ONE PECULIARITY OF THE VILLAGES, PARTICULARLY GIVEN ITS GEOgraphic size and population, is that it doesn’t have any municipal buildings. This is because The Villages, despite the fact that it spans three counties, is a privately held business situated on unincorporated land.
When asked, few residents can tell me how they are governed. Most queries are met with a blank stare and an abrupt change of topic, usually to golf or the weather. That’s not particularly surprising, because few people understand how The Villages is governed even after it is explained to them.
It’s an exceedingly Byzantine enterprise—and one that took me quite a while to comprehend as well—with an alphabet soup of legalisms. It’s amorphous complexity obscures the fact that Gary Morse owns much of the community and exercises enormous political control over it.
By choosing to live under the Morse family’s private regime, Villagers have voluntarily relinquished many of their civil liberties. In exchange for unlimited leisure and recreation, they’ve traded the ballot box for the suggestion box. The underlying assumption, it would seem, is that self-governance isn’t really very important. Those who have run afoul of Morse’s policies refer to the “Village vision”—a willful disregard by the vast majority of Villagers of anything that threatens their rosy outlook. I suspect that this laissez-faire attitude may well take a beating one day soon, as home values stop appreciating at a blissful twenty percent a year, and residents are eventually beset by problems that force them to confront a privately owned government. It’s easy to lose oneself in The Villages’ resort-like atmosphere, but reality has a way of intruding, and residents have little recourse when it does intrude.
To gain a better understanding of The Villages quasi-government, I sign up for a special class given weekly by The Villages: “Community Development District Orientation: Your Introduction to Your Special Purpose Units of Local Government.” The two-hour class is taught in a building as nondescript and nearly invisible as the quasi-government it houses.
Several rows of folding chairs fill the meeting room. Sixteen people show up, including two reporters from the Daily Sun. A man named John Rohan steps up to the front of the room and introduces himself as the district administrator.
Rohan asks everyone where he or she is from, and then comments about the bane of most northerners’ and midwesterners’ existence: “Gosh, I hear there’s a lot of snow back there! How deep is it? It sure is nice and warm here, isn’t it?” When asked, one attendant responds that he’s from the Florida Panhandle. “Gosh, that makes you a ’Gator fan, I bet!” Rohan says.
“OK. Cool. Let’s get started. But this is complicated, so feel free to attend this course again as many times as you’d like. OK? Here we go. Sometimes folks think we’re a municipality because of our size, but we’re basically one big master-planned development. It started out as a mobile home community surrounded by farmland on a lonely county road. There were contractual-based fees for utilities, public safety, and golf, so the developer, in his wisdom, created districts and numbered them. Each one is a unit of ‘special purpose local government,’ which is a general-purpose government for a region. But it can’t issue building permits, comprehensive plans, annex, or do law enforcement. But with the exception of those four things, it operates just like a regional government; only it doesn’t lie within incorporated boundaries. OK?
“You see, growth pays for growth in Florida: somebody’s going to pay. This is a mechanism to fund and finance infrastructure and support services. At some point in time the last nail will be nailed and the last slab poured, and the developer will be finished with his dream, but he knew that someone would have to manage those golf courses. The developer knew that this lifestyle would have to continue after he’s done. To provide for this, he builds recreation centers and sells them back to the community. OK? Everyone still with me?”
Rohan takes out an easel filled with large complicated charts. The audience members begin to have a glazed-over look. He moves quickly, and the many numbers rapidly blend into one another. Every so often, there’s something recognizable that I try to hold on to, such as “bond debt,” “impact fee,” and “amenities fees.” But mostly it’s a slew of puzzling terms like “adjusted taxable revenue” and “ad valorem.” He proceeds to explain an algebraic equation where “assessments equal total costs times the number of acres in the unit divided by the number of assessable acres in the district.” Women look to their husbands, but several of the men are already asleep. “I bet you all are ready to get out of here and go golfing, aren’t you?” Rohan asks cheerfully.
To break up the monotony, somebody asks Rohan a question: “Are you elected to your position?” “Uh, no,” he responds. “I’m an employee.” Rohan then takes out a seven-foot aerial photograph of The Villages with a clear plastic overlay identifying the development’s ten districts, which together are big enough to encompass two zip codes. The color-coded districts are oddly shaped, much like gerrymandered municipal wards. In the middle of the photograph, which is devoid of color-coding, there is a large empty area as big as any district. It corresponds to the white space in the middle of the map I bought from the chamber of commerce. I ask Rohan why the area is left blank.
“Oh, that over here? Uh, that’s private property.”
“Whose private property?” I ask. It’s a sizable chunk of real estate in the heart of the development, and yet it’s outside any of the development’s districts, which means that it’s not governed by any of the rules or additional fees that every other resident must adhere to.
“Uh, uh, that’s the developer’s property,” Rohan manages. “It’s a private gated community.”
“So that’s where Morse lives?” I ask.
“Uh, yes.” Rohan turns back to the flip charts. The next one is covered with so many calculations that it resembles a financial prospectus, or perhaps a classroom exercise for MBAs.
What Rohan is trying to explain is the rather unusual legal structure underlying Morse’s mega-development, which grants him enormous powers. It’s called Chapter 190, referring to the Florida statute’s numerical designation. The legislation is nearly three decades old, and its origins date back even farther, about half a century ago, when Walt Disney brought his vision for a Magic Kingdom to sleepy Orange County, Florida. After a cross-country search for the right location—one that would give him maximum flexibility but still be near an interstate highway and a population center—Disney found himself circling in a small plane over a swampy, alligator-infested wasteland several miles outside Orlando, a small city that served as a hub for Florida’s citrus industry. To ensure that he could buy the land dirt cheap, Disney kept his intentions secret for two years as he acquired more than 25,000 acres.
Disney lobbied the Florida state legislature for the creation of a wholly independent district, free of state, county, and local ordinances and land-use laws, and empowered with the ability to float its own tax-free bonds—and even to build its own airport and nuclear power plant if it so wished. When Disney described the $400 million investment he planned to make, and the thousands of jobs his new theme park would create, the legislature was happy to oblige. It was called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, and despite its inherently controversial and despotic nature—some people have likened it to an imperial land grant from the king of Spain—it is still in existence today.
In 1980, the Florida state legislature decided to help spur development by formalizing portions of Walt Disney World’s special status, so that it could be imitated easily across the state. The ensuing legislation was called Chapter 190. There are now hundreds of communities in Florida governed by these special districts, and similar legislation now exists in more than thirty states.
From what I can tell, this peculiar form of government works as follows. A developer encounters a number of challenges regarding infrastructure when working with raw land. He needs to clear the land, grade it, and build—among other things—roads, sewers, and storm water retention ponds. This can cost a lot of money, particularly when the local government doesn’t have the means to help with roads, electricity, and water treatment. A developer can finance this burden in a number of ways.
The most common method, which Del Webb used when he built Sun City, is to borrow money from a bank. Webb earned the money back when his homes were sold because the infrastructure improvements were included (front-loaded) into the price of the houses. Chapter 190 provides another way for developers to fund these infrastructural improvements without help from the county, by allowing the builder to create his own quasi-government with its own “community development districts” to help govern the development and pay for its infrastructure.
This financial structure affords a developer many advantages, such as the ability to obtain tax-free bonds, which are ordinarily available only to traditional governmental bodies, such as municipalities and school districts. This process makes it unnecessary for a developer to persuade a private bank to lend him a large sum of money, usually at higher interest rates. Rural counties generally give Chapter 190 projects their approval because the local government reaps all the eventual tax benefits from the new development (more people mean more gross tax revenues), without having to spend a penny.
The developer doesn’t have to repay these bonds himself; he can pass them on to homeowners. Instead of paying for the infrastructure up front, Villagers theoretically pay a reduced rate when purchasing their homes; but upon closing, they must accept their portion of the bond’s repayment. Because the costs are back-ended, the homes can appear to be less expensive than they are.
The Villages’ ten mini-districts (or CDDs) are each governed by five supervisors, who for the first several years are appointed by the developer at will. These supervisors are often family members, friends, and business associates of the developer. It is during these first few years of existence as a governmental body that the CDDs borrow millions of dollars and set up conditions for repayment. By the time homeowners are allowed to elect their own representatives, most decisions of consequence have already been made. Residents are basically empowered to doll up roadside flower beds and repaint streetlights.
Morse began tapping into Chapter 190 financing when The Villages spilled across the county highway that borders Orange Blossom Gardens. This financing covered many infrastructure costs, but Morse was still left paying for his golf courses and recreation centers.
Morse created two special “central districts” (one for Spanish Springs and one for Sumter Landing), which govern the other mini-districts. The central districts encompass only the development’s commercial areas, but they still govern the rest of the community. Not only did their creation help reimburse Morse for additional expenditures; they also ensured the family’s control over the community for years to come.
Unlike the mini-districts, which eventually enfranchise their inhabitants when they revert to civilian control, the central districts are structured in such a way that no residents of The Villages live inside their boundaries. Hence, as the majority landowner in the central districts, the Morse family rules them unchallenged. Once again, the boards are filled with friends, business associates, and family members.
When Gary Morse wants to be reimbursed for his recreation centers and golf courses, he sells them to these central districts. It’s important to remember the mantra of most developers: “Build; sell; leave.” Maintaining pools and golf courses to the exacting specifications of demanding residents doesn’t fit that model.
The central districts buy the properties—recreation centers, golf courses, swimming pools, etc.—as well as the amenities contracts connected to these properties. Consequently, a recreation center that the county tax appraiser values at $5 million could be sold to a central district for $50 million, because the central district is also buying future revenue. Villagers collectively owe several hundred million dollars for their community’s infrastructure and amenities, and that number is likely to increase in coming years as the community continues to build out. Sixty percent of every monthly amenity fee goes toward debt service.
In the past, when evaluating the developer’s asking price, the central districts have used a consultant who has also worked for Morse. The Villages refuses to acknowledge any conflict of interest. But even if such a conflict was acknowledged, it wouldn’t much matter: Chapter 190 exempts these districts from Florida’s laws governing conflicts of interest. And although the residents of The Villages pay the developer for these properties and contracts (and assume liability for them), they don’t actually “own” them in the way they own their homes; the central districts (over which they have little control) own them. Residents are free to complain about these financial arrangements, but they have no leverage in the matter. And yet, to many residents, such details amount to splitting hairs. As far as they are concerned, the central districts, whose primary functions are to administer their recreational amenities for the benefit of the residents, are doing a fine job.
As Rohan’s presentation winds down, a resident from Michigan asks if it’s true that The Villages is planning a third downtown with a western motif. The Villages filed for permission with Sumter County years ago to build a third downtown, and for most people the information is common knowledge.
“A third downtown? Gee, I don’t know,” Rohan says. “But I would encourage you to keep yourself up-to-date the same way we do—by reading the Daily Sun.”
I look over at the two reporters from the Daily Sun. One of them is staring out the window, and the other is impatiently jiggling her leg. Neither has asked a single question. At exactly noon a secretary comes in to remind Rohan that he has a lunch date. “Wow! It’s noon already?” he says, then hastily hands out gold-stamped certificates of completion. Outside, I invite the two reporters—Mark and Kim—to lunch. They readily agree.
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the Daily Sun is its ability to masquerade as a real newspaper. It’s printed on state-of-the-art presses and carries local, regional, national, and international news, much of it from legitimate wire services. The hefty Sunday paper resembles that of any other mid-size city.
The Daily Sun is unabashedly conservative—not surprisingly, given Morse’s political affiliations. Public records indicate that Morse, his family, and his associates have donated more than $1 million to the Republican Party, including at least $100,000 to President Bush’s two campaigns, thus earning Morse the status of “pioneer.” He was also a strong supporter of the former governor, Jeb Bush, who visited The Villages many times and even borrowed Morse’s private jet. More recently, Morse handed the Florida Republican Party its largest single donation ever—a check for $500,000.
The Daily Sun won’t run “Doonesbury,” but it does print a slew of conservative columnists, including Oliver North and Ann Coulter. Although most of the local news is unusually sunny, one gets the distinct impression that just enough bad news (drugs, crime, juveniles misbehaving) is sprinkled on top to make one feel relieved to live inside the gates.
My former neighbor Betsy Anderson tells me she is impressed with the Daily Sun because it concentrates more on cheerful profiles of fellow Villagers than on hard news. “It’s nice to read about good news for a change,” she says. “I like reading about all these peoples’ accomplishments. It’s the sort of thing most newspapers ignore. And the Sun only costs a quarter. The paper back home was twice as expensive.”
The paper has a ninety percent penetration rate, something unheard of in the real world, and has thus cornered the advertising market, including the highly profitable classifieds. Morse’s paper has another unique advantage: few residents appear to have an interest in other local newspapers or in the hard news they provide about surrounding communities. I spoke with a number of Villagers who even believed that deed restrictions prohibited home delivery of other papers. They were mistaken, but competing papers are hard to find. By comparison, the Daily Sun’s vending machines are everywhere, even though many residents opt for home delivery: the newspaper lands in thousands of driveways every morning.
Mark, a former bartender, is a rookie reporter, and Kim has about three years of experience. Mark tells me he didn’t know where The Villages’ government building was until now, and he’s not sure why he was required to take today’s course. “I can’t see how it relates to what I’m doing,” he says.
Because of their age, the two reporters necessarily live outside the community they cover. Both were hired after posting résumés on an Internet job site, and they suspect that their lack of training and experience helped them get a foot in the door. “I didn’t even have any clips,” Mark explains. “I’m not sure why they hired me.”
“Me neither,” Kim adds. “I was hired as a crime reporter, but there’s no crime. I get the sense they don’t really want me covering anything, so I spend a lot of time doing nothing. I see this being a better place to end a career.”
“We’re not allowed to cover anything even remotely controversial,” Mark adds. “I wanted to write about the 1,000-person waiting list for new homes. I thought that was a good thing. But the editor told me I couldn’t write about it. He wouldn’t even let me call public relations for a quote.”
“Look, every newspaper is owned by somebody, and that person usually exerts some editorial control,” Kim says. “But this is extreme. The Morse family owns everything and controls everything. It’s a true company town.”
“All the businesses are linked,” Mark says. “I’ve been told that I can’t tend bar at any of the country clubs after work, because then The Villages would have to pay me overtime.”
Like the owners of a theme park, the Morse family caters to the needs of a captive audience. From what I can tell, they own liquor stores and liquor distribution rights, a mortgage company, several banks, many of the restaurants, two giant furniture stores as well as a giant indoor furnishings arcade called the “Street of Dreams,” a real estate company, golf cart dealerships, movie theaters, and the local media. You name it; they probably own it. They own so many different businesses that’s it’s nearly impossible to tell which are theirs and which aren’t. And what they don’t own outright, they often lease. The Morses own hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail space. In addition to rent, many businesses also pay the family roughly seven percent of their monthly gross.
Mark tells me about an orientation for new employees he recently attended. The other participants were restaurant workers, engineers, personal trainers, real estate agents, and liquor store cashiers. “They wanted to teach us the philosophy of the company, to let us know we don’t work for the newspaper so much as for The Villages itself,” Mark says. He shows me the back of his company identification card. It reads: “The Villages’ Dream-Maker Passport. We’re dedicated to building a retirement community where people’s dreams come true.”
“How does the Daily Sun cover bad news?” I ask.
“They don’t,” Kim responds.
I ask her if she could help me obtain some back issues. “I can’t,” she says. “We don’t keep old newspapers on file. We don’t even keep our notes. We are supposed to destroy them after a story is run. Taped interviews, too. And every few months somebody from the company goes through our computers and deletes all our files. I think legal counsel suggested it.”
Mark has an epiphany. “I should change my résumé to say that I write public relations and marketing materials. I’m really just writing free advertising.”
“This place isn’t normal,” Kim says. “I keep waiting for everything to just unravel.”
The Villages is not entirely without homegrown opposition. Relations between homeowners and management first soured years ago, when residents accused Gary and his father Harold of reneging on promised free cable television and trash pickup.
Residents banded together, took the owners to court, and won. In anger, father and son refused to acknowledge the scrappy group, which named itself the Property Owners Association (POA). Gary and Harold then sponsored the formation of a competing organization. To this day, there remain two resident groups: the Village Homeowners Association (VHA) backed by the developers, and the feisty POA.
I meet with Joe Gorman, the current president of the POA, over a cup of coffee in downtown Spanish Springs. Joe, a mergers and acquisitions analyst for a Fortune 100 company, opted for early retirement, and for The Villages as the place to spend it. “I liked it immediately, and I still do,” he tells me. “This place is ninety percent great. Not merely good—but great.”
Joe says he “woke up to the issues” about five years earlier, when the Orlando Sentinel ran an investigative series about Chapter 190. It explained how Morse sold common property assessed at $8.8 million to the central district for $84 million. “When I saw that, I thought it was a typo at first,” he tells me. “I later learned that the business valuations weren’t completely off base, but what concerned me was that there appeared to be very little arm’s-length negotiating. I’ve been in business long enough to know that you never give someone exactly what they ask for. We had to make repairs to the Savannah Center not long after purchasing it.”
When Joe talks about Morse’s ability to levy fees on residents with near impunity, he uses language borrowed from the American Revolution. “It’s taxation without representation,” he says. “If the central districts are going to tax us, then residents should be able to serve on the board. If there were just one thing I could ask for, it would be to open up these districts to fair representation.” The POA’s ten demands, incorporated into its “Residents’ Bill of Rights,” are actually quite modest. The document is filled with basic requests that most of us take for granted, such as “a local government that is free of conflicts of interest.”
But few requests are too rudimentary in dealing with Morse’s autocracy. Although the First Amendment ensures that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” Morse and his central districts recently tried to do away with that protection.
They instituted an “Activity Policy,” which outlawed the gathering of two or more residents for the purpose of protesting against The Villages’ policies without first filling out a lengthy application to gain permission from the central districts, and obtaining a $1 million liability policy. Even then, there was a ten-day waiting period, and protesters were still forbidden to demonstrate near areas with high traffic. When the POA called the American Civil Liberties Union and the local independent press, The Villages quickly backtracked.
Joe says the Activity Policy originally slipped by without anyone’s even noticing it. “There’s hardly any discussion at central district meetings. The board recites the Pledge of Allegiance and then votes on whatever is presented to them by staff. There’s never a dissenting vote. The whole thing lasts maybe twenty minutes.”
Technically—and company officials are quick to remind you of this—the mini-districts and central districts don’t “belong” to the developer; employees of these districts don’t work for the developer directly; and the company is a separate entity that must petition the districts just like anyone else. But it’s difficult to ignore the obvious: the family owns the company that controls the government.
The family members themselves rarely speak with residents. Gary Morse’s son Mark, who now runs the company’s day-to-day operations, gives an annual “state of The Villages” address sponsored by the VHA. Several Villagers describe it to me this way: the younger Morse jumps onto the stage and delivers a quick speech. He doesn’t take questions from the audience, insisting instead that all queries be submitted in advance. This past year, they say, he didn’t even respond to submitted questions.
I ask Joe how much support he thinks the POA has in the community. “It’s kind of like during the American Revolution,” he tells me. “About one-third support the king, one-third support the rebels, and one-third are generally more concerned about the annual Christmas parade.”
Later that night, I attend a campaign rally for U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, a Democrat, in one of the recreation centers decorated to give a feeling of the old South. After delivering a basic stump speech to a crowd of 200, Nelson takes questions from the audience.
A man wearing sandals, shorts, and a hearing aid is passed the microphone. “Senator, are you aware that the developer of The Villages is abusing Chapter 190?” The man is clearly nervous: his voice trembles, his eyes water, and his hands shake, but he soldiers on. “The developer controls everything. If he wants to sell residents an outhouse for $50 million, his people on the central districts say ‘Sure!’ He has sold property to us at ten times assessed value.” The audience erupts into applause, but Nelson shows little interest in the issue.
“As a member of Congress, I get all sorts of calls like, ‘Can you help me get my cat down from my tree?’” the Senator responds. “Now what can I do about that? I have no jurisdiction over that Chapter 190, or whatever it’s called. One thing you can do is demand accountability from your local elected officials.”
Several audience members shout out, nearly in unison: “We don’t have any!”
After the rally, I meet one of the few residents elected to a mini-district, Rich Lambrecht. He is trim and clean-cut, and looks almost too young to be living in The Villages. Like Joe Gorman, he has a financial background.
“Once we finally got a majority of residents sitting on our five-member CDD board, the developer’s two appointees simply stopped showing up,” Rich tells me. “They weren’t used to the sort of issues we brought up, like competitive bidding.”
Sinkholes—and the resulting liability—have become an issue in Rich’s mini-district. These impromptu ponds dot the landscape all over this region of Florida. Until recently, it wasn’t an issue; a sinkhole in a cow pasture isn’t exactly big news.
In the middle of Rich’s district is the Nancy Lopez championship golf course, which Morse decided to retain rather than sell to the central districts. The golf course has a complex drainage system that includes retention ponds. Not long ago, one of these disappeared down a sinkhole. Given the fact that the retention pond is on Morse’s property—you can’t reach it without first walking across the golf course—you might assume that Morse would be footing the bill to repair the damage. You’d be wrong.
When Morse first built the golf course and the surrounding residential area, he had the mini-district approve the building of a storm management system, and then assume debt and liability for it, even though portions of the infrastructure are located on his private property.
Although the retention pond serves Morse in many ways, he left Rich’s mini-district with the bill for repairing the sinkhole, which ran well over $150,000. When Rich dug a little deeper, he also found that Morse made residents of the district financially responsible for landscaping a nearby strip mall owned by The Villages, costing residents of the mini-district another $50,000 a year.
“Somehow I keep expecting Mr. Morse to pull me aside to see if we can find some common ground,” Rich says. “But he won’t even show us his face.”
A few days later, I attend a meeting of the developer-friendly VOA—the Village Homeowners Association. The meeting is advertised as a question-and-answer session with representatives of The Villages. Gary Lester, Morse’s spokesperson, sits at a table facing the audience. Several colleagues join him, including Pete Wahl, who manages The Villages’ entire quasi-governmental system. All questions have been submitted ahead of time.
I sit beside a veteran member of the VHA, and he volunteers to fill me in. “Pete Wahl’s the old-timer. He knows what the hell’s going on. You’ll see him and Gary Lester clash a bit because Lester works for the developer, but Pete doesn’t; he sort of works for us. He won’t speak for the developer because he wants the developer to speak for himself. Pete doesn’t want there to be any conflict of interest. He’s basically paid by the developer, so it’s a real delicate line he walks.” I nod in agreement.
The questions are all innocuous. “Why are folks driving so fast in their golf carts? It should be illegal!” “Will the developer widen the golf cart paths near Spanish Springs?” “When’s the new golf course going to open?”
“People shouldn’t be driving so fast; I guess that’s just human nature,” Lester philosophizes. “But it’s not right. And it’s not safe.” When he is asked about any construction plans in The Villages’ near future, Lester pleads ignorance. “I don’t really know. We’re just so busy doing what we’re doing. That’s about all I can tell you.”
Wahl addresses the next question, about the nine-hole golf courses, which are owned by the central district. He then passes the microphone to Lester to speak about eighteen-hole championship golf courses, which are still owned by the developer. My seatmate nudges me. “See how Pete didn’t answer for the developer? See the difference? Pete’s a very knowledgeable guy, but a lot of people still don’t like him. They say he should be elected, and that if there were an election, he’d never get voted in.”
The next question is about the possibility of making the church in downtown Spanish Springs off-limits to visitors without passes. I’ve heard other Villagers express outrage that their downtowns are inundated with local families. Another church congregation also considered limiting its parishioners to those age fifty-five and over; children under nineteen would be able to attend the church only as guests. The question makes Lester a touch uncomfortable. He pauses, then says he doesn’t think placing age restrictions on the church downtown is such a good idea.
Lester then ends the meeting with an impassioned sermon about “truth and cow doo.” The Villages uses millions of gallons of water a day, and the regional water district has recently expressed concern that the water table is dropping. Lester is clearly pissed off because several local newspapers had the temerity to report these preliminary findings as news.
Much of Florida sits atop a giant aquifer, but it’s not big enough to meet the needs of endless growth. After years of bruising water wars, every county and municipality in Florida has adopted stringent standards that regulate water use. Regional water districts use these standards to establish minimum water levels in order to ensure that the state’s aquifers don’t dry up.
The Villages is challenging the way the water district collects its data and then applies the data to establish minimum water levels for the surrounding area. By negating the water district’s methods and findings, The Villages is potentially unraveling Florida’s water policy.
Water, or the lack of it, is The Villages’ Achilles’ heel. Restrictions on water use are one of the few things that could prevent Morse from building thousands more homes. The Villages makes a good faith effort to irrigate with reclaimed water, but this still covers only a small fraction of total water use. The possible overuse of water has some very real consequences: dropping water levels could lead to an epidemic of sinkholes, and put the regional ecosystem and economies under enormous strain.
During his speech, Lester belittles a local environmental activist who lives outside The Villages, and insinuates that she doesn’t understand the issues well enough to be criticizing The Villages’ complex water system. In reality, the woman is a highly educated young retiree who quit a lucrative career developing power plants to home-school her three children.
“I don’t have any financial incentive to stand up and take the heat to do what’s right,” she explains to me when I speak with her later. “This is my community. My children live here. I’m not in it for personal profit and gain. How much is the developer paying Gary Lester? Just how far is the developer going to chase the golden ring? Until our lakes are sucked dry?”
It’s plain to see that the water table around The Villages has dropped, although it’s hard to say exactly why. Lake Miona, which borders some of The Villages’ more prestigious properties, has fallen by more than a foot. The docks are now so far above the water that it’s uncomfortable to board a boat, and a metal fence pole sticking out of the water at a public beach clearly shows a foot or so of exposed rust. Many of the people I speak with say it’s because of unsustainable water usage. Lester says it’s because of a long statewide drought.
“If you read the local papers, you’d think the sky is falling, that we’re running out of water,” Lester says. “I want you to know the facts. You should be very proud of the water program here in The Villages. Did you know that the water quality in Lake Miona has dramatically improved? You know why? Because it’s no longer surrounded by pastures filled with cows that poop in the water! We’ve cleaned up Lake Miona by developing the land around it!”
Visibly moved, a member of the audience pleads with Lester to publish the truth in the Daily Sun. “We’re working on it,” Lester responds.
The man seated beside me looks satisfied with Lester’s explanation. “No matter where you live, or what you do, there will be negative thinkers,” he tells me. “I’m just glad that there aren’t too many of those kind of folks here in The Villages.”
A few days later, I see a headline in the Daily Sun that seems familiar: “Villages’ Efforts to Protect Aquifer Working.” A tiny sidebar is headed: “Villages Helps Recharge Aquifer.” It’s a short, awkward story quoting only one source: the developer’s paid water consultant.
* * *
The next day, I meet with Pete Wahl, a stocky gray-haired bulldog of a man who used to work as the supervisor of Lake County until things soured, and he left to work for The Villages.
Wahl tells me that he left Lake County because he was pro-development and his board of supervisors wasn’t. Like Lester, he expresses some disdain for the rural character of the three surrounding counties: Lake, Sumter, and Marion. “The worst kind of sprawl is low-density development,” he tells me. “That kind of development can’t even support sewer and water lines.
“Chapter 190 is perfect for Florida,” Wahl continues, “because it helps developers build a fantasy in the middle of nowhere. Sumter County could never have provided us with the services we needed. The nearest municipality was poor and miles away. Chapter 190 let us do it ourselves. And the CDD form of government protects the development forever.
“A typical subdivision uses a homeowners association. But an HOA can go belly-up. We’re a form of government and we can’t cease to exist. Our assessments are collected with county taxes; and taxes must be paid. It’s a guaranteed collection system.”
Although much of Wahl’s job is to represent the Villagers’ interests, he is quick to express frustration with residents, such as the POA, who challenge Morse’s policies. “Those people don’t understand how the system works,” he says. “They don’t want to understand it, and they don’t appreciate what they have—a lifestyle essentially unmatched in the continental United States, and probably the world. When it comes down to it, if they don’t like it here, they can always move. Living here is voluntary.”
Wahl clearly doesn’t relish his role as the local punching bag. “All I ask for is fairness. There are two sides to every story.” He tells me he has devised a system for dealing with errant reporters. “The first mistake, they get a phone call; the second mistake, they get an e-mail; and after the third mistake, we communicate on an e-mail basis only.”
Although his soliloquies are aggressive, Wahl ends each one with the pained look of someone who’s been terribly misunderstood. “I don’t represent the developer,” he insists. “I represent the district boards.” I find this splitting of hairs tiresome and politely excuse myself for another interview. He walks me outside, and invites me to have a Swisher Sweet cigarillo with him.
Changing the subject, I ask Wahl if the rumors about Gary Morse’s personal fortune crossing the billion-dollar mark are true.
“The Morse family isn’t that kind of wealthy,” Wahl responds. “And I can remember a time when things weren’t so rosy. I can remember cash flow problems and all sorts of worries about making payroll.” When I ask him what time period he is referring to, I am surprised to learn that it is the same year as Gary Morse’s weekend-long surprise birthday party, during which hundreds of guests were flown in on chartered jets.
Wahl puffs on his cigarillo and exhales deeply. “Our commitment is to building a retirement community where dreams not only come true, but they exceed all expectations.” he says. “I might be biased, but I think we’re doing one hell of a job. This is my baby. I got it to adolescence, and soon adulthood. And it will continue forever without me.”
“Any regrets?” I ask. “Could anything have been done better?” He takes another slow drag, glances out to the horizon, then turns to meet my gaze.
“I wish we had built the golf cart paths wider,” he says. “And we should have had a lawn ornament restriction from day one. But you learn to live with your errors.”
Many of the residents I speak with express little concern about their lack of representation. “Just as long as they keep this place looking so nice, and they keep on building more golf courses, then I’m happy,” Betsy Anderson tells me. “I don’t want to get involved in politics. I didn’t come here for that. And frankly, I don’t care how much the developer makes. He’s done a great job.”
Dave Anderson is more philosophical about what I perceive to be his voluntary disenfranchisement. “Forget the developer; he’s already alienated himself. It’s the people who now live here that define what the community is. We’re the ones shaping things.”
To me, The Villages’ increasingly affluent residents just don’t seem to feel the pain. Much as with American shareholders who are too often apathetic in the face of executives’ obscene pay packages, the financial hit that Villagers are taking for the Morse family is spread across enough residents—tens of thousands of them—that it sparks little interest. New construction continues to be viewed as an expression of Morse’s benevolence and business acumen. “Wow, they built us a new recreation center!” rarely translates into, “We are paying every penny of it, many times over.”
As one might expect, Villagers are not alone in their lack of interest in something as basic as governance. And there’s little correlation to age: a good number of younger families are also choosing to live in similar planned communities because they, too, want the reality of the outside world to go away. They don’t want messy towns with messy town politics; they want orderly communities where decisions are often made for them, preferring to live in developments that resemble towns, as opposed to the real thing. When I think about my own town, with its century-old buildings, and our annual town meetings, where citizens vote on budget items and proposed laws, this sort of thing strikes me as a tragic parody. Sure, my town also suffers from voter apathy, but at least most people have an opinion—and we don’t allow ourselves to be governed by a developer.
About an hour’s drive from The Villages lies the town of Celebration, which is owned by Disney and markets itself as a “traditional” age-integrated community, although it too will soon have an age-segregated neighborhood. Surrounded by alligators, interstate highways, and theme parks, Celebration is nonetheless reasonably charming. The houses all have homey front porches within speaking distance of sidewalks so that neighbors can stroll and meet more easily. The schools and downtown civic and commercial buildings are all within easy walking or biking distance, and some people even live downtown, often in apartments above stores. The nostalgic nod to yesteryear is nearly movie-set perfect—the designers even provide fake fall leaves and winter snow for seasonal celebrations. Most residents I met spoke of their handsome community with great enthusiasm.
What’s missing? A real government, for starters. Celebration was designed, owned, and run for many years by a global entertainment conglomerate in search of profit, rather than by elected officials. At this point, Celebration remains an unincorporated community with its residential areas partially “governed” by a homeowners association, but much of the commercial area remains in private hands. Disney recently sold the town center to a private real estate investment firm based in New York City.
There’s a stately building in the center of downtown Celebration labeled “Town Hall,” but it’s really just a meeting place for the homeowners association as well as the board of directors appointed by the developer. The governance of Celebration is anything but simple. Thrown into the mix are the following: the developer, the Celebration Company, which is a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company; the Residential Owners’ Association, the Non-Residential Owners’ Association (consisting of commercial landowners and appointed by the Celebration Company); the Celebration Community Development District (now consisting of residents); something called an Enterprise Community Development District (governed by the developers’ appointees); and a “managing agent,” Capital Consultants Management Corporation, which has headquarters in Phoenix and Dallas, and bills itself as a “full-service community management firm.”
When I ask a woman at the front desk (I had assumed she was the town clerk) for an explanation of the community’s complicated organizational structure, she tells me to contact a local realtor. A notice in the public restroom asking visitors to turn off the lights adds to my curiosity. It’s signed: “The Management.”
On one of my trips to Phoenix, I visited a new planned community with the blandly patriotic name Anthem. Built by Pulte Homes and its subsidiary Del Webb, it has both “traditional” and age-segregated neighborhoods. Located thirty miles north of Phoenix, Anthem is a true exurb in the middle of nowhere, at least for now.
As with The Villages, segregation is a theme that seemingly runs throughout the community’s design, with similarly priced housing clustered in “neighborhoods.” Adults over fifty-five have the choice of living in a separate gated neighborhood where they can exercise and socialize in their own child-free recreation center.
I was naturally drawn to a large park and sports complex in the center of Anthem, where I introduced myself to a young supermarket executive taking a walk with his daughter. He spoke enthusiastically about the planned community’s amenities—the park has a toy train that children can ride, and the recreation center has a water park and an indoor climbing wall.
To be sure, it is leagues ahead of the usual housing development, many of which lack even a rudimentary community green. A typically dreary American subdivision isn’t even in the same ballpark. I suspect that most Americans, myself included, if given a choice only between the two, would be tempted to live in a faux wonderland like Anthem.
“We love it here,” the young man told me. “Crime is low. We can let our children run around, and they have plenty of other kids to play with. There’s so much to do! And it’s easy to make friends. Anthem’s like it must have been in the old days: one big community.”
But although Anthem may be a community—with a recreation center, ball fields, schools, and even some strip malls for shopping—is it actually a city? Or is it just an amalgamation of housing tracts like The Villages? “Just what is Anthem?” I asked.
“Gosh, I hadn’t really thought about it,” the young father responded. “I think we’re part of Phoenix. Or maybe we’re just part of Maricopa County. I don’t know. I think we live in both.”
“Who runs the place?” I asked. “Do you have a mayor?”
“A mayor? I think so. But don’t quote me on that. Actually, wait a minute, I think Del Webb runs the government.”
“Del Webb runs the government?”
“They’re really good to us,” he responded. “A bunch of us asked them for a skateboard park, and we got one. I thought that was awesome!”