Courtesy photo. County Councilman Jack Hayman wants a state audit of New Smyrna Beach's CRA.
County Councilman Jack Hayman is calling for a state audit of New Smyrna Beach's Community Redevelopment Agency for what he believes are irregularities in spending. New Smyrna Beach leaders say they welcome the oversight.
What else would you expect them to say. This is a tough situation for Mayor Sally Mackay on the eve of the general election where she is fighting for her political life against upstart businessman Adam Barringer who beat her by 15 votes in the Sept. 22 primary.
Of course, Hayman can make hay of his own going after the city because he is term-limited in his role as county councilman representing Southeast Volusia and Port Orange. He's going to go after the at-large council seat that Joie Alexander of Samsula now finds herself term-limited in while she may pursue Hayman's lame-duck seat.
Still, like he did in getting his colleagues to battle in the 11th hour to derail county raises for the new fiscal budget, Hayman is coming after the CRA at an opportune time. Politics or individual motives aside, the CRA finances are troubling as are the spending decisions.
For the longest time, there was virtually little activity this year by the CRA despite a bloated salary structure that is now being called into question.
And then less than two weeks before the primary, there was construction galore, on both ends of Canal Street, Washington Avenue and the North Causeway. The erection of a nearly $9,000 Christmas tree on the east end of Canal Street last month caused such a stir, it was taken down the very next day.
City officials said they were merely putting it up as a dry run. It was paid for with CRA funds, which Interim City Manager Pam Brangaccio justified in a memo to NSBNEWS.net as merely a fraction of the CRA's budget. On West Canal Street, orange barrels were put up and the street narrowed just a couple of weeks with no construction activity for several days after the primary.
And large cranes were parked near the roadway off the North Causeway boat ramps, quite visible to passing motorists during the week of the primary.
Former mayoral candidate and Flagler Avenue merchant Marilee Walters, who didn't make it out of the primary, said it was her belief that all of the construction activity and equipment as well as the temporary installation of the 20-foot artificial Christmas tree were done to show voters the city was actually accomplishing something.
Last month, the CRA and the City Commission members actually took a bus tour of the CRA district to highlight projects either in the works or projected to be in the works.
And last week, Hometown News published a story "Dunn Lumber property fails to attract bids," which pointed out there were no takers despite calls for proposals to develop the arsenic-infested site at the intersection of West Canal and U.S. 1 that the city bought at full-market value for $417,000 earlier this year, even though there were no other potential buyers.
As Hometown News pointed out, the Dunn site had been on the market since 2005 and there were no buyers, even with a city pledge to clean up the property first.
The City Commission paid full price earlier this year with no competitors and may have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant monies to clean it up. The city has hoped a private developer would build something to enhance the site, but lately city officials have fallen back on talk of turning it into a turning lane to ease the traffic congestion, especially with the railroad tracks just west of the property crossing West Canal.
However, the city could have acquired the property at a fraction of the cost through eminent domain -- or government taking for public good.
With the city's finances stretched to the limits as witnessed by the use of nearly a million dollars in reserves for a second year in a row to artificially lower taxes to support the city budget, Dunn Lumber could stand as an eyesore for years to come. That CRA land-purchase money is already spent.
Councilman Hayman's concerns about CRA finances are highlighted in a story published in Wednesday's Daytona Beach News-Journal, in which he questions spending practices, and reported by the newspaper as follows:
# "He alleged during a council meeting that redevelopment agency dollars have been moved to the city's general fund, which he described as verboten. City officials say that money is being used to pay city employees doing work for the redevelopment agency in its district."
# "In addition, Hayman calls the almost $400,000 the entity spends on personnel expenses excessive 'for a CRA that doesn't do anything,' and he objected to the $1.8 million the CRA spent in 2009 for operating expenses."
# "Lastly, Hayman questioned how the agency could go from having $4 million in its contingency or unallocated-funds account to a deficit of $673,000 in just one year."
The New Smyrna Beach CRA has received nearly $11.6 million since its inception in 1985. The county provided close to $1.5 million this year with another $822,000 from the Southeast Volusia Hospital District, which funds Bert Fish Medical Center, and another $893,000 in taxes from the city for tax parcels in the CRA district.
Only the county has the authority to expand the CRA as some New Smyrna Beach leaders have suggested as a means to encourage economic development or even to disband it as early as 2015, the date it goes into sunset unless re-upped.
The city is expected to discuss the CRA at an Oct. 5 workshop in hopesof developing a master plan.
The way some people see it, if the CRA hasn't had one in place in the last two decades that it can point to now, then what exactly is the point of the CRA? It's a question that rightfully demands an answer.
Even the make-up of the CRA district can be called into question. What's the point of fixing up Canal and Flagler and part of Third Avenue on the beachside while ignoring the city's main north-south artery, U.S. 1 looks more and more like a ghetto with each passing day? That's my question.