South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
On the taxpayers’ dime
Use of CRA funds for costly Finally Friday on Sistrunk parties weren’t legal
FORT LAUDERDALE — Chances are, you missed the parties — an expensive series of shindigs near downtown Fort Lauderdale known as Finally Friday on Sistrunk. But if you live in Broward County, you paid for them.
Commissioner Robert McKinzie, who championed the event and says he attended every one, says it was key to energizing a once-blighted area that is now undergoing a long-awaited transformation.
“It brought people to the area who otherwise would not have come,” McKinzie said. “People are coming from all over. It started out small. Now it’s a big event. We’re trying to get people to come to this place and spend their dollars.”
But the free taxpayer-funded street parties — six over the past several months — cost the Fort Lauderdale Community Redevelopment Agency a whopping $272,100, or $45,350 for each gathering. The cost exceeded the $30,000 that was budgeted for each event, the city auditor found.
Critics also say that McKinzie blurred lines, seeming to use the taxpayer-funded festivity as a campaign event where he handed out scholarships from a nonprofit.
The total cost for the Finally Friday parties came to 10 times more than Fort Lauderdale spends on the Starlight Musicals event series held at Holiday Park ($4,130 apiece for 10 events for a total of $41,300) and about five times more than it spends on the Friday Night Sound Waves event that takes place at Las Olas Oceanside Park ($8,878 apiece for 13 events for a total of $115,414).
Fort Lauderdale canceled all future Finally Friday events weeks ago after Commissioner Steve Glassman questioned whether it’s legal under state law to use money from the city’s taxpayer-funded CRA to pay for the gatherings.
The city attorney says it’s not.
Legal opinion kills event
McKinzie chafed at the news.
“Steve Glassman wants to take an event away from the community,” he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “He’s the one who did it. He’s the one who asked all these questions. He’s the one who started the momentum. We finally got the chance to do what other areas in the city are doing, and now it’s going to be taken away. It’s sad that they would go to these lengths to do this. I think the event should stay forever.”
At one point state law did allow for CRA money to be used for parties, City Manager Greg Chavarria said.
That changed when the state law was amended in 2019, according to City Attorney Alain Boileau. The change, designed to cut down on questionable expenditures like fairs, carnivals and other entertainment events, took effect on Oct. 1 of that same year.
“At the end of the day, an event had to promote the CRA or educate people about the CRA,” Boileau told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It couldn’t just be a party for the heck of a party.”
Soon after he issued his opinion, the CRA canceled all Finally Friday events. “We are no longer doing Finally Fridays,” Chavarria said. “We want to be aboveboard.”
McKinzie questioned why the sudden turnabout if the law changed back in 2019.
“Any event approved in the city comes to our city attorney,” McKinzie said. “Now all of a sudden there’s an opinion that the CRA can’t hold the event anymore. It’s a loss to the community and it’s a shame. I guarantee you it’s politically motivated. Glassman has been going after this event for the past three months, scrutinizing everything. I think everything going on right now is about politics.”
Leann Barber, president of the Flagler Village Civic Association, greeted the news with dismay.
“I think they should be able to use CRA money for promotional events to help Sistrunk become a cultural destination,” she said. “The best thing that could happen for Sistrunk is to help transform it into a cultural destination.”
CRA districts are created to improve blighted areas by funneling property tax dollars that would otherwise go to the county and other taxing entities, including the city. The CRA keeps the tax income from rising property values, borrowing against it to lure investors and help pay for major improvements.
“CRA money is supposed to go toward capital investment,” said Bob Jarvis, a law professor with Nova Southeastern University. “At one time there was the thought that marketing and promotion is part of the redevelopment of a community.”
But in 2019, Jarvis said, state legislators made a change in the law out of
concern the parties being thrown by CRAs throughout the state were doing nothing to really improve the areas that were in such dire need of investment.
Spotlight on Sistrunk
The neighborhood surrounding Sistrunk Boulevard is Fort Lauderdale’s oldest African-American community. Today it is home to working families, historic churches and mom-and-pop businesses.
Touted as a free concert series, the Finally Friday events kicked off in 2019 with the CRA hosting three gatherings between August and October, just before the coronavirus pandemic hit and right around the same time the state law governing CRAs changed.
The Finally Friday events usually drew anywhere from 1,200 to 2,500 people, though one event had a
crowd of close to 5,000, city officials say.
“From what I understand, it was an event to promote the local businesses and to attract people to come to Sistrunk as a destination,” said Chavarria, who took over as city manager on July 23.
During the pandemic, the events were canceled for all of 2020 and most of 2021. Then, in November 2021, the Finally Friday events started up again at Provident Park.
The events — each with an approved budget of $30,000 — showcased food trucks, local vendors and artists, live entertainment, an interactive kids zone and a meet and greet with CRA officials.
CRA Director Clarence Woods said he respects the legal opinion rendered by the city attorney, but argues that most CRAs around the country host events similar to Finally Friday.
Woods was sensitive about using the word
“party” to describe the Finally Friday gatherings.
“I wouldn’t call it a party,” he said. “I’d call it a festival or an event. You can call it a party with a purpose. We came up with the idea of doing pop-up events. It would be a marketing event. And we’d tell the story of the CRA at those events.”
The first one drew a smaller crowd of around 800 people.
“And then it just took off,” Woods said. “It became really popular. People will come out when there’s food, music and entertainment. During breaks in the live music we’d get up on stage and talk about the development that was coming. And we’d have renderings of those developments so people could see.”
Nearby streets were closed to traffic. A stage had to be set up for each event.
“Most of the cost went into getting the stage, the sound and the talent,” Woods said. “At first we were spending $5,000 for what you’d call a house band. Then we spent $12,000 on a band. The most we spent was $18,000.”
‘Raised a red flag’
Both the city auditor and city attorney started looking into things after Glassman, whose district also includes a portion of the neighborhood along Sistrunk, flagged a request from the CRA to double the budget of each Finally Friday event from $30,000 to $60,000 starting in 2023.
“That raised a red flag for me,” Glassman told the Sun Sentinel.
On June 13, Glassman formally requested a full audit and accounting from Interim City Auditor Patrick Reilly for several items, including a line-item budget and expense report for Finally Friday events; a comparison of the Finally Friday events’ budget and expense report to the Friday Night Sound Waves events that take place at the beach; confirmation of whether Finally Friday events are permissible under the current rules/guidelines of the CRA; and identification of the funding source for the twelve $1,000 scholarship checks handed out by McKinzie in city envelopes from the stage at the Finally Friday event on May 20.
Critics accuse McKinzie, whose district includes the Sistrunk neighborhood, of turning the Finally Friday parties into campaign events, where he doled out scholarships checks from a nonprofit group, mixing public and private roles in ways that some argue could violate a strict ethics code that applies to all elected officials at the city and county levels in Broward.
The ethics code prohibits the use of city resources to raise money for nonprofits.
McKinzie, who plans to resign from the city commission on Nov. 7 to take a seat on the county commission, says he did nothing wrong.
“I’m the commissioner of that district and I give information to the citizens of Fort Lauderdale,” he said.