On March 3, 2026, four supervisors gathered at the Watergrass II Clubhouse in Wesley Chapel for a routine Mirada Community Development District board meeting. Among the items on the agenda: whether to keep paying a company called Mirada Club LLC, on a month-to-month basis and not to exceed $27,000, to keep the community's decorative fountains running. The board said yes. It also authorized staff to solicit bids for a permanent fountain maintenance contract, because the district still hadn't taken over that job itself. Turnover reports from the master developer were, in the board's own words, still pending.
If you're cross-shopping master-planned communities in Pasco County right now, that meeting matters more than it looks like it should. Every listing you're comparing shows a CDD fee as a single dollar figure, sitting quietly next to the tax line. It looks like a fixed cost, the kind of number you can drop into a spreadsheet and compare apples to apples. It isn't. The same three letters can mean a resident-run district that finished its infrastructure years ago, or a district where residents are still paying assessments into a system the developer hasn't finished handing over. The fee tells you almost nothing about which one you're getting.
What's Actually Bundled Into That Number
A Community Development District fee is really two different charges stapled together. One is a debt service assessment, the district's share of paying back the bonds that financed roads, stormwater systems, and amenities before the first house ever closed. That portion is fixed for the life of the bond, usually 20 to 30 years, and it disappears once the bonds are retired. The other is an operations and maintenance assessment, which pays for the day-to-day upkeep of whatever the district owns and gets reset by the board every single year at a public budget hearing.
Those two pieces behave completely differently over time, and a listing sheet almost never tells you which one is doing the heavy lifting in the number you're looking at. A district with a low current fee might have a large O&M increase already teed up for next fiscal year. A district with a higher fee might be carrying a bond that's most of the way paid off. You can't tell from the sticker.
One Community, Two Very Different Numbers
Epperson, the lagoon-centered community in Wesley Chapel, is a useful example of how much this number can move inside a single neighborhood. The Epperson North Community Development District's own adopted assessment schedule for the current fiscal year shows single-family CDD costs ranging from roughly $1,165 to $2,477 a year, depending on the lot type and which bond series that section of the community was built under. Two homes a few streets apart, both technically "in Epperson," both showing a CDD line on their listing, can carry assessments nearly $1,300 apart.
The district also published notice of an April 1, 2026 public hearing to consider amended and restated amenity rates for residents and non-residents using its recreational facilities. That's the O&M side of the ledger doing exactly what it's designed to do: move, based on what the board decides the community needs that year. A buyer who checks the CDD number once, at the time of the listing, is checking a number that the district itself expects to revisit.
Compare that to a Homes by WestBay disclosure for a Mirada product line showing an all-in CDD example of $3,723.03 annually, a different community entirely, with its own bond structure and its own lot mix. Put Epperson's range and Mirada's example side by side and you get a spread of more than $2,500 a year between communities that market themselves almost identically: lagoon lifestyle, gated entry, new construction, Wesley Chapel or San Antonio address. The fee isn't telling you about the lifestyle. It's telling you about the bond schedule for that specific parcel, and you have to go get that information yourself.
The Same Word, a Very Different Board
Here's the part that doesn't show up on a listing sheet at all: who's actually running the district you're about to start paying into.
Every Florida CDD starts the same way. The developer's landholding entity elects the first board of supervisors, because the developer owns essentially all the land when the district forms. Over time, as lots sell and residents move in, control is supposed to transition to a board elected by the people who actually live there. Del Webb Bexley's own CDD explains this directly: the board begins as landowner-elected and starts transitioning to resident control after roughly six years of operation. Once that transition happens, the people voting on your assessment are your neighbors, not the builder's staff.
Mirada, based on its own posted board minutes, is still mid-transition. Beyond the fountain contract, the district was working through turnover punch lists tied to a second phase of construction, waiting on the master developer's engineering team to respond to outstanding items before the CDD could formally accept infrastructure. The district's board also had a vacant supervisor seat it was actively recruiting a resident to fill. None of that is unusual for a community still building out. It does mean that if you buy into Mirada today, part of what you're funding through your CDD assessment is a district that doesn't yet fully run itself.
That's a very different proposition than moving into a community where the board has already turned over and the residents you'd be living next to are the ones voting on next year's landscaping contract.
A Quick Side-by-Side
| Epperson (North CDD) | Mirada | Del Webb Bexley | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDD range (single-family) | About $1,165–$2,477/year, varies by lot and bond series | Builder example cited at $3,723.03/year for one product line | Set annually by board; check current tax bill for parcel |
| Board control | Resident input growing as lots sell out | Still finishing developer turnover as of early 2026 | Structured to shift toward resident-majority control over time |
| Recent activity worth knowing | April 2026 hearing to reset amenity rates | March 2026 vote to keep paying a developer-affiliated vendor for fountain upkeep | Established 55+ community; board process outlined in district FAQ |
What This Means If You're Comparing Communities
None of this means avoid CDDs, or that a still-transitioning district is a bad buy. Newer sections of a growing community, including newer phases of Angeline further north, are simply earlier in their build-out than communities like Connerton or Bexley, where more of the internal parks and trails are finished and handed over. Earlier-stage sections often come with lower prices and more room for the neighborhood to develop the way you'd want it to. If you'd rather skip the CDD conversation altogether, older streets in Trinity were built before the CDD financing model became standard in this part of the county, though that usually means fewer of the resort-style amenities that draw people to Wesley Chapel and Land O' Lakes in the first place.
The point is that "CDD fee" on a listing sheet is a starting question, not an answer. Before you compare two communities on that number, ask:
- Is the debt service portion fixed for the life of the bond, or is a rate change already scheduled or under public hearing?
- Has the district completed turnover from the developer, or is a developer-affiliated entity still managing amenities month-to-month?
- Does the fee you're looking at match this specific lot's assessment, or is it a community-wide average that doesn't apply to this parcel's bond area?
Pasco County's tax collector maintains a public list of every CDD it bills on behalf of, and it runs to several dozen districts across the county. Most of them post their own budgets, meeting minutes, and assessment schedules online. That paperwork is where the real comparison happens, not the listing sheet.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Does a still-developer-controlled CDD affect my mortgage or closing? Not directly. Lenders treat the assessment as a line item on your tax bill regardless of who sits on the board. What it affects is who decides how your assessment dollars get spent and how quickly amenity issues get resolved.
Will my CDD payment jump once the board turns over to residents? Not automatically. Turnover changes who sets the O&M budget, not the underlying bond schedule. The O&M portion can rise or fall in any year, under either kind of board, based on what the community actually needs.
How do I check whether a specific Pasco CDD has completed turnover? Most districts post their board meeting minutes and current officer list online. Look for language about turnover reports, punch lists, or developer-managed amenities still marked as pending. If a management company or developer-affiliated LLC shows up in a recent motion, that's your answer.
Comparing two Pasco communities on their CDD numbers alone is like comparing two houses on square footage alone. It's a starting point, not the whole picture, and the difference between a finished, resident-run district and a district still mid-turnover can matter more to your day-to-day experience than a few hundred dollars a year either way.
If you're weighing Epperson against Mirada, or a newer Angeline phase against an established Bexley street, The REvest Group can walk through the actual assessment documents and board status for the specific communities on your list, not just the number on the listing sheet. Schedule a free consultation and home valuation to start comparing with the full picture in hand.
