At its meeting earlier this week, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District did something inexplicably nice for Walt Disney World. The Board, hand-picked by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, decided to cut the mill rate, which would cut the property taxes that the Walt Disney Company would have to pay to the Board. But just as soon as they gave, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District took something away from Disney World.
At the meeting, the Board announced it was cutting $8 million spent on security specifically for Disney World. That money was used to hire off-duty public police officers to help with security and make arrests on Disney World property. The Board noted that Disney World isn’t the only taxpayer in the district and should not receive any special treatment that the other taxpayers don’t.
Board Chair Martin Garcia said at the meeting:
That doesn’t make any sense to me and it doesn’t make any sense to anybody on our team that’s looked at it. As we are doing more work it appears there are a number of naughty things this old board did with district funds, and we are going to look for further savings.
But there is another motive for the cut. The CFTOD noted that it would need additional funds for its legal team as it fights the Disney Company. Disney sued the CFTOD in Federal Court after the board tried to expuDisney’s deals with the Reedy Creek Improvement District. In turn, the CFTOD countersued Disney. Disney was in court two weeks ago asking a Florida judge to throw that case out. The judge still has not decided the issue.
This fight began when Disney reacted to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, known by its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Florida Gov Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature stripped Disney of its self-governing board. Before the previous board left, they reached several agreements with Disney to strip the Desantis appointees of most of their power.
The Walt Disney Co has sued both the Board and DeSantis in Federal Court, claiming that the loss of the previous board was retaliation for Disney exercising its First Amendment rights.
The loss of a police presence comes at a terrible time as Disney has seen an uptick in bad behavior from Guests recently, including fights at Magic Kingdom and drunken Guests at EPCOT trashing rides.
We will continue to update this story at Disney Fanatic.
