Coral Springs Mayor’s race centering around expensive contributor driven city hall project

October 27, 2014 · by · in Broward County · 2 Comments

On Sunday, a very revealing column ran in Coral Springs Talk regarding the $28 million downtown city complex. Commissioner Tom Powers’ campaign for Mayor is all about city hall.    No one in the city is arguing that Coral Springs does not need a new city hall, including his opponent Former State Senator Skip Campbell. Coral Springs is a city that has over 125,000 residents, making it one of the largest municipalities in the state.

The argument  that is being made by Campbell and other opponents is whether Coral Springs needs an extravagant Taj Mahal style city hall with unnecessary and over-the-top bells and whistles?  Why does Coral Springs, a city that has been in terminal decline need a municipal complex that resembles a luxurious  hotel or spa? Other south Florida cities have spent $10 million or less than that for new modern and spacious city hall complexes.    Why does Coral Springs have to spend so much more than those other cities?

Commissioner Powers sells the city hall by pushing the complex which will be developed around city hall as the selling point.  But the truth is he’s selling out Coral Springs taxpayers in doing so.  Why should the city’s citizens finance a complex that benefits a private developer?  And why is Powers pushing this so aggressively?  That’s not too hard to figure out — check out Tom Powers’ campaign reports.  The developer who benefits from this project just happens to be one of his biggest campaign contributors. We will have more on Powers campaign contributions from lobbyists and politicians later in the week.
In recent years, Powers was lukewarm when asked about favoring a city hall saying then it wasn’t the time to get involved in such a large expenditure.  Now all of a sudden as he runs for Mayor, he’s done a 180 degree turn.    Now, not only is it the time for Tom but he seems to be promoting it as the be all and end all issue for the city aggressively promoting this new complex as the cornerstone of his economic development project for the city.

The most comical aspect of Powers’ promoting of the project is saying the new city won’t cost more taxes.  What he isn’t telling you is he and the current commission majority is raising taxes now!  They are raising property taxes, waste fees, garbage fees, fire fees, debt fees, and more.   Yet, Powers continues to mislead the voters of the city on economic issues.

This new municipal complex is simply put an irresponsible giveaway to contributor at Coral Springs citizens expense endangers the fiscal health of the city. Powers has made his campaign about this issue more than any other and this gives Coral Springs citizens yet another reason to question the motives and actions of the current commission majority.

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2 comments

  1. Francis Farnum · ·

    How true. Why only yesterday Powers told me that I was misleading voters after he overheard me telling someone that the three candidates endorsed by the Sun Sentinel were also in favor of a new city center but on a smaller scale. He said that Skip Campbell was totally against the city hall project. He is getting his way by painting a rosey picture to those who will listen. Someone from Campbell’s camp need to get out tehre ASAP.

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  2. Non-Partisan local elections giving Democrats cover in playing with conservatives | The Florida Squeeze · ·

    […] to Powers. This is in addition to large sums of developer money that has flowed into Powers’ campaign accounts as we discussed yesterday. They are betting Powers wins election and continues the current policies of the Tea Party driven […]

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