News

By Steve Plunkett
    
The Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District will continue to let its annual contribution to the downtown Community Redevelopment Agency grow, but wants to discuss stopping the payments in the future.
    Arthur Koski, the district’s interim executive director, told commissioners Aug. 15 that the contributions were evidence of a historical “spirit of cooperation” between the district and the CRA. He advised them to cancel an Aug. 22 special hearing called to consider freezing the annual check at $894,000 each year.
    That would have left the CRA with a $132,000 shortfall for fiscal 2017 and more in subsequent years.
    Koski said the CRA and the district agreed in 1986 that the district would pay into the CRA’s redevelopment trust fund to provide for park and recreational facilities and public art downtown.
    Three years later the city asked the district to allow its money to be used to pay off debt for building Mizner Park.
    “Again, in the spirit of cooperation, this board agreed,” Koski said.
    Without the money from the parks district, the CRA may have had to take money from another account or ultimately get bailed out by the city.
    Koski said the original agreement was due to sunset this year and the 1989 agreement would end when the Mizner Park bond is paid off in December 2018.
    “There may be some dispute from the city as to whether we have the right to walk away after completion of the debt,” he said.
    The CRA, he said, will continue to exist until 2025, longer if the City Council extends it.
    But Koski, who is also the district’s attorney, advised against “getting into a contest of lawyers trying to determine who is right or wrong” and recommended that commissioners add the issue to the agenda of an as-yet unscheduled joint meeting with the council.
    Commissioners seemed ready in July to freeze the CRA payment after Koski told them a state statute would allow them to do so. But City Attorney Diana Grub Frieser, who is also the CRA’s attorney, said the statute does not apply.
    Part of the city taxes that downtown property owners pay fund the CRA’s operations. The district does not own any land within the agency’s boundaries and, without the agreements, would not owe the CRA any money.