The Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District’s long-standing frustration over annual payments it must make to the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has reached the point that district commissioners decided to take steps that could lead to legal action against the city.
Commissioners unanimously agreed on Oct. 2 that Executive Director Briann Harms and the district’s legal counsel should “pursue any and all options” to be exempted from making the payments, to cap the amount of the payments and to press its claim that the CRA has breached a 1986 agreement with the district.
“It still seems (city officials) look at us as their personal piggy bank,” said Commissioner Craig Ehrnst. “The City Council and (city administrators) need to be more responsive to us and work with us.”
The district’s annual payments increased to $2.3 million the last fiscal year and rose to $2.5 million for the year that started Oct. 1.
Rather than going to the city, the money would be better spent on improvements to parks operated by the district, commissioners repeatedly have said.
District officials asked to be exempted from making the payments in 2020, but city officials declined. They renewed their request in August, but City Council members, who also sit as CRA commissioners, offered no assurances that would happen.
District officials had thought the payments would come to an end in 2019 when the bond for building Mizner Park was paid off. That didn’t happen.
They then thought it would end in 2025 when the CRA was scheduled to sunset.
But in June, City Manager Leif Ahnell proposed extending the CRA to 2042, and with it the district’s obligation to make payments.
The City Council is expected to vote on the extension on Oct. 11
— Mary Hladky
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