Years ago, Fort Lauderdale sold residents on the idea of paying higher property taxes for 30 years in exchange for an ambitious $200 million in park upgrades.
Out of 112 city parks, 96 wound up on the promised list for improvements, both big and small. But the city said nothing about a deadline.
Seven years later, much of the bond money remains unspent in the face of skyrocketing costs, with several projects facing budget shortfalls of $2.5 million or more. With inflation, the cost to get everything done has increased from $200 million to at least $277 million, according to city estimates.
In addition, a yearslong backlog has Fort Lauderdale officials warning that some projects won’t get done until 2028 or possibly 2029.
“The problem is we were so slow out of the gate,” Commissioner Steve Glassman told the South Florida Sun Sentinel this week. “It’s been seven years. We should have been done with everything in seven years. I was not happy seeing some projects pushed back to 2027, 2028 and even 2029.”
What’s behind the backlog?
“I would say there’s a lot of blame to go around,” Glassman said. “It was a lack of attention on staff’s part. A lack of organization. And a lack of understanding of the magnitude of the bond. And just dropping the ball.”
Staff has put part of the blame on the long planning process. By December 2004, only $39.5 million in bond money had been spent, but most of it had gone to design.
City Manager Rickelle Williams took quick note of the problem after coming onboard in April 2025, six years after voters approved the bond. To help get the ball rolling, she hired Assistant City Manager Quentin Pough to spearhead the parks bond program and see it through.
Mayor Dean Trantalis applauded that move.
“I think it was too much to expect from the parks director,” he said. “We should have probably hired additional staff back in 2019 to bring about new park facilities.”
After years of delays, work will soon begin on a new playground at Victoria Park. A groundbreaking is planned at the end of May.
Glassman, the district commissioner for the neighborhood, says he’s looking forward to that day.
“People have been waiting so long for the playground, I told them they need to have more children because the kids they have now are going to be too old by the time it’s built,” Glassman said. “I’m at my wit’s end with that one.”
The commission has requested an internal audit to help pinpoint what went wrong with the rollout of the parks bond.
Residents are upset by the lack of progress — and Glassman said he feels their pain.
“Would I like things to happen faster? Oh yeah,” he said. “But it’s not always realistic. You have to make a timeline based on reality.”
Only $59.4 million out of $200 million in voter-approved debt had been spent as of December, much of it on design plans, city records show.
The pace has been so slow that federal grant money earmarked for some projects will have to be returned due to the lack of progress.
The city manager informed the mayor and commissioners of that fact during a recent meeting.
“In the past couple of weeks we’ve had to return some of the grant funding that has been awarded because the projects haven’t advanced at the level that we anticipated,” Williams said.
Trantalis was taken aback by the news.
“I cannot believe you’re telling me this tonight,” he told Williams. “Unfortunately you’re the messenger tonight. But this is shameful.”
Trantalis suggested that those park projects with grant funding should have been given priority years ago.
“I’d hate to lose all that grant money just because we have not set our priorities in trying to move forward,” he said.
Williams told the commission her team was working on a potential prioritization and phasing plan for the remaining parks bond projects. That plan will be presented at an upcoming meeting.
“I’d like to have a more robust conversation with the commission about setting expectations for the delivery of projects,” Williams said. “When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. And that has sort of become the position we’re in.”
The city is also scrambling to address high and low budget shortfalls facing several projects across the city.
One project has a shortfall of $8 million.
That would be the phase III plans for Cooley’s Landing Marina. The project calls for lighting upgrades, outdoor fitness equipment, solar panels and additional boat slip renovations, including seawall improvements, docks and utilities.
Over at Holiday Park, a project that calls for a new splash and restroom building is short by $2.26 million. Another project would see nine more pickleball courts built, but it’s short by $2.45 million.
Mills Pond Park is slated to get a new restroom and parking lot, a new playground, boat ramp, covered basketball courts, event stage, landscaping and walkways. The shortfall on that project: $2.45 million.
The delays have not gone unnoticed by residents.
“The voters are mad,” said Mary Peloquin, a former member of the city’s parks board. “We were all very frustrated on the parks board because it was taking forever to get designs done. Look where we are now, seven years later.”
Ted Inserra, president of the River Oaks Civic Association, says people he’s talked to are fuming.
“They’ve had this money since 2019,” he said. “And now the money is running out.”
When voters approved taking on debt to pay for the new police station and park improvements, they agreed to pay a higher property tax bill every year until the bonds are paid off in 30 years. For a home with a taxable value of $300,000, both bond issues together will hike the tax bill by an estimated $150 a year for 30 years.
The city fumbled the rollout of the parks bond and now the residents are paying — in both money and exasperation, Inserra noted.
“It’s just pathetic planning,” Inserra said. “They need to start getting to the neighborhood parks that the residents have been waiting on for years. They just kept passing the buck like normal. ‘We’ve got time, we’ve got time.’ It’s insane.”
The mayor has heard the grumblings.
“A lot of folks have been complaining,” he told the Sun Sentinel. “They feel they are being pushed to the back of the line. We have a certain amount of money to work with. And we’ll do our best to accomplish as much as we can.”
Bill Brown, president of the Council of Fort Lauderdale Civic Associations, has been hearing grumbling from neighborhood leaders about how long the park upgrades promised years ago are taking.
And that slow pace has only made the shortfalls worse, Brown said.
“These projects have taken so long, and with more delays, the costs increase,” he said. “The commission will have to prioritize which projects they want to move forward with and address the shortfalls. I’d like to know how they figured it was going to cost $200 million to do all these projects.”
As Trantalis remembers it, the city came up with an arbitrary number for how much it would cost to pay for the wish list of projects.
“Then reality sets in in terms of how much is all of this going to cost,” he said. “It became obvious a couple years ago that things weren’t working out as planned. These projects were going to cost more money because of the higher cost of labor and supply-chain issues.”
Commissioner Ben Sorensen attributed some of the initial delays to the pandemic.
“City staff went out a year or two before the bond came through and asked the neighbors what needs to be improved,” he said. “Then COVID happened. And things just ground to a halt.”
To help get things back on track, Sorensen said he’s been meeting regularly with staff overseeing the projects in his district.
“In District 4, we’re getting things going,” he said. “I can only speak to District 4. We are going to deliver parks in District 4 exactly as the residents want.”
