against the RCSC and has circulated a petition to recall the board’s president.

  “Believe it or not, a lot of the older folks are upset because these projects increase the value of their properties,” Norm says. “They aren’t looking to sell their homes and, frankly, they don’t care much about their heirs, either. What they care about is protesting anything that might lead to an increase in their taxes.”

  Because residents of Sun City don’t pay municipal or school district taxes, the tax rate is actually quite low. Norm tells me that he was paying $5,000 a year in property taxes in Michigan before moving to Sun City a decade ago. He now pays about $750. “When I got my first tax bill,” he says, “it was so low that I thought it was a monthly payment.”

  Given Sun City’s aging demographics, the turnover of houses is relatively high. The consistent turnover is evidence that newer residents are still buying into the community. Norm intends to keep it that way, because the alternative is unthinkable.

  “Communities either grow, stagnate, or decay. In order to remain a viable community, we must attract newcomers. When a community can’t fill vacant houses, neighborhoods begin to deteriorate and things start to spiral downward until there are too few people to afford maintaining what’s left.

  “We need to be proactive. If we don’t fix up our community, we won’t attract new people and we won’t fill vacancies—not with fifty-year-old facilities. There are simply too many competing communities out there. We need to give people a reason to continue choosing us. But convincing older residents of this hasn’t been easy.”

  The results of these internecine battles—stagnation and decay—are already visible. Some of Sun City’s apartment houses and condo complexes are run by miniature homeowner associations that don’t have the money—or are unwilling to spend the money—to perform cosmetic repairs, let alone major renovations. “What happens when these units can no longer attract new occupants, and the association fees are spread across fewer and fewer residents?” Norm asks. “Then what?”

  I ask Norm if these generational wars will ever end. “I don’t know,” he says with a sigh. “As far as I’m concerned we have a moral obligation to contribute to the future of those who come after us. But some of our older residents forget that they were once young.”

  After half a century of age segregation, Sun City’s future remains anything but certain. One wonders if it will someday simply cease to exist, the unforgiving desert reclaiming it like the ancient Hohokum settlements before it.

  By comparison, a decade of desegregation has breathed new life into Youngtown. Once the poor cousin across the street, the tiny municipality is seemingly filled with optimism and opportunity.

  Mark Fooks, Youngtown’s first and only town manager, promotes this hopeful image. The town has a total landmass of just one and a half square miles, so its worst drawback is its postage-stamp size. Municipalities in rapidly sprawling areas tend to compete with one another much as businesses do: the yardstick of growth measures success. For Youngtown to remain competitive, it will have to grow. Otherwise its revenue sources will be forever limited—a situation that in municipal (and business) terms, has a smell of death about it.

  How will landlocked Youngtown grow? Youngtown is heavily dependent on its “sales team” to bring home the bacon. Aside from managing Youngtown’s day-to-day affairs, Fooks’s job includes attracting businesses to the town so he can continue to portray Youngtown as a “player” in the local municipal scene. He hopes to transform the resulting cachet into a mandate for annexing the aging behemoth next door. “The only real problem is what to call the new town,” Fooks says, with evident satisfaction. “Do we call it Youngcity, Suntown, or what?”

  Although the young mayor may be the face of the new Youngtown, Fooks is the architect. I met with him at his modest office in Youngtown’s ramshackle town hall. A large man with a confident smile who is fast approaching retirement, Fooks gives the impression that planning for Youngtown’s future is as easy as baking chocolate-chip cookies with store-bought dough.

  Conversely, Fooks sees Sun City’s days as numbered. “These folks have lived in a bubble for years, and they’ll tell you, ‘Please don’t burst our bubble—that’s why we came here.’ It’s only a matter of time before they’re annexed. The only question is which neighboring municipality gets the honors.

  “They could incorporate,” he continues. “But why go through all the trouble of building a new town hall, establishing a police force, and creating a public works department when they can just join us? We’d turn into a city of 42,000 overnight. With state revenue sharing for municipalities at $230 a head, $8 million would float down to us without us lifting a finger. Increasing our size opens us up to all sorts of money. Just think of the additional $3 million in sales tax we would get from local businesses. And we’d qualify for federal monies as well. That’s a heck of a budget to play golf with.”

  Because it is unincorporated—a city in name only—Sun City cannot charge a municipal sales tax; nor is it eligible for state and federal monies. Youngtown already receives these sorts of payments, but on a smaller scale.

  Fooks tells me that even if volunteerism weren’t waning, Sun City’s problems are too big for volunteers to handle. “God bless volunteers, but you can’t run a city with a bunch of amateurs. They don’t have the training to administer a city with its buildings, streets, golf courses, parks, streetlights, water, and sewers. Do you have any idea what it takes to manage a golf course, let alone a sewage treatment plant? You don’t turn a golf course over to somebody whose sole qualification is that they like to play golf. That’s why most local governments are run by trained professionals.”

  Fooks predicts that the next wave of retirees (assuming there is one) in Sun City is likely to be wealthier, savvier, and more demanding of municipal services. “They’ll want to incorporate once they realize they don’t have a real voice in their own affairs,” he says. “They’re going to wonder why they don’t have a real police force, and why they have to plead wi
th the county just to get a road repaired. Having to knock on the county’s door every time you want something is not what I would call local representation.”

  The police chief, Dan Connelly, drops by the office, and Fooks invites him in to join our discussion. Connelly has few illusions about the critical choices Sun City will soon face. As far he’s concerned, it’s only a matter of time before Sun City will have to face reality. “The driving force for Sun City’s incorporation will be police protection,” he says flatly. “Crime is getting worse and there’s no way the Posse can even begin to handle it.”

  In Arizona, streets in gated communities are not eligible for road repair or police patrols; therefore, there is a strong financial incentive to remain un-gated. After years of de facto solitude, Sun City remains without gates, but it is now uncomfortably sandwiched between sprawling municipal neighbors. Residents of these other cities have necessarily turned many of Sun City’s roads, such as Grand Avenue, into major arteries, and Sun City finds itself subjected to an ever-increasing amount of nonresident traffic, making it more vulnerable to crime.

  “People want to feel safe, and the sheriff’s department can’t supply that with three deputies,” Connelly continues. “Besides, how many of today’s criminals are going to be scared off by an eighty-five-year-old member of the Posse wearing a hearing aid?”

  10

  Foreign Policy

  ALTHOUGH THE VILLAGES EXTENDS INTO THREE COUNTIES, THE VAST majority of the development will soon roll across hapless Sumter County. Per capita income in Sumter County is about half the state’s average, and sixty percent of its population is on some sort of state assistance. In addition to being poor, it’s also far more rural than two adjacent counties—Lake and Marion—with less than one-fourth their population. When the build-out of The Villages is complete, Sumter will have 45,000 new homes, compared with 5,000 each for Lake and Marion counties. There will be roughly 90,000 Villagers living in Sumter County, outnumbering all other county residents by nearly 50,000.

  Sumter County encompasses nearly 600 square miles of the quiet center of Florida. Even when fully built out, The Villages will remain a small rectangle on Sumter’s northeast corner. I know this, but I’m still surprised when it takes me nearly an hour on back roads to reach Bushnell, the county seat. The number of run-down trailer parks that post signs advertising their age-restricted status also surprises me.

  Along the way, I stop by the tiny Leesburg airport, just across the Lake County line, to sneak a peak at the “Morse air force,” as Gary’s planes are often referred to. I spot two gleaming Falcon jets in a hanger detailed to look like it holds thoroughbred horses. Morse successfully lobbied to have a U.S. customs officer assigned to the airport, thus giving it “international” status, and allowing him to fly directly into and out of the country with foreign clients. Morse has also lobbied for and received tentative approval for interchanges off Interstate 75 and the Florida Turnpike that will help make The Villages and its environs more accessible to motorists.

  I arrive in tiny Bushnell early for a meeting with county officials, and park beside the county’s handsome old courthouse. I ask a young, pregnant girl walking along the road where the center of town is. “This is it,” she replies. “Unless you mean Wal-Mart. That’s up the road.”

  The air is hot and seems to cling to my body, and the town of 2,300 is quiet except for chirping cicadas. I see a sign for Bushnell’s one claim to fame: the nearby Dade Battlefield Historical Site, where in 1835 Seminole warriors (distantly related to Billy Bowlegs) ambushed and killed more than 100 American soldiers in a marshy meadow, thus starting the Second Seminole Indian War.

  Inside the courthouse, which has served as the county seat for 100 years, I meet with County Supervisor Brad Arnold and Supervisor of Elections Karen Krause. She paints a picture of Sumter as one of central Florida’s last sleepy counties, but rapidly changing under pressure from The Villages’ development. “I guess it was just a matter of time,” Krause says. “We’ve got The Villages in the north, and now the southern portion of the county near Orlando is filling up with that city’s spillover. Those folks are tired of the mess down there—the crime, the traffic, the sprawl, the high cost of living—but now they’re re-creating it here.”

  “Ten years ago, the number of registered voters in Sumter County was under 16,000,” she tells me. “Five years ago it was about 28,000; now it’s about 50,000. The majority of these registered voters are from The Villages. We knew it would happen; but we didn’t think it would happen so fast. Used to be we had more cows than people in the county, and just three stoplights.”

  The trend shows no signs of abating, she says. “We are issuing 550 building permits a month for The Villages. We figure that each new house represents 1.9 voters. And unlike the rest of the county, Villagers are a conservative lot. Ten years ago, I was the very first Republican ever elected as a county commissioner. Now all the commissioners are Republicans.”

  Residents of The Villages, along with Morse, quickly flexed their new political muscle by changing the way county officials were elected, advocating a new system of power distribution in the county, ironically titled “One Sumter.” County residents used to elect their five commissioners by district. Residents in district one, for example, would elect their own representative to the board, but not vote on a commissioner representing another district. But with just two district commissioners to vote for, Morse and the Villagers decided that they’d rather vote on the election of all the commissioners. Naturally, the rest of the county liked the protection the district system afforded them from the surge of new voters in The Villages.

  The vote on “One Sumter” in 2004 was extremely close, but with a ninety percent turnout rate (twice the county average), The Villages won, and the era of big-stick diplomacy began. Villagers, with their overwhelming numbers, could now monopolize every county election. And yet many still felt stymied and underrepresented by the districting system. Although Villagers could now vote for all five commissioners, they could still run for only two seats.

  To address this slight obstacle, Villagers pushed through a redistricting, which gave them a third seat on the county commission, and thus a lock on electing the county’s government for the foreseeable future.

  Although Villagers have already lobbied for—and received—their own Sumter County sheriff’s substation and government annex, which is golf cart–accessible, they are no longer satisfied with the arrangement. There’s now talk of moving all county functions out of the centrally located, century-old Bushnell courthouse and relocating them to The Villages.

  At our meeting, County Supervisor Arnold tells me that Chapter 190 is “a wonderful thing. I haven’t seen a downside. It helps grow an unincorporated part of the county in a rational manner.” He adds that he recently said as much to a fact-finding group from Georgia, whose legislature is considering the adoption of a similar measure. “The Villages pays taxes and yet it’s not a big user of county services,” he says. “It’s a win-win for us.” Arnold says nothing of the fact that transplanted retirees have politically overwhelmed the local-born population. When I ask him if these retirees might have a different set of priorities from local families—regarding schools, perhaps—he says he doesn’t think so.

  He points with pride to the towns near The Villages, including the desolate municipality of Wildwood, which are preparing to benefit financially from the development. “Wildwood is annexing unincorporated land that will soon be commercial,” Arnold says. “They will also provide homes for workers. It’s a real boom for them. The Villages is a big economic engine. A lot of residents hope it’ll give their children a reason to stick around after high school.”

  To gauge just how far The Villages has already expanded, I return from Bushnell along a sun-bleached, cracked two-lane county highway that goes through gorgeous rolling pastureland with broad vistas. I admire the shady stands of old live oaks in the meadows, and an occasional glistening lily pond. Thi
s is the Florida of piney woods, saw palmetto scrub, and sun-dappled hummock that Marjorie Kennan Rawlings describes vividly in many of her novels. Although an avid reader of Rawlings, I still had no idea that central Florida could actually be this stunning.

  The Villages’ executives often refer to this scenic idyll of delicately interwoven ecosystems as “inventory,” and I soon see why, when up ahead the scenery abruptly changes. To my left I see a metallic water tower soaring above a treeless crest, surrounded by hulking piles of concrete sewer molds, partially finished streets, and mounds of sandy soil. Some of the landscape is carefully contoured and resembles the early stages of a new golf course.

  To my right, mailboxes line the road beside old driveways scarred by tank treads. The homes are already demolished, and giant bulldozers have leveled what were once rolling hills. Pale sand and upturned oaks with their naked and gnarled roots litter the construction site for as far as the eye can see, which is pretty darn far. The development has leaped right across the road I am driving on, which will soon be converted into a multilane highway with strip malls. Concerns about the health of the area’s aquifers have apparently had no effect on Morse’s ambitions.

  I head for what seems to be the eastern perimeter of The Villages’ mammoth construction site. But it’s hard to know for sure. The development is expanding so quickly that none of the local maps can keep up. I turn down a lonely lane that runs right along the Sumter and Lake county line, and I am soon rewarded with another vista of endless construction. The newest phase of nearly completed Village development sprawls to the horizon.

  In the near distance, just across a brown rail fence, are scores of gently curving streets ending in culs-de-sac. Unlike the more rudimentary site I have just visited, here there are tidy curb cuts, sewer grates, utility boxes, stop signs, and even street signs. Only one thing is missing—houses—but they’ll be there soon. A wave of homes is already cresting on a nearby hillside and is poised to roll across this neighborhood-to-be. Given The Villages’ aggressive construction schedules, this neighborhood could be filled with homes built from scratch in a few months.