ChampionsGate CDD Explained: What the Community Development District Does, Who Runs It and How It Is Paid For

Every ChampionsGate property owner pays two governments, and only one of them holds elections you will find on a county sample ballot. The second is the ChampionsGate Community Development District — the CDD — a local, special-purpose government created under Chapter 190 of the Florida Statutes and established by Osceola County ordinance in 1998. It owns and runs a share of the community’s shared infrastructure, it levies the assessment line that appears on the property tax bill, and it is governed by a five-member Board of Supervisors whose meetings, budgets and audits are public records. This explainer works from the district’s own published documents: what the CDD is, who sits on its board, what its staff do, and where its money comes from and goes.

What a CDD is, in the district’s own words

The district’s official site describes a community development district as “a local, special purpose government entity authorized by Chapter 190 of the Florida Statutes as amended, and created by ordinance of Osceola County as an alternative method of planning, acquiring, operating and maintaining community-wide improvements in planned communities.” The ChampionsGate district dates itself to 1998 — its establishing ordinance, Ordinance 98-10, is among the documents posted on its site, alongside the district’s boundary map, engineer’s report and public facilities report. The model, as the district explains it, exists so that the infrastructure a large planned community needs can be financed and then operated and maintained over the long term by a government built for that single purpose, rather than loaded onto the county and its wider tax base.

Osceola County’s own community development district page puts the powers plainly: a CDD is a legal entity that can enter into contracts, own real and personal property, adopt rules and regulations, borrow and issue bonds, and “impose assessments and levy taxes on property within the District.” Taxes and assessments are set annually by the Board of Supervisors and are itemised on the property tax statement, in addition to county and other local government taxes. The county lists the ChampionsGate CDD and its official site among the districts in the county — and, separately, a Stoneybrook South at ChampionsGate CDD, a distinct district with its own site; the two should not be confused.

The board: five supervisors, named seats

The CDD is organised, its site says, “similar to other local governments in Florida, in that the legislative body is composed of a five-member board known as the Board of Supervisors. The Board establishes the policy of the District in accordance with Florida law.” The board the district currently publishes is: Lee Dawson, Chairman; Darin Tennyson, Vice Chairman (Seat #2 — appointed February 8, 2021, term expiring November 2028); Elizabeth Allen, Assistant Secretary (Seat #1 — elected November 5, 2024, term expiring November 2028); Darlene Clevenger, Assistant Secretary (Seat #3 — elected November 8, 2022, term expiring November 2026); and Douglas Cady, Assistant Secretary (Seat #5 — elected November 5, 2024, term expiring November 2028). The district publishes the supervisors’ ChampionsGate addresses and contact emails on the same page. Supervisor pay is set by statute: the district’s adopted budget narrative notes that Chapter 190 allows a supervisor to be compensated $200 per meeting, not to exceed $4,800 per year.

The staff residents actually deal with

By law, the board must hire a District Administrator (the district manager) and District Counsel, and it selects a District Engineer through an advertised request-for-qualifications process. ChampionsGate’s manager is Governmental Management Services — Central Florida, LLC (GMS), whose Orlando office is at 219 E. Livingston Street, Orlando, FL 32801 (telephone 407-841-5524); the district manager named in the board’s minutes is Jason Showe. The manager’s published responsibilities are the district’s operating core: preparing the proposed operations and maintenance budgets for board review, preparing contract specifications for district operations — the site names stormwater management and associated landscaping specifically — filing required forms with state and local agencies, and attending board meetings to implement policy. The engineer’s role is inspection and reporting on district facilities and help preparing the annual maintenance budget; counsel prepares and reviews agreements and district documents and ensures the Florida Statutes are followed. GMS is also the district’s custodian of public records: record requests go to the custodian at the Livingston Street address above.

The money: assessments, adopted in public

The district funds its general operations with a non-ad valorem assessment levied on the assessable property inside the district — that is the mechanism stated in its adopted budget. For scale, the adopted fiscal year 2025 budget totals $1,120,132 in revenues and expenditures. The fiscal year 2026 budget was adopted at the board’s regular meeting on July 14, 2025, held at 2:00 p.m. at the offices of RIDA Development, 8390 ChampionsGate Boulevard, Suite 104: Resolution 2025-04 adopted the budget — the minutes record the district manager reporting that it “reflects no increase in assessments,” with over $1 million in capital funding anticipated to be available at year-end and funds set aside in the coming year for milling and resurfacing — and Resolution 2025-05 then imposed the special assessments and certified the assessment roll, the spreadsheet transmitted to the tax collector that assigns the operations and maintenance assessment to each parcel. Audited financial statements are published on the district site through fiscal year 2025.

Meetings a resident can attend

Board meetings are public, and the district publishes its schedule a fiscal year at a time. For fiscal year 2027 the board meets at 2:00 p.m. at the Offices of Rida Associates, 8390 ChampionsGate Blvd., Suite 104, ChampionsGate, FL 33896, on December 14, 2026, and in 2027 on February 8, April 12, May 10, July 12 and September 13. Agendas, minutes and adopted budgets for prior years are all posted on the district site, which is also where the district posts its annual goals and objectives. For residents, that document trail — agenda before, minutes after, budget every summer — is the working record of what the second government behind the gates decided, and it is the record this desk reports from.

More ChampionsGate coverage: the ChampionsGate Beat hub, the ChampionsGate area portal and the ChampionsGate archive. Related: our ChampionsGate guide, the Oasis Club guide and our corridor explainer, Exit 58: I-4, CR 532 and the corridor ChampionsGate lives on

Sources & notes

Key facts in this article were checked against:

• ChampionsGate Community Development District — official site (checked November 15, 2026) — the district overview and Chapter 190 basis, board organisation, the current Board of Supervisors with seats and terms, manager/engineer/counsel duties, the FY2027 meeting schedule, the public-records custodian notice, and the posted Ordinance 98-10, budgets, minutes and audited financial statements.
• Minutes of the CDD Board of Supervisors meeting, July 14, 2025 — adoption of the FY2026 budget by Resolution 2025-04 (no increase in assessments; capital funding and resurfacing set-aside as reported by the district manager) and imposition of assessments by Resolution 2025-05.
• ChampionsGate CDD Adopted Budget FY2025 — total revenues/expenditures of $1,120,132; the non-ad valorem assessment mechanism; the Chapter 190 supervisor-compensation note ($200 per meeting, $4,800 annual maximum).
• Osceola County — Community Development Districts — the county’s statement of CDD powers, annual setting of taxes and assessments, itemisation on the property tax statement, and its listing of the ChampionsGate CDD and the separate Stoneybrook South at ChampionsGate CDD.

Photo: a subdivision entrance, file photo. Photo: MLG Communities · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons. Graded to the paper’s photo finish; the scene is unaltered. CDD coverage on this desk is reported from public documents only, in even-handed terms; where two public documents differ, both are reported.

Filed under ChampionsGate · ChampionsGate CDD · community development district · Osceola County

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