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Independent Reporting · Palm Coast, Florida
CDD  ·  Episode 1

What Is a CDD?

By Johnny Diamond  ·  PalmCoastStorylines.com
Chief Investigative Correspondent

Is a CDD a government?

Yes.

A Community Development District — CDD — is a special unit of local government Florida created decades ago for exactly one purpose:

build the infrastructure a new development needs — roads, water, sewer, drainage, sometimes a bridge — and let the people who eventually live there pay it off.

Not the rest of the city.

Not the rest of the county.

Just them.

When a CDD is created, somebody has to run it. A board. Five seats.

And in the first years of almost every CDD that’s ever existed in Florida, those seats aren’t elected by the people who live there.

They can’t be. Almost nobody lives there yet.

One vote per acre. Not one vote per person — one vote per acre.

And in a brand-new district, who owns almost all the acres?

The developer.

Which means, for years, the developer elects the developer’s own board. Approves the developer’s own contracts. Authorizes the bonds that will get repaid by whoever eventually buys a house there.

That’s not a loophole. That’s not somebody gaming the system.

When a board member votes on something that benefits the company that put them there, Florida law doesn’t make them sit that vote out. Most local officials have to. CDD supervisors elected the landowner way have that lets them vote anyway.

It goes further than that. A supervisor doesn’t just get to vote around a conflict — they can be a stockholder or officer in the company doing the development, and the law says outright that’s .

Picture that happening anywhere else in government. A city council member votes to approve a contract with a company he personally owns stock in. No recusal, no apology.

Here, it’s normal. , on purpose.

Every CDD board also has to follow — real public notice, real open meetings, real minutes, whether anyone from the public shows up or not.

Put all of that together and here’s what you could build, entirely on the right side of the law.

Five seats. Three supervisors tied to the developer who show up, vote, and disclose exactly what the statute asks of them. Two supervisors who own the cement company. Or the lumber yard. Folks getting purchase orders and submitting invoices to the district — who simply don’t come to the meeting.

Three is . Three is enough to vote. The two who stayed home never voted, never participated — so there’s nothing for them to disclose, and nothing missing from the record.

The minutes would show a normal meeting. Notice posted. Quorum met. Vote passed. Nobody objected, because nobody who might have was in the room.

All perfectly legal.

Once a district turns at least six years old and has 250 or more residents who are registered to vote, control starts shifting — landowner votes give way to resident votes, an appointed board gives way to an elected one.

Eventually.

Some districts hit that mark on schedule and hand the keys over clean.

Some sit in the developer-controlled stretch for years longer than you’d expect, because the houses just aren’t selling yet.

And some — this is the one worth watching — stay in that stretch long after the neighborhood around them looks finished. Roofs up. Driveways poured. Families moved in.

Next, we’re going to take a look at Palm Coast’s CDDs:

Starting with the one about to dominate the dialogue: the Landings CDD.

A couple years back they issued a bond worth $6 million. Where did it go?

We’ve got the bank statements. Stay tuned.

A CDD’s Meeting & Notice Requirements

What the law actually requires, by statute — separate from and stricter than a routine local-government meeting.

Open meetings — F.S. 189.015 & Ch. 286.011

  • The board must file a schedule of its regular meetings with the local government (city or county), published quarterly, semiannually, or annually in a paid-circulation newspaper.
  • Any meeting outside that regular schedule requires at least 7 days’ advance notice in a newspaper of general paid circulation — except a genuine emergency, which the board must still ratify afterward. The annual budget can never be approved at an emergency meeting.
  • Meetings must be held in a public building — one inside the district if available, otherwise a county courthouse or another building in the county accessible to the public. Not a private clubhouse. Not a developer’s office.
  • Under Florida’s Sunshine Law (Ch. 286.011), any gathering of two or more board members to discuss something the board will foreseeably act on counts as a meeting — not just the formal vote. Reasonable notice is required, and minutes must be taken.

Website & agenda posting — F.S. 189.069

  • Every CDD must maintain its own official website — an independent special district cannot simply be a subpage of another government’s site.
  • Required postings include: the district’s full legal name and public purpose; name, address, email, and term for every board member; its charter; its boundaries and services; every tax, fee, or assessment it collects and the rate; a code of ethics; its budget; its most recent audit; and its meeting schedule.
  • The agenda for every meeting or workshop must be posted at least 7 days before the event, and stay posted for at least a year after.

Sources: Florida Statutes §189.015, §189.069, and Ch. 286.011 (flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes).

Voting Conflicts — and the CDD Exception

Florida’s ordinary conflict-of-interest rule for local officials, and the specific carve-out that applies to landowner-elected CDD supervisors.

The general rule — F.S. §112.3143(3)(a)

A local public officer normally cannot vote on a matter that would financially benefit themselves, their employer, or a business associate. Before the vote, they must publicly state the conflict and abstain. Within 15 days, they must file a written memorandum disclosing the nature of the conflict, which becomes part of the public record and the meeting minutes.

The exception — F.S. §112.3143(3)(b)

The statute carves out one specific group: “an officer of an independent special tax district elected on a one-acre, one-vote basis… is not prohibited from voting, when voting in said capacity.” A CDD board elected the landowner way — one vote per acre — falls squarely inside that exception.

In practice: a CDD supervisor can vote on a bond, a contract, or an assessment that directly benefits the developer who elected them, or who employs them, without stepping aside. The Florida Commission on Ethics confirmed this directly in a 1987 advisory opinion — supervisors of a development district “may vote on a matter inuring to the special gain of the developer by whom they are employed,” so long as they publicly announce the conflict and file the disclosure memorandum. The vote itself isn’t blocked. Only the paperwork is required.

When the exception goes away

The carve-out is tied to the one-acre, one-vote election method — not to CDDs generally. Once a district transitions to resident (qualified elector) elections, board members filling those elected seats are no longer “elected on a one-acre, one-vote basis,” and the ordinary abstention rule applies to them again.

Sources: Florida Statute §112.3143 (flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes); Florida Commission on Ethics Opinion CEO 87-66 (ethics.state.fl.us).

Can a Supervisor Be the Developer?

Yes — and the statute doesn’t hedge about it.

The statute — F.S. §190.007(1)

Buried in the section covering a district’s day-to-day management: “It shall not be a conflict of interest under chapter 112 for a board member or the district manager or another employee of the district to be a stockholder, officer, or employee of a landowner or of an entity affiliated with a landowner.”

Read plainly: a CDD supervisor can hold stock in the development company, serve as one of its officers, or draw a paycheck from it — all while sitting on the board that oversees bonds, contracts, and assessments tied to that same company’s project. The law doesn’t just permit the overlap. It states, by name, that the overlap isn’t a conflict of interest under Chapter 112, Florida’s general ethics code for public officers.

A second layer — the state constitution

The same subsection extends further, into Article II, Section 8(h)(2) of the Florida Constitution — the provision that defines “abuse of public position” for elected and appointed officials generally. It specifies that a board member does not abuse their public position by taking an action this subsection authorizes, or by casting a vote consistent with the landowner-election exception in — so long as the disclosure procedures were followed.

Bottom line

Ownership or employment overlap between a CDD supervisor and the company developing the land inside that district is not a gray area, a workaround, or something that happens to slip through. It is expressly written into the statute as not being a conflict of interest at all, provided the board follows the disclosure steps already covered.

Source: Florida Statute §190.007(1) (flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes).

Quorum, Absence, and the Disclosure Gap

Why a supervisor who simply doesn’t attend a meeting leaves no record to explain — and why that’s legally different from recusing.

Quorum — F.S. §190.006(5)

A majority of the five-member board constitutes a quorum for conducting business and exercising the board’s powers. That’s three people. Action is taken by a majority vote of the members present, not a majority of the full board — so a matter can pass on two votes out of five, so long as three are in the room to begin with.

Recusal versus absence

When a supervisor is present and abstains from voting on a conflicted matter, Florida law requires a specific, documented process: state the conflict publicly before the vote, then file a written memorandum within 15 days that becomes part of the permanent minutes. That’s recusal, and it leaves a record.

Simple absence triggers none of that. Section 112.3143’s disclosure requirement is tied to voting or participating in a matter. A supervisor who is not present has not voted and has not participated — so nothing requires them to disclose anything, and nothing in the minutes distinguishes an absence caused by a scheduling conflict from an absence caused by an actual one.

What this means in practice

A five-member board can conduct fully noticed, fully open, fully minuted business with only three members present. If those three are the members with the cleanest exemptions to vote on a given matter, and the other two simply aren’t there, the meeting record shows nothing irregular — because procedurally, nothing was.

Sources: Florida Statute §190.006(5) and §112.3143 (flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes).