In Lakewood Ranch, a Paid-Off CDD Isn't the Same as a Cheap One

A home in the Hollow neighborhood of Summerfield, inside Lakewood Ranch Community Development District 1, carries $0.00 in CDD debt service on the FY2026/2027 schedule. Its operations and maintenance line is $1,733.94 a year. A 45-foot lot in Belleisle, part of Country Club East in the newer Lakewood Ranch Stewardship District, is still paying off a 2020 bond. Its FY2027 gross bill is $471.53 in debt service plus $697.86 in O&M, or $1,169.39 combined.

So the home with no debt pays about $565 more per year than the one with debt.

Those assessments land on the November 2026 Manatee County property tax bill, a few weeks after this post goes up. For buyers comparing villages, the useful lesson is simple. The debt-service column mostly tells you when a district was built. What a district costs depends on what it owns.

The debt column tracks age, and the total tracks something else

Lakewood Ranch runs two district systems. Schroeder-Manatee Ranch set up the original series of community development districts through ordinances in the 1990s and 2000s, each one financing a stage of the community, according to a Suncoast Searchlight investigation last updated in June 2026. Today, Lakewood Ranch Town Hall lists five of those community development districts: CDD 1 Summerfield/Riverwalk, CDD 2 Country Club South/Edgewater, CDD 4 Greenbrook, CDD 5 Country Club North and CDD 6 Country Club West. Newer areas such as Country Club East, Star Farms, Lakewood National and Polo Run fall under the Lakewood Ranch Stewardship District. Both systems work the same basic way. The district issues tax-exempt bonds for infrastructure, and buyers repay them through assessments, as the Searchlight piece explains.

Here is how FY2027 totals line up across both systems. CDD 4, 5 and 6 figures come from pre-hearing notices labeled preliminary, so read them as proposed.

Look down the O&M column. Every Stewardship row sits under $700. The older districts start at about $1,700 and go up from there. In Greystone, O&M alone is $3,822.79, more than the entire bill for a Seacroft homesite in Country Club East.

CDD 5 shows the same pattern from another direction. Its proposed schedule runs $3,490.92 to $6,442.66 per unit, with debt service of $814.34 at most and O&M of $3,294.52 to $6,027.23. Nearly all of that bill is upkeep.

What a finished district owns

The older districts cost more because they own more. Town Hall's own description says CDD 1 owns and maintains the common areas of Summerfield and Riverwalk. That covers landscaping, irrigation and stormwater infrastructure, parks, preserve areas, sidewalks and street lighting, all paid for through property tax bill assessments. CDD 2, which covers Country Club South and Edgewater, adds roadways, access gates, potable water and sewer to that list.

CDD 1's FY2027 adopted budget shows where its $3,707,760 in assessments goes:

• Landscaping, $945,000
• Shared maintenance staff, $564,240
• Reserves, $450,000
• Utilities, $417,800
• Shared administration, $359,320
• Environmental and conservation work, $176,700
• Town Hall related costs, $145,200

That budget is spread across 1,819 units. The staff behind those shared lines work for the Lakewood Ranch Inter-District Authority, which runs Town Hall and serves as district manager for the CDDs. Its FY2027 adopted budget includes $920,400 in general maintenance salaries, $470,900 in landscape maintenance salaries and $270,900 in irrigation maintenance salaries shared across all of the CDDs.

Gates account for much of the difference. The IDA budget includes a $358,700 Country Club gatehouse service contract, with gatehouse O&M and unmanned-gate costs on top, all charged to CDDs 2, 5 and 6. CDD 2's own adopted budget lists another $280,700 in gatehouse expenses and $590,000 in reserves. The gated districts are also the ones with the highest O&M figures in the table above.

Why the newer villages show a light O&M line

The Stewardship District is no lean operation. Its FY2027 adopted operating budget totals $15,477,791, including $3,698,418 for contracted landscaping and irrigation and $2,921,000 for general and parks maintenance. That cost is divided by sector across a much larger base, so a Lakewood National or Polo Run home ends up with $439.13 in gross O&M and a Central Park home with $542.58.

The heavier charge in these villages comes from bonds, and it varies a lot from street to street. Within Country Club East's 2020 bond series, a 57-foot Belleisle lot pays $751.76 in gross debt service, a 62-foot Windy Hill lot pays $2,206.84 and a Seacroft homesite pays $3,204.32. Every one of those lots has the same $697.86 O&M line. Lot width and bond series decide the rest.

More debt is still coming. The district's FY2027 debt-service budget lists $60,526,299.39 in assessment revenue across bond series issued from 2014 to 2026. That includes a Southeast Series 2025 issue and Series 2026 notes. On the Sarasota County side, the Villages of Lakewood Ranch South carry both an older Series 2016A and a newer Series 2024A. The same budget lists a 2021A refunding series for Belleisle and Central Park, so bonds here can be refinanced as well as paid down.

The part of the bill that resets every August

Debt service is tied to a specific bond. O&M is a different kind of charge. CDD 1's hearing notice calls its special assessments "annually recurring." It says the amounts are "preliminary and subject to change at the hearing and in any future year." Each board sets the number again every summer. This year's hearings ran August 17 to 20 at Town Hall, 8175 Lakewood Ranch Boulevard.

In CDD 1, the whole bill is that recurring, board-set portion. In Country Club East, roughly $700 is recurring and the rest is bond repayment. Two homes with the same total today are exposed to future budgets in different ways, so the split between debt and O&M deserves as much attention as the total.

Here is how to pull those numbers for a specific property:

1. Read the non-ad valorem section of the tax bill. The Sarasota County Tax Collector explains that the bill combines value-based taxes with non-ad valorem assessments, which are not based on value. Its list of levying authorities includes LWR Stewardship, LT Ranch CDD, LT Ranch South CDD and Windward at LWR CDD.
2. Match the neighborhood to its row on the district's schedule. The Stewardship District posts gross and net figures by bond series and lot width. The older CDDs list each named neighborhood, from Bluffs to Woods.
3. Check the early-payment discount. Manatee CDD notices say owners can receive a discount of up to 4% for paying early.
4. On new construction, find the disclosure. Florida Statutes §190.048 requires the contract for the initial sale of a parcel or residential unit in a CDD to include a bold, conspicuous district tax disclosure, in larger type, immediately before the buyer's signature line.

These assessments are collected by the county tax collector along with property taxes. CDD 6's hearing notice says failure to pay will cause a tax certificate to be issued against the property, which may result in a loss of title.

Quick answers

Does my HOA cover the same things as the CDD? They have different roles. Town Hall describes CDDs as the bodies that plan, finance, build, operate and maintain community-wide infrastructure and services. It describes HOAs as the bodies that enforce covenants, conditions and restrictions to keep a uniform community look. Expect to pay both.

Are the CDD 6 numbers in the table final? The figures shown came from a pre-hearing notice that called them preliminary. The amount on the November 2026 bill is the one to use.

Is the Golf Course line in CDD 6 something homeowners pay? That $33,859.00 is assessed to a single golf course unit, not to residential lots.

This post is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Please confirm the assessments and contract terms for any specific property with the right professional.

If you're weighing two Lakewood Ranch homes with similar prices and different district lines, Christine Walker can pull the debt and O&M figures for both so you can compare the full annual cost before you write an offer. If you already own in a district and want to know how your CDD line looks to a buyer, start with Get Your Instant Home Valuation.