Report on Past Practices of the RCID released

[irlandaise]

I THINKKK all the college program kids and the internation cast live in the district, I would think that is more than 44

All of that housing (aside from the housing for the 40-50 residents hand-picked by Disney) exists outside of RCID/CFTOD.

And even if that housing wasn't outside the district, CP/IP employees would be renters, not homeowners. Their apartment rents would help cover the property taxes paid by the buildings' owner, but the residents themselves wouldn't be considered taxpayers. As the buildings' owner, Disney would be the taxpayer.

The only residents of the district are in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista.

So are we still at 44, or does someone have a different number. (If no one else knows and I get motivated to do so, I could pull data from the Census Bureau website for the relevant census tracts.)

 

[Robbie Cottam]

And even if that housing wasn't outside the district, CP/IP employees would be renters, not homeowners. Their apartment rents would help cover the property taxes paid by the buildings' owner, but the residents themselves wouldn't be considered taxpayers. As the buildings' owner, Disney would be the taxpayer.


So are we still at 44, or does someone have a different number. (If no one else knows and I get motivated to do so, I could pull data from the Census Bureau website for the relevant census tracts.)

I don't think anyone is stopping you, I just think it is irrelevant....

Nobody believes anything is that report is anything more than a political hit job..

 

[Kwami]

Am I crazy or is there a lot of illegal activity done here.. With techniques that kinda show things were done to keep the illegal activity from being discovered.

Such as?

 

[Sykes]

And even if that housing wasn't outside the district, CP/IP employees would be renters, not homeowners. Their apartment rents would help cover the property taxes paid by the buildings' owner, but the residents themselves wouldn't be considered taxpayers. As the buildings' owner, Disney would be the taxpayer.

Inside vs outside is mostly just relevant because if they were inside the district they could potentially claim residency and be entitled to vote in district elections. (Or at least that was the case with RCID. The Governor appointed political donors to the CFTOD board so there is no longer any local representation.)

So are we still at 44, or does someone have a different number.

It's about that. It varies slightly depending on the size of each family that lives in the district at any given time. The lowest I've seen is 39 and the highest is about 56. It was 43 when the amended RCID comprehensive plan was published last year.

 

[OKW Lover]

Was that in the report?
I was just taking about the report

No it wasn't in the report. A covienient omission?

 

[New Mouse]

Which any competent tax preparer should have told them, but yeah

People making $15 an hour don't have tax preparers.

 

[Robbie Cottam]

People making $15 an hour don't have tax preparers.

Idk is that about what tax act pays those people at Walmart to do taxes

 

[irlandaise]

And even if that housing wasn't outside the district, CP/IP employees would be renters, not homeowners. Their apartment rents would help cover the property taxes paid by the buildings' owner, but the residents themselves wouldn't be considered taxpayers. As the buildings' owner, Disney would be the taxpayer.

Inside vs outside is mostly just relevant because if they were inside the district they could potentially claim residency and be entitled to vote in district elections.

That would have been interesting if those CMs could vote. But I was talking about taxpaying; they would still be renters and not on the county assessor's rolls.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

Such as?

Well for starters it looks to me that Disney often hired itself instead of putting things out to bid. Maybe you might argue as it regulated itself it had no real law to do so, except I am assuming that Bonds were sold to public and entities that had no idea the good faith standards of open competition were being ignored.

To which if you are doing this illegal practice and you know it is being done as their are no bidding practices being done for these jobs. If this funding is inappropriately inflating your companies wealth, well to0 me that sounds like what Enron or MCI was doing.

I am not saying this is correct, it just seems from what i read plausible to me.

 

[Robbie Cottam]

Well for starters it looks to me that Disney often hired itself instead of putting things out to bid. Maybe you might argue as it regulated itself it had no real law to do so, except I am assuming that Bonds were sold to public and entities that had no idea the good faith standards of open competition were being ignored.

If that is actually true. I don’t have a problem with that, personally. Section 255 has a list of reason why a project does not have to go out to bid, the district was completely on private property.

I’m sure and engineer signed off saying the Disney paving company, was the only one that could do it, and funding would be lost if the project went out to bid…..

Yes, total speculation. But at the end of the day the report trying to push the pendulum to far the other way….

Oh and nobody carried for almost 50 years how things got done…

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

But as I understood it those jobs were being funded by municipal bonds. Maybe Im wrong but I thought there were fair practice guidelines for them.

 

[Robbie Cottam]

But as I understood it those jobs were being funded by municipal bonds. Maybe Im wrong but I thought there were fair practice guidelines for them.

They are, with a list of about 15 or 20 exceptions

 

[Sykes]

Well for starters it looks to me that Disney often hired itself instead of putting things out to bid. Maybe you might argue as it regulated itself it had no real law to do so, except I am assuming that Bonds were sold to public and entities that had no idea the good faith standards of open competition were being ignored.

In the act forming RCID the Florida legislature specifically authorized the district to issue bonds and undertake projects without a competitive bidding process (even when undertaken by non-District employees/resources). The RCID charter that says this was incorporated by reference into the disclosures for the bonds that were issued.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

In the act forming RCID the Florida legislature specifically authorized the district to issue bonds and undertake projects without a competitive bidding process (even when undertaken by non-District employees/resources). The RCID charter that says this was incorporated by reference into the disclosures for the bonds that were issued.

K
This goers beyond what i read but maybe that was intentional.

It just first thing I thought when I read some pieces.
Scary cause anytime a company wanted to inflate its value it could start a project and there would be the benefit of the project and the work itself on the public company. Worse yet it could lead to huge benefit from abandoned or overstated projects. I think this is kinda like Enron did right. Not saying it was what Disney was doing, what I thought was possibly being done?

 

[Sykes]

Scary cause anytime a company wanted to inflate its value it could start a project and there would be the benefit of the project and the work itself on the public company. Worse yet it could lead to huge benefit from abandoned or overstated projects. I think this is kinda like Enron did right. Not saying it was what Disney was doing, what I thought was possibly being done?

There's some truth to that. RCID operated with less transparency and with more direct coordination with its largest taxpayer than a typical special district did, because it was explicitly set up to do so. Because of that, if there was fraud or other illegal activity happening it would have been more difficult to detect than in a typical government entity. But RCID was still quite transparent--their books were mostly open and subject to Florida's sunshine law--so if Disney wanted to commit malfeasance it would have been much easier to do it within their own corporate structure where they aren't subject to the same disclosure requirements. And to that end, for the better part of the year the CFTOD board has had full control of the district and full access to its historical records and has made no substantiated accusations of illegal behavior. Maybe there's a smoking gun they haven't found or disclosed yet, but I doubt it. In this day of politically-motivated investigations and prosecutions I won't be too terribly surprised if they do manage to file charges for something, but I'll be pretty surprised if there are any convictions.

 

[ForWhomTheMouseTolls]

Well for starters it looks to me that Disney often hired itself instead of putting things out to bid. Maybe you might argue as it regulated itself it had no real law to do so, except I am assuming that Bonds were sold to public and entities that had no idea the good faith standards of open competition were being ignored.

To which if you are doing this illegal practice and you know it is being done as their are no bidding practices being done for these jobs. If this funding is inappropriately inflating your companies wealth, well to0 me that sounds like what Enron or MCI was doing.

I am not saying this is correct, it just seems from what i read plausible to me.

This is nothing like what Enron or Worldcom did. It’s not even in the same arena.

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

In no way meant to imply Disney was pulling an Enron, meant the way Enron lied often was by hiring themselves.

 

[ForWhomTheMouseTolls]

In no way meant to imply Disney was pulling an Enron, meant the way Enron lied often was by hiring themselves.

They were running a mark-to-market accounting scheme, claiming profits from contracts signed well before there was any income from them. It’s a massive logical leap to get from: Disney is paying for projects through RCID to claiming future income and profits illegally from those projects in the current period.

 

[Strimp]

The real insidious part is that there isn't much, if any, real outright fiction in the report, it's just that perfectly normal practices are disingenuously presented as horribly improper. Like suggesting that failing to build schools within the district, which has no residents to speak of, is depriving the community of resources despite the fact that Disney pays disproportionately high property taxes that substantially fund schools in surrounding communities where they actually belong. Or that they got out of paying impact fees even though they were paying more in other ways. Even if you fully accept the text of the report as true, the only whiff of an actual improper act (as opposed to vague ramblings about the potential for improper acts if the District did a bunch of things that there's no actual evidence that they did) is that the district might have failed to tell employees that some of the ancillary benefits they were receiving were taxable gifts.

The municipal bond issue alone, if true, is fraud, so that is a real problem. Also, not reporting income for passes, no Bueno. If the audit is true, and time will tell, it is riddled with substantial legal problems for Disney.

 

[Robbie Cottam]

The municipal bond issue alone, if true, is fraud, so that is a real problem. Also, not reporting income for passes, no Bueno. If the audit is true, and time will tell, it is riddled with substantial legal problems for Disney.

Doubt it
Disney did nothing wrong running the district…..
‘The state did nothing wrong changing the district

it’s the new normal, the parties need to learn how to play nice and peacefully co exist
or it will be bad for both of them