Growth & Development: Is New Development Paying for the Spike?

Indexed to FY2018 = 100. Dashed line marks FY2023, the first budget adopted after Neunder and Smith took office. FY2018–FY2024 are actuals as printed in the county's budget books; FY2025–FY2026 are adopted budgets; FY2027 is the preliminary plan.^[1]

Two things about this money that the rhetoric on both sides tends to skip. First, it is real: over the four budgets adopted on the Neunder–Smith watch, developers were billed roughly $214.2M in impact and mobility fees. Second, by Florida law it cannot pay for the spike. Impact fees may only be spent on new capital facilities that serve new growth. They cannot fund operations, salaries, maintenance, or existing deficiencies, and they cannot service general debt.^[4] Over the same four years the county levied $1,270,260,021 in property tax — about 6 dollars from residents for every dollar from developers.

The county's own 2025 Debt Profile lists every outstanding bond by the revenue legally pledged to repay it.^[3] Water and sewer bills back 49.2%. Sales taxes paid at the register back another 34.8%. Property taxes, assessments, tourist tax, and state sharing cover the rest. Impact and mobility fees: zero. When the Board authorizes a bond, it is pledging residents' bills, not developers' fees.

The FY2027 Preliminary Financial Plan projects $828,347,584 in major revenues against a $312,378,332 capital program and $109,270,219 in debt service.^[2] Stream by stream, here is the county's own year-over-year change and who pays it:

From this site's frozen ledger of every Board vote since November 2022, these are the large-tract decisions, with the applicant named from the public record.^[5] Approved acreage is real; the home counts are the maximums the zoning permits, not units built. Fees are paid at building permit, years after the rezone, so none of these has yet produced the revenue the county's forecast leans on.

• Lakewood Ranch Southeast, Project Area 1

  Approved 3-2

  Schroeder-Manatee Ranch with Neal Communities / Neal Signature Homes · 1,746 acres · 1,399 homes; OUR → RSF-2/PUD

  2025-01-28 · Rezone 23-21 (three ordinances) · Neunder: yes · Smith: no

  Knight and Smith dissented over Fruitville Road traffic. Requires a four-lane Bourneside Blvd extension.

• Lakewood Ranch Southeast, Project Area 2

  Approved 4-1

  Schroeder-Manatee Ranch · 548 acres · up to 1,400 homes; OUR → RSF-2/PUD (3.5 u/ac)

  2025-05-06 · Rezone 24-10 · Neunder: yes · Smith: no

  Neunder and Knight said the 2022 Master Development Order bound them to approve if criteria were met.

• Palmer Ranch, final increment (SR 681 / Honore / I-75)

  Approved 4-0

  Palmer Ranch Holdings · 115 acres · 500 multifamily units, 85,000 sf commercial, two 150-room hotels to 85 ft

  2025-12-16 · SA-2024-04, Rezone 24-20, SE 1905 · Neunder: recused · Smith: yes

  Neunder recused, citing his parents' participation in the process.

• Siesta Promenade (Stickney Point & US 41)

  Approved 4-1

  Benderson Development · 23 acres · Critical Area Plan boundary revision and commercial rezone

  2023-09-27 · CAP 16-01-SP, SA-2022-02, Rezone 22-09 · Neunder: yes · Smith: no

• 2501 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way

  Approved 5-0

  Applicant not identified in the ledger · 114 acres · 1,479 residential units + 20,000 sf; to RMF-3/PUD (13 u/ac)

  2024-02-21 · Rezone 23-22, DOCC Ord. 2024-005 · Neunder: yes · Smith: yes

• Winchester Ranch (South River Road)

  Withdrawn

  Winchester Florida Ranch LLLP (Mattamy Homes) · 2,433 acres · Rural/Semi-Rural → Moderate Density Residential on part of a 3,148-acre ranch

  2026-01-27 · CPA 2025-C · Neunder: yes · Smith: yes

  Petitioner withdrew after a majority signaled opposition (South River Road traffic, Englewood water, North Port annexation).

• Hi Hat Village 1 (east of I-75, Fruitville/Clark corridor)

  Pending

  Turner family, with Pulte Homes and Lennar · 2,070 acres · ≈3,000 homes

  Not yet heard · Rezone OUR → Village Planned Development · Neunder: yes · Smith: yes

  In formal staff review as of Aug 2026; Planning Commission expected fall 2026, then the Board. Staff have flagged secondary access, transportation, and water-quality monitoring.

The two Lakewood Ranch Southeast approvals sit inside a 2022 Village Transition Zone that permits up to 5,000 homes east of I-75; Neunder and Knight said the earlier master order left them little discretion. Smith voted no on every contested large-tract rezone in the term. Neunder voted yes on every one he did not recuse from.^[5]

"Developers pay impact fees" is only half the ledger. During the term the Board approved 12 agreements that reimburse, credit, or pay development entities — mobility-fee credits for roads the developer builds, reimbursements for oversized water and sewer lines, and county purchases of development rights.^[6] Every one passed without a dissenting vote, most on consent.

• Lakewood Ranch Stewardship Districts (SMR)$9,480,000
  Fruitville Rd PD&E mobility-fee credit $4.0M; master wastewater/reclaimed agreements $2.94M + $2.07M; lift station $379k; connector forcemain $95k
• LT Ranch CDD$9,956,336
  Lorraine Road Segment A: $5.07M mobility-fee reimbursement + $4.89M mobility-fee credits (Mar 2023)
• Palmer Ranch (Palmer Ranch Ltd, McCann Holdings, PR Holdings)$3,986,425
  Road Impact Fee & Property Acquisition Agreement, Amendment 9 $3.76M; utility agreement $231k
• MHC Lake Village II$2,892,187
  Wastewater system utility agreement reimbursement (May 2026)
• Lakes of Sarasota CDDs I & II$2,395,000
  Mobility-fee reimbursement (Mar 2023)
• Neal Communities of SW Florida$1,600,000
  County purchase of transferable development rights (Jan 2023)
• East Venice 10 LP (Nolan Estates)$1,230,726
  Water system utility agreement reimbursement
• Taylor Morrison (Skye Ranch)$733,220
  Utility oversizing reimbursements $278k + $455k
• M/I Homes of Sarasota$584,000
  County purchase of transferable development rights (Jan 2023)
• DiVosta Homes$580,000
  Utility system improvements reimbursement
• Three Rivers Stewardship District$330,000
  Design and permitting of utility improvements
• FruitvilleLWR75 LLC (Fruitville Initiative)$220,000
  Wastewater system improvements reimbursement

Fair framing: most of these are routine and lawful. A developer builds a bigger pipe or road segment than its project needs, and the county pays the difference or credits it against fees. The point is not that they are improper. It is that the "developer pays" stream runs in both directions, and the reverse flow equals roughly 16% of the fees billed over the same four budgets.

Yes, by the standard of Sarasota's own neighbors. Published 2025 schedules put total county impact and mobility fees on a single-family home at roughly $12,940 in Sarasota, against about $35,822 in Manatee and $29,158 in Collier — the two counties with the same coastal growth pressure. Sarasota sits in the state's lower fee band with Hillsborough and Lee.^[9]

Two honest caveats. First, fee schedules are size-tiered and district-specific, so these are order-of-magnitude comparisons, not audited figures. Second, the fee is not the whole ask: Sarasota also requires developers to build and dedicate roads and utility lines directly (Slide 6 shows the county reimbursing the oversized portions). But the headline stands — the 2021 state cap (HB 337) limits increases to 50% over four years absent a declared "extraordinary circumstances" finding. Manatee made that finding. In Sarasota's 1,050 recorded roll calls from Dec 2022 to Aug 2026 there is no vote raising the impact or mobility fee schedule at all — every impact-fee vote in the term spends the fees (park agreements, a Property Appraiser software purchase); the schedule moved only by the automatic 3% index.^[4]

The ten major revenues grow from $375.9M to $630.6M — an extra $254.7M a year. The third chart is the one that answers the question: of every additional dollar the county projects to collect, 71 cents comes from property owners, 14 cents from sales taxes at the register, 10 cents from visitors, and nothing from developers — the impact and mobility fee line is projected to be $0.2M lower in FY2027 than it was in FY2018.^[1][2]

Developers' share of the mix falls from 11.9% to 7.1%; property owners' share rises from 47.7% to 57.3%. Utility revenues ($197.7M in FY2027) sit outside the "major revenues" table because they are enterprise funds, but they are the largest single pledge behind the debt and are covered on the next slide.

Put the pieces together. The money for the spike comes from utility bills, sales taxes, and property taxes on rising values. Utility rates and sales taxes are flat per household or per purchase, so a family at Sarasota's 20th percentile ($36,470) gives up a share of income more than four times larger than a family at the 80th ($152,658). Property tax is the one stream with a built-in shield — and the shield belongs to whoever bought earliest. Save Our Homes caps a homesteader's assessed value at 3% a year, so a retiree who bought in 2010 has been largely insulated from the +18%, +14%, +10% value surges of FY2022–FY2024, while a nurse who bought in 2023 pays on the full price, and a renter pays the landlord's un-capped 10% assessment through the rent.^[8][12]

What this does not show: the county publishes no distributional analysis of its own revenue plan, so the per-income figures above are this site's arithmetic on the county's rates and the Census Bureau's income data, not a county finding. And the wealth gap itself is not the Board's doing — Sarasota's 80/20 income ratio (4.19) is actually below Florida's. The Board's choice was which streams to lean on to pay for the spike, and every one it leaned on — water bills, sales tax, and market-value property tax — is one that working families and new arrivals feel more than the wealthy or the long-settled.

This is not our projection; it is the county's. The FY2027–2031 Preliminary Strategic Financial Plan programs $630.5M of capital over five years. Of the pay-as-you-go share, 31.9% comes from water and sewer bills and 39.5% from the two sales surtaxes; all seven impact-fee categories plus mobility fees together supply 8.6%. Of the $167.2M in new debt the plan schedules, 72.2% is to be repaid by the transportation sales surtax, 18.1% by the General Fund (property tax), 9.7% by assessments — and $0 by impact or mobility fees. The prior year's plan (FY2026–2030) was the same shape: $162.7M of new debt, 75.4% on sales surtaxes. The utility system's $188.6M of borrowing is already appropriated; the plan carries it and adds none.^[13]

The Debt Profile charts every series' annual payments out to final maturity — the utility bonds run to October 2055, the half-cent sales-tax bonds to 2048. At peak the county owes about $88.3M a year in debt service across the nine liens, and the two largest (73.1% of principal) are repaid from water bills and the half-cent sales tax. Coverage ratios are healthy on paper — that is not the point. The point is which households make the payments for the next thirty years. Excludes the Utility System subordinate note (Series 2021, $15.6M outstanding) and the $105.4M WIFIA loan ($57.3M drawn as of Dec 2025). The five-year plan is the longest budget horizon the county publishes; there is no 25-year revenue projection in the county documents this site holds.^[14]

So where will the money come from? The county's own documents answer: from residents — through property taxes on rising values at an unchanged millage, through water and sewer rates, and through sales taxes at the register — with developer fees a shrinking sliver that the law forbids using for the spike in the first place. Growth brings new taxable value, and that is real. But the bonds are pledged against the bills that everyone already living here pays.