Wow, some things move at an earth shattering, or should we say a ground breaking, pace in Plantation.

We are referring to the new community center for Kennedy Community Center that was presented to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on February 23, 2010, just a couple of weeks back.  While they approved moving forward with a “conceptual” plan, I do not believe that they thought it would go through the process from concept to construction in 10 days…

As you will recall from our previous article (Kennedy Community Center: The "Conceptual" Plan), the discussion during this meeting included questions like how much will this cost, what is the time-frame and how would this project be funded?

Romano explained to the advisory board that this was only a conceptual plan, that an architect had not been hired, but that they were merely playing around with this in an interoffice manner.

When asked about the cost of this project, Romano simply replied, “Don’t know…”  However, later he explained that he wouldn’t be surprised if we saw the construction within a year from now.  Little did we know, it could very well be completed in one year.

As far as how this project would be funded, Romano explained that the project could wait until further FRDAP funds ($50,000.00) are available, but it all “depends on what happens with the taxes and all the other stuff this year…”

I guess the memos that are attached to this week’s Council Agenda provide us a little explanation to “all the other stuff this year…”

It seems as though there are funds, from a Y2003 bond, that have been “sitting around” earmarked for this project.  The other point that raises questions for us is how can a Director, that is fiddling around with a concept, be far enough along to propose to the Council that they grant him the approval to begin construction.  This all in just ten (10) short days from it being presented to the Advisory Board.  It appears that just maybe the Advisory Board was not given the rest of the story…

While we may not all agree that this is a worth while project for the City, at this point, one would have to say that this seems eerily similar to the situation where the “horse was out of the barn” when dealing with the Concrete Parking Lot from a few month’s ago.  As you will recall, many raised the question, "Why even have a volunteer Advisory Board, if the decisions are already in place?"