A proposal to create a new special taxing district in the University Town Center area along the Sarasota and Manatee county line cleared its final Committee, advancing to the House floor.
But there is still no companion bill in the Senate.
The House State Affairs Committee voted 23-0 to advance HB 4091, sponsored by Lakewood Ranch Rep. Bill Conerly, to the House floor. The bill would establish the University Town Center Improvement District, an independent special district spanning a roughly 1,500-acre area that includes one of the region’s most heavily developed commercial corridors.
The District would be authorized to construct, operate and maintain a wide array of improvements within its boundaries, but the Committee approved an amendment introduced by Conerly specifying that it’s meant to focus on stormwater infrastructure improvements in response to flooding during the 2024 hurricane season.
The strike-all amendment “makes it a district that focuses on stormwater and flood, as opposed to the other things that were previously included, so this bill creates an independent special district that exists in both Sarasota and Manatee counties, and the intent of it is to operate stormwater and flood control facilities as well as other community infrastructure associated with the district,” Conerly told Committee members Thursday.
To finance those projects, HB 4091 authorizes the District to levy both ad valorem and non-ad valorem assessments on property within its boundaries. Any ad valorem tax would require voter approval and would be capped at 3 mills. The District would also be able to issue revenue, assessment and general obligation bonds, with voter approval required for bonds backed by ad valorem taxes.
Governance would rest with a five-member Board of Supervisors elected by landowners on a one-acre, one-vote basis, with staggered three-year terms. The board would be subject to Florida’s public records, ethics and financial disclosure requirements. Conerly explained that there are no residential land owners on the property, as the District is meant to serve the commercial corridor and easy flood mitigation across the Sarasota and Manatee county line.
“The majority of the property is owned by commercial operators,” Conerly said. “Anything that’s residential is excluded, so there are no residential units like single family residential. It’s a commercial district, and the need for this is during Tropical Storm Debby it flooded. What’s difficult is that there’s a drainage basin that exists in two counties, so it’s very hard to coordinate the overall drainage district to provide stormwater improvements and flood mitigation.”
If approved by the full Legislature and signed by the Governor, the District would still not become operational until a majority of affected landowners vote to approve its creation at a meeting held within 20 days after the bill becomes law. But with no Senate companion, the plan’s fate in the upper chamber remains unclear.
