The head of Florida’s bond finance is predicting that the Florida legislature will re-establish the Reedy Creek Improvement District. This comes after Florida passed a law that would dissolve the district.
The prediction was made by Ben Watkins, director of Florida’s division of bond finance. He suggested that legislatures will most likely create a successor district. Watkins thinks that the new district would have many of the powers of the current Reedy Creek Improvement District. This is what allows Disney to run many municipal functions throughout Walt Disney World Resort. The new district would likely again includes emergency services, garbage collection, infrastructure funding, and more. It would most likely drop some of the powers that previously the district had that were never used, like the operation of a nuclear power plant.
“I’m confident that Reedy Creek will get addressed in a more meaningful way,” he said Thursday. Lawmakers will likely restore a limited version of the special district in the next legislative session, Watkins said. Watkins also shared that Governor Ron DeSantis’s office has been “supportive” of a successor district approach. At the end of the day, lawmakers will ultimately have the final say in how the legislation will be drafted.
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