Coral Gables sidelines plans for bonding for youth center, parks

Coral Gables commissioners agreed last week not to place on the November general election ballot a $60 million bond referendum that would have financed construction improvements for the War Memorial Youth Center and Phillips Park.

Instead of letting voters decide on the construction project, city officials preferred staff to come back with improved or alternative ways to fund the projects’ renovations and expansion.

“I think that taxation is something that I’m opposed to raising,” said Commissioner Jorge L. Fors Jr., “but really the problem with taxes for me is taxation without representation. Here, we’re asking the people if they would like to voluntarily take on an added assessment to their tax roll.”

The cost for doing a $60 million, 20-year general obligation bond would be taken out all in one phase, said Diana Gomez, the city’s finance director.

“We would take out the entire amount of debt service on that $60 million, which would be roughly $4.2 million in order to generate that tax revenues and cover that debt service,” she said.

For example, a home assessed at $250,000 would pay about $58 a year for the life of the 20-year bond to cover the debt and a $750,000 home would pay $173 extra a year, Ms. Gomez explained.

The War Memorial Youth at 405 University Dr. would cost an estimated $42 million to repair and expand, while Phillips Park at 90 Menores Ave. would need about $8 million in improvements.

“For me, the youth center is not my number one priority on the list of priorities in the Parks Master Plan,” said Vice Mayor Michael Mena. “Obviously very important to our park system, but just from my perspective of allocating significant dollars, my thing is that I’ve pushed and fought to improve our park system as much as I can within the confines of our budget, and it has been to try to elevate the rest of our park system around the youth center.”

One of the bigger concerns is similar to what is currently happening with the city’s planned mobility hub, he said.

“I have real concerns about even the numbers that we’re using, not because there hasn’t been a good faith effort to come up with reasonable numbers, but because numbers are changing drastically right now,” the vice mayor said. “I’m not comfortable with the current plan as proposed and am happy to keep working on it. I don’t know that we can meet the November deadline. I’m absolutely on board, but I just think we need to flesh out in today’s construction industry and with what maybe wait a few months on how things would look like and do this at the right time that makes sense.”