They call Pompano Beach “Florida’s Warmest Welcome.” The CRA paid Facebook to make sure you know that.
On May 19, a sponsored post appeared in South Florida feeds from the Pompano Beach CRA. The subject was the McNab House and Botanical Gardens. The post announced that the project had reached 100% construction drawings, that every approval was secured, and that something special is taking shape in Pompano Beach. It described the coming attraction as a botanical experience designed to engage your senses and create lasting memories. It noted, helpfully, that the project is funded through Tax Increment Financing, meaning rising property values generate the revenue that pays for it. No new taxes. The ad is still running. Your tax increment is still paying for the ad that explains how your tax increment is being spent. The circle is unbroken.
The city’s finance department sent a different memo around the same time. That one went to the city manager. It was not sponsored. It did not mention lasting memories or engaged senses. It explained that if Florida’s homestead property tax amendment passes in November, Pompano Beach could face a shortfall of roughly $17.8 million annually. It listed what would need to be cut to close that gap. Parks were on the list. Senior services were on the list. Community events were on the list.
The botanical garden was not on the list. The botanical garden has 100% construction drawings, every approval secured, and is ready to move into the bidding phase. The parks are ready to move into the cutting phase. These two things are happening in the same city, in the same fiscal conversation, and one of them has a sponsored post.
To be fair to the CRA, and I am going to try very hard to be fair to the CRA, the funding mechanisms are technically different. Tax Increment Financing captures the increase in property values within the CRA district and reinvests it in that district. The general fund, which is where parks live, is a separate pool of money. The botanical garden money could not simply be redirected to parks even if someone wanted to do that, which based on available evidence nobody does. The CRA will tell you this. They will pay to tell you this. They will target you demographically and serve you a video about it while you are trying to look at pictures of someone’s dinner.
What the sponsored post did not mention is what happens to Tax Increment Financing when the taxable values it depends on stop rising. The entire mechanism runs on growth. Rising property values generate rising tax increment. The homestead amendment the city is warning residents about would reduce the assessed value of homestead properties, which is another way of saying it would reduce the base from which the increment is calculated. The botanical garden projections were not modeled on a scenario where the math runs the other direction. The sponsored post did not address this. Perhaps the algorithm is still working on the targeting.
The CRA did real things. This is worth saying and worth meaning. The beachfront transformation near the pier is visible and genuine. Old Town has restaurants that exist because the CRA invested in the corridor first. The Northwest district funded infrastructure in neighborhoods that had been waiting decades for anyone to show up with a checkbook. A tool that did none of that would be easier to write about. The tool worked. Then it kept going.
The McNab House is a historic structure built in 1926. Moving it several blocks to McNab Park cost nearly $3 million before a single permit was pulled for anything else. The full project, restoring the house, building the botanical garden, adding a children’s classroom and an interactive water feature, and converting the whole thing into a restaurant experience, is now estimated at approximately $27 million. The city calls this economic development. The stated goal is to encourage pedestrian activity on Atlantic Boulevard and create a unique attraction for residents and visitors. Pompano Beach already has the Atlantic Ocean four blocks away and people manage to find it without a capital project or a wayfinding sign. The ocean does not have an interactive water feature, which is apparently the gap in the market the CRA has identified.
Meanwhile the city is also building a new downtown with a master developer, a new city hall to anchor that downtown, and a self-funded development deal that requires approximately $200 million in public money to get started. Self-funded is the city’s word. It means the project will eventually generate enough in land sales and new property taxes to cover what was spent. Eventually is doing a lot of work in that sentence and nobody has asked it how it is holding up.
None of this is hidden from the public. The CRA holds monthly meetings on the third Tuesday of each month at one in the afternoon. One PM. On a Tuesday. The city has made a considered decision about who has the flexibility to be in that room, and the answer is not you. For everyone else, there is the sponsored post, currently running, engaging your senses, creating lasting memories, explaining that none of this is costing you anything while the parks memo sits in a city manager’s inbox.
Pompano Beach is not a special case. It is a case study. Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Miami, Deerfield Beach, Coral Springs: every Florida city with an active CRA and a development boom is running the same argument in slightly different brochure language. The development pays for itself. The TIF funds nothing you would otherwise have. The rising tide lifts all boats. And if you would like to know what happens to homeowner tax relief given all of that, the finance department has a memo for you. It was not sponsored. It did not mention lasting memories. It mentioned parks.
The resident who cannot take Tuesday afternoon off is being told two things at the same time. The garden is an investment that costs nothing. The parks they actually use might not survive the next budget cycle. Both of these are true. Both are being communicated by the same city government. One of them has a video.
The CRA’s sponsored post says no new taxes. The finance memo says fewer parks. Only one of them paid to find you.
Something special is taking shape in Pompano Beach. It just depends on which memo you read.
