Fort Worth capital project review finds $52.6 million in unspent money

An exhaustive, monthslong accounting review of Fort Worth bond program dollars going back to 2004 has made a startling discovery — money that’s available for spending. A lot of it.

The audit found $52.6 million, the City Council learned Tuesday.

City staff has already allocated the money to make good on all the bond projects from 2004, 2008 and 2014.

Last year, the city began switching from an antiquated financial software system to a more sophisticated program that will allow city staff to better track dollars and projects.

And last fall, when asked how the process was going switching to the new program, city staff warned council members that it looked grim and that the city might not be able to account for tens of millions of dollars that was supposed to be spent on fixing streets and building community centers, parks and libraries over the past decade.

Jay Chapa, an assistant city manager, said the old financial system segregated money into subfunds and all of it became co-mingled and “very difficult to follow.” As a result, city staff started keeping spreadsheets on the side and with 418 projects in the works, staff lost track. It didn’t become a priority to straighten out the accounting, he said.

“I underestimated the length of time and difficulty of going through the old projects to try and come up with an answer of where we are today,” Chapa said. “The assumption was we needed additional dollars because we couldn’t see there were dollars available. There was no easy way to get a full view of the dollars in a project. Over time it got more and more cumbersome.”

Chapa said staff will have a project schedule ready in May.

Despite the good news, council members quickly chastised staff and asked for money for projects in their districts.

“Things had gotten to a point in my district where there’s a question of credibility,” said Councilwoman Gyna Bivens. “I couldn’t even tell people when to expect street projects or just simple repairs to take place. Things are getting in the right direction now. It’s like Christmas almost at City Hall.”

Councilman Jungus Jordan called the situation frustrating, particularly for a project at Chisholm Park in his district.

“Found money is a good thing to have,” Jordan said. “I’m a little frustrated, I have to tell you, because we had an opportunity to build the best skate park in the county. We were $400,000 short, so instead of building the whole thing we cut back. This was money falling through the cracks, quite frankly, from an accounting standpoint.”

For several months, staff has tracked projects tied to 2004 and 2008 bond programs, and certificates of obligation issued in 2007 and 2013, totaling $571.3 million. From that, staff found $52.6 million. They encumbered $25 million to cover project shortfalls from the 2004 and 2008 bond programs, leaving $27.6 million to spend.

Street projects

Among the street projects, some money will go to help get the Hemphill-Lamar connector project downtown closer to full funding. The project was recently put on hold because of a shortfall. The project will connect downtown to the near south side at Hemphill Street. The city will still work to get funding from the North Texas Council of Governments, Chapa said.

The $27.6 million will be applied to shortfalls from the 2014 bond program, which includes spending $13.2 million finishing more than a dozen arterial streets and $6 million on neighborhood streets.

Another $2.7 million will help conclude projects making infrastructure improvements at nine city parks and community centers, $621,975 to buy new playground equipment at nine parks, and filling in gaps in funding for a fire station at Spinks Airport, the kennel expansion at the Chuck Silcox Animal Care & Control center, and perhaps building a larger library on East Lancaster Avenue at Oakland Boulevard.

Moreover, money will be spent on new roofs and structural repairs at some city buildings, pay for 10 speed monitors in school zones and catch up on a backlog of streetlight repairs, Chapa said.

An additional $6.5 million that had been set aside for the completion of Lakeshore Drive on the Fort Worth side of Lake Arlington, a project that will no longer be done, has been reallocated to seven street projects in Bivens’ district and Cavile Place and Stop Six area improvements.

Also, $1.7 million will be set aside to help pay consultants to aid in project estimates in a 2018 bond program, Chapa said. Project cost estimates have led to shortfalls with projects related to the 2014 bond program.

“We need to have, and we intend to have, more emphasis on our estimates of projects,” Chapa said.

Mayor Betsy Price agreed and said it “is not acceptable” that money tied to bond dollars had been left sitting on the table.

“We just simply can’t get back where we’ve been with the problems we’ve had in estimates,” Price said. “We have to do better. On behalf of our citizens, it is nice to find the money, but we shouldn’t have been in this position. I don’t want to see us digging this hole again.”

This story was originally published April 13, 2016 at 4:12 PM with the headline "Fort Worth capital project review finds $52.6 million in unspent money."