Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Who was behind city’s $1M mistake?
Fort Lauderdale leaders hire outside firm to investigate
A mystery man approved nearly $1 million in work after an epic sewage spill spoiled Rio Vista, one of the toniest parts of town.
Just one problem: The restoration work should have gotten approval from the city commission.
Now Fort Lauderdale wants to know who’s to blame.
City leaders say the answer about how the colossal mistake happened will require some investigating. An outside firm has been tapped to conduct a $60,000 forensic audit to make sense of things.
Here’s what we do know: At least one person told a contractor to move forward with $871,000 in unapproved work restoring the Rio Vista neighborhood and return
ing its streets, sidewalks and two neighborhood parks to their former glory.
Smoking gun email?
City Manager Chris Lagerbloom points to what might be a smoking gun email crafted by Raj Verma, the former Public Works director who quit in July after submitting a fiery resignation letter.
“All work was done with my approval,” Verma told Fort Lauderdale’s finance director in the June 4 email, sent at 2:03 a.m. “Staff simply followed my directions.”
The email said that following the correct process — getting all the necessary approvals — became impossible, with the scope of work changing significantly each week, outside staff ’s control.
Verma told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he felt he had no choice but to circumvent the process to get the work done and keep the residents happy.
“The residents in that neighborhood don’t take no for an answer,” he said. “We could not do enough for the community. They would not take no for an answer.”
Verma said he and his staff were under immense pressure from exasperated residents of Rio Vista and Ben Sorensen, the district commissioner, to get the work done as quickly as possible.
Sorensen — himself under pressure from residents — would “relentlessly” check in with problems and questions, calling and sending text messages two or three times a day, Verma said.
At one point, Verma said, he told Sorensen he really needed to take things up with the city manager. But the calls and texts kept coming.
“I have not come across a commissioner calling me or staff two or three times a day and pushing,” Verma said. “He texted all of us all the time.”
‘Wait-and-see mode’
Sorensen said he doesn’t recall Verma ever directing him to the city manager.
As for all the texts and calls, he says he had a right to inquire about how things were going and was not giving direction to staff or the contractor, an activity prohibited under the city charter.
“Normally I would just relay the contractor’s questions to Public Works or the city attorney,” Sorensen said. “I’d call up Raj or other members of the Public Works team and relay the answer.”
Lagerbloom was not copied on the June 4 email, but finance director later alerted him. He said he thinks it was Verma who approved most of the unauthorized work done by Hinterland. But he hopes to get a clearer picture once the audit sleuths complete their work in the next several weeks.
Commissioner Steve Glassman said he’s eager to see what the audit turns up and doesn’t want to see anyone scapegoated.
“We’re in a wait-andsee mode,” Glassman said. “We’re waiting on the audit to see the who, what, when, where and why. Little tidbits are surfacing, but it’s really important to get the whole story in context and not react to little snippets of information.”
Verma was hired in January 2020 to be the point man in fixing and replacing the city’s long-neglected network of underground pipes. He was gone by July 7, 2021.
On June 18, he sent Lagerbloom a stinging six-page resignation letter highly critical of the city and the way things are run.
This week, Verma told the Sun Sentinel he approved the work in Rio Vista to keep things moving and avoid delays. He had hoped the commission would consider it emergency work and sign off on it later.
Now Verma says he’s wondering if politics or retaliation are at play.
Lagerbloom said the audit might lead to stricter rules on how the city approves work by contractors.
“All I can say is we will wait for the report and let that speak for itself,” he said. “We didn’t have an internal control in this circumstance. That’s one reason for doing an audit. If we identify where we have a loophole, we will identify what control we need to put in place to close it.”
Contractor says: Pay me!
Hinterland Group was initially hired in 2017 to do stormwater work.
After the sewage spill, the city asked the contractor to take on other jobs beyond the scope of the original contract. That work included repaving roads, narrowing a street and replacing the playground at Virginia Young Park.
Here’s where things stand now: The contractor has lawyered up, sending an urgent letter to Fort Lauderdale demanding payment.
The city terminated its contract with Hinterland and hired a different contractor to finish roadwork and is on the hunt for another contractor to wrap up work at Virginia Young Park.
Romin Currier, an attorney representing Hinterland, said his client thought he had approval from the right people — a senior project manager and Sorensen — only to find out too late that he didn’t.
“The people in charge told Hinterland they were approved to do the work and were going to be replaced if they didn’t get it done,” Currier said. “And my client is the one that has to suffer because they’re not getting paid for what they were hired to do.”
On Aug. 17, the contractor’s attorney sent an urgent letter to Fort Lauderdale demanding payment.
As part of its demand letter, Hinterland included texts sent on May 20 to company owner Daniel Duke from Sorensen saying the work had been approved.
“I just spoke to Public Works and the change order is approved and is being routed for payment,” Sorensen wrote in response to a text from Duke asking for help getting paid for work already completed.
Duke wrote back: “I don’t want to bug you. They said it was going to be approved, but now they don’t answer.”
Sorensen had a reassuring response: “Thanks. It is approved. You are never bothering me. I get 10 questions a day about the parks so the more info I have the better.”
Duke then asked Sorensen to get the city to move faster to pay a $510,000 bill sent two weeks earlier.
Sorensen replied with a promise: “Okay — I will push on that.”
More texts came in July. “Hi Ben, I know you deferred me to city staff but we have had an open line throughout this and I am asking for your help to make something happen here for us,” Duke wrote in a July 15 text. “The city has not kept their end of the bargain here and the holdup is with the commission at this point.”
Sorensen’s response came within two minutes: “Yes, I continue to work together with City staff on this.”
When questioned by the Sun Sentinel, Sorensen said he never realized the work needed commission approval. He puts the blame squarely on Public Works.
“I would call Public Works and they’d tell me it was approved or it would be approved,” Sorensen said. “I don’t remember them ever telling me it had to be approved by the commission. It was always all systems go. We wanted to get the work done.”
Uproar over ugly fence
Tempers are flaring again in Rio Vista, this time over a chain-link fence that now surrounds a favorite park.
The fence went up around Virginia Young Park and its playground to keep people out until the city can find another contractor to finish the work.
The fence is there to protect the city from slip-and-fall lawsuits, City Attorney Alain Boileau says. But with work at a standstill, no one can say when the fence will come down, adding to the fury of a neighborhood already thin on patience.
Rohit Navani, who moved into Rio Vista just months before the sewage spill, is fed up with what he calls the city’s mismanagement.
“The whole neighborhood has been an eyesore for the past two years,” Rohit said. “And this ugly fence is just the icing on the cake. It’s us residents who have to pay the price.”
Life changed for the wellto-do residents of Rio Vista in December 2019 when a river of foul-smelling sludge ran through their pristine yards and streets. Their tree-lined neighborhood soon became a noisy construction zone, with crews digging up roads and sidewalks to install new sewer pipes.
“Rio Vista is broken,” said Miles McGrane, another homeowner who doesn’t like what he sees. “Sidewalks are cracked and are dangerous to walk on. Construction by the city has no end. To top it off we have the fiasco of the park. The fence closing it probably cost more than it would to complete the project.”
But with this latest whodunit, there’s not much they can do but watch on the sidelines and wonder who’s to blame for the legal imbroglio Fort Lauderdale now finds itself in.
Mayor Dean Trantalis declined to speculate on who was behind the stupendous goof.
“That’s the $800,000 question,” he said. “We’re going to get an answer as we research emails and text messages. We’re going to see upon whose authority did Hinterland rely. I think all parties involved were all trying to do the right thing. I don’t think anything sinister was done.
“I think there may have been some overstepping of authority. Let’s wait until we get all the facts and then we can see.”