They hope to form a majority voting block and hire a new management company for the Lake St. Charles area.
By JANET ZINK
Published May 28, 2004
For more than a year, Lake St. Charles resident John Bakas has acted as a self-appointed watchdog for his community development district.
He attends most board meetings, filed public records requests to get financial statements from the CDD's management company and created a Web site forum for often-heated discussions about the Lake St. Charles CDD board.
Now he's ready to really initiate change.
Bakas and two like-minded neighbors are campaigning together for separate seats on the Lake St. Charles CDD board. They hope to create a majority voting block on the five-member board.
Bakas, Lorelei Bowden and David Candia say they share the view that the CDD board at Lake St. Charles, located off U.S. 301 about 1 mile south of Progress Boulevard, needs to be more open and responsive to residents.
"Community development districts are basically totally unregulated," Bowden said. "The potential for abuse is just massive."
A community development district is a governmental body with paid elected supervisors. The CDD taxes homeowners to repay a bond used by developers to pay for construction of roads and utilities, and to operate and maintain common areas.
Most significant is the candidates' plan to hire a new CDD management company. Rizzetta and Co., which has managed the Lake St. Charles CDD since its creation in 1996, does not communicate well enough with homeowners, the candidates say. The company has been reluctant to turn over financial statements, and when they do, the documents are vague, they say.
"These people are working for us, so there's no need to put up with this kind of attitude," Candia said.
Current board members, he said, appear to be too intimidated by Rizzetta to be effective.
The candidates plan to join forces on numerous issues:
* A top priority is how to handle the CDD's $3-million bond, which is scheduled to be paid off in 2017. The current board, Bakas said, is considering either refinancing the debt, extending it for 10 years or borrowing more money. The trio believes the last two options, which will result in a larger debt, shouldn't be undertaken without the endorsement of 50 percent of the community's 900 homeowners.
* They want to let homeowners comment on meeting agenda items before the board votes on them. Now, residents can only speak at the end of the meetings.
* Board meetings, the three say, should be at 6:30 p.m. instead of 5:30 p.m. to make it easier for people to get there after work.
* Financial documents should be readily available to residents, something that hasn't happened in the past, the candidates say.
"The CDD in my view has an affirmative duty to get information to homeowners in a meaningful way so they know what's going on and can come to meetings and have a significant impact on what the board decides," Bakas said.
At press time, the three incumbents - Art Dowd, Todd Gesling and John Marshall - had not filed documents with the county announcing their intention to run for office. The deadline to qualify for election is July 16. Candidates for CDD boards throughout Hillsborough County will appear on ballots during the General Election on Nov. 2.
