Taxpayers to get back money paid toward Wave rail system
FORT LAUDERDALE – Property owners who paid a special tax for the defunct Wave streetcar system will get a refund check in the mail soon.
The city of Fort Lauderdale will reimburse almost $10 million collected from owners along the planned rail route. Taxpayers along the downtown Fort Lauderdale proposed loop were charged a special assessment on their property tax bills for five years.
Refund checks — with interest — will go out Feb. 1.
The assessment showed up on property tax bills as a line item for “Wave Streetcar,” starting in 2013. It amounted to hundreds for some, and thousands of dollars for others, over the five years it was imposed.
Homeowners paid $99 each year; businesses paid 9 cents per square foot; owners of vacant land paid 3 cents per square foot.
The city continues to unwind plans for the Wave system, which had the support for many years of city, county, state and eventually federal government. The city voted in May to back out. The county followed.
Not a single track was ever laid, yet project managers still spent more than $33.7 million working on it.
Some of the special assessment was spent, so the city will pull about $2.5 million from the general budget for the reimbursements, City Manager Lee Feldman said.
The city already gave $764,446 back to the North Broward Hospital District, which operates the Broward Health Medical Center at Andrews Avenue and Southwest 17th Street along the Wave’s planned route.
Refunding the money will be a little tricky. Commissioners agreed Tuesday to refund prior property owners who paid and then sold the property.
“It’s very complicated,” attorney Albert del Castillo, hired to help with the effort, told commissioners.
Commissioner Ben Sorensen said the city should “do our best, a good faith effort, to find past taxpayers.”
Mayor Dean Trantalis suggested the city reduce the refunds by the amount the city has to spend on lawyers and advertising.
Sorensen and Commissioner Heather Moraitis disagreed.
“We as a commission decided to stop this project,” Moraitis said. “I don’t think we can penalize the people who had to pay.”