New Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board outlines its plans as it assumes control over Reedy Creek at Walt Disney World

Apr 19, 2023 in "Reedy Creek Improvement District"

Posted: Wednesday April 19, 2023 10:40am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

At today's Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board meeting, the new management board outlined several priorities that it hopes to evaluate and implement as it takes over from Reedy Creek Improvement District.

 

The board said that they will aim to provide the governor with a report before the next Florida legislative session so they can make more long-term changes to the legislation of the district.

Here is a run-down of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District's current plans as outlined at today's meeting:

  • Creating new zoning to develop affordable and workforce housing
  • Creating voting rights for future residents in that housing
  • Developing better traffic solutions for the surrounding counties
  • Reducing the carbon footprint for the district
  • Aligning the district's interests to join Osceola and Orange counties to fight Disney's lawsuits relating to taxes
  • Join the counties and school boards in efforts to create funding for public schools in Central Florida
  • Evaluate regulating Disney like every other business in Central Florida
  • Charging utility rates that are not controlled by Disney
  • Evaluate providing more transparent to the districted governors
  • Implementing new accounting standards
  • Increasing the district revenues
  • Evaluate how to monetize assets of the districts to pay off debts

The board also revealed that Disney created an agreement with Reedy Creek Improvement District prior to the arrival of the new board to set their own utility rates. Board member Martin Garcia said, "Disney is going to tell the governing body what utility rates they are going to pay and what everyone else in the district is going to pay."

We expect to hear more on many of these points during the presentations later this morning at the board meeting.

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MR.Dis8 days ago

To give an example, I am retired from JP Morgan Chase, the provider of Disney Visa charge cards. I was eligible to purchase WDW and Disneyland tickets thru a portal for 20% off the rack rate. I do not know if that is still the case. While I was an annual pass holder purchasing thru DVC, I would purchase tickets for my kids when they visited WDW with their families. It was a significant savings.

flyakite8 days ago

Should anyone be interested and would like to attend:

michmousefan21 days ago

cranbiz22 days ago

Not really a distortion of facts. Yes, RCID was a legally a separate entity from TWDC. In reality, it was controlled by WDW, which is why DeSantis had a hard on for getting revenge on TWDC for "don't say gay" and other woke policies by trying to revoke the district. He couldn't do that for many reasons so he got the law changed to appoint his own governing board. As we know, that really did fail miserably and there is now a board that is not antagonistic towards Disney. There is a charge for those benefits to the third party entities in some way, shape or form. WDW doesn't give anything away for free. RCID (and many third party operating participants) pay for those benefits (usually at a very reduced rate). So, in the case of RCID, Disney paid for those benefits through it's tax assessments because RCID has no income of it's own except for income received from it's taxpayers (of which TWDC is it's largest and majority taxpayer). So, what I said was true. WDW paid for the benefits granted by RCID to it's employees and RCID, by granting those benefits paid WDW back for them. This keeps everything legal. Yes, CFTOD wanted to stick it to Disney by refusing to pay WDW for those benefits, which in turn stuck it to the employees. RCID and CFTOD employees were never WDW Cast Members, they were employees of RCID or are/were employees of CFTOD.

LAKid5322 days ago

It takes little time to release a completed report. Unless that report didn't say exactly what you wanted it to say....

LAKid5322 days ago

Governor's office receives a FOIA (govt in the Sunshine) request... "What's sunshine?" 🙄

LAKid5322 days ago

🤫

LAKid5322 days ago

Florida statute says state records are open to the public. It doesn't say how quickly agencies have to provide the info. When I worked for various state agencies, we tried getting the requested info as quickly as possible. If it was a state legislator or governor's office, yesterday wasn't fast enough. 😉

LAKid5322 days ago

Bingo

Chi8422 days ago

So they had to ferret it out as opposed to the government releasing it to the news agencies. That’s understandable. Those requests can take a surprisingly long time to fulfill.

Stripes22 days ago

WKMG submitted a public records request. That request was just recently fulfilled and the document released. WKMG hasn’t said when they submitted the request.

Unbanshee22 days ago

Lol, you must be new here. The state doesn't like to "live in the sunshine" when it comes to matters that the esteemed governor finds personally difficult

Chi8422 days ago

The memo is dated June 21. Reporting on it the day after Christmas seems to be the definition of “old news.” Although it could be that Florida dragged its feet releasing it for some reason.

TiggerDad22 days ago

When you want to bury a story, you release it at Christmas when no one is paying attention to the news.