FORT LAUDERDALE — First came the monster flood.
Then came the monster cost estimate to keep a waterlogged City Hall up and running: $175,000 a day — or even as much as $50 million over a six-month period.
The staggering number persuaded commissioners to cut their losses on a City Hall they eventually planned to abandon anyway. They asked staff to start looking for temporary office space and to plan on knocking down the old City Hall and building a new one on the same land.
But the sky-high estimate, an astounding number shared by city officials last week, had skeptics wondering if it was really true.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel requested a cost breakdown. We’re still waiting.
So is City Hall, according to City Manager Greg Chavarria.
“I don’t have that,” he said Monday.
The original $175,000-a-day estimate came from Ashbritt, the city’s emergency vendor, Chavarria said.
“We asked Ashbritt for the rough order of magnitude [to power up and run City Hall],” he said. “As soon as we get the invoices, we will know the details.”
In responding to a request from the Sun Sentinel, a city spokeswoman provided a list of services procured, but did not include the estimated cost.
Commissioner John Herbst, who spent 16 years as the city’s auditor, said he didn’t think to ask for a cost breakdown last week, but he plans to now.
So does Commissioner Steve Glassman.
Both men noted that the topic was not listed on the April 18 commission conference agenda, but came under discussion in the wake of the April 12 storm that dumped 26 inches of rain on the city.
“If there was a slide show, you can imagine I would have torn it apart,” Herbst said.
Glassman say he has no cost breakdown and nothing in writing to back up the estimates shared last week.
“But I’m going to ask for that,” he said. “When something is off the cuff like this, I’m just trying to absorb it. But we should know that [cost breakdown]. I’m hoping someone didn’t pull that number out of a hat or somewhere else.”
Abby Laughlin, a local activist and longtime resident, says the proof is in the pudding.
“I want an itemized list,” she said. “Who figured out those numbers? It’s so laughable. Maybe I’m wrong. But they made the decision [to build a new City Hall] in 30 minutes. God love them. Maybe they know what song they have to sing to get the feds to pay for a new City Hall.”
That is indeed the plan.
Mayor Dean Trantalis says he and the city manager plan to leave on Thursday for Washington, D.C.
“We will apply for federal funding to finance a new City Hall,” the mayor said. “Right now we’re focused on finding alternative space because the building is considered uninhabitable. The electrical system is down. The servers have been compromised.”
Last week, Chavarria told the Sun Sentinel paying for the diesel gas to fuel the generators needed to keep the lights on was one of the biggest costs. At the time, he said it would take 150 gallons of diesel fuel an hour — or 3,600 gallons — to power the generators needed to power the entire eight-story building.
Why power the entire building?
“We need to keep the building from deteriorating,” Chavarria said. “And we need to move out equipment and protect what’s in there right now.”
On Monday, Doussard said it was taking 1,000 to 1,100 gallons of fuel per day to power City Hall 24 hours at a time.
That’s because the system has been stabilized and is requiring less fuel, Chavarria said.
For the most part, Fort Lauderdale has not let commissioners or city employees back into the building since the rainstorm hit on April 12.
With City Hall closed, commission meetings were held on Zoom on April 18. Fort Lauderdale did host a Planning and Zoning meeting in commission chambers on the ground floor of City Hall on April 19. But no one was allowed into the lobby or on any other floors.
Chavarria said it would likely be the last public meeting held in City Hall.
The eight-story building is now on “life support” after floodwaters breached the basement and ruined key mechanical and electrical equipment, Chavarria said.
The commission plans to knock down the building and move to temporary offices until a new City Hall can be built.
Rumors are flying, with some speculating that building permits will be delayed and water bills won’t be sent out. City officials say that is not the case at all.
“We continue to operate,” Chavarria said. “Bills are going out and people are able to pay via check or cash. We can’t accept credit card payments right now. We had to take all the IT in our server room and redeploy it at another location to get those systems online.”
The building’s computer servers are located on the sixth floor, far from the basement. But when the building lost electricity on April 12, the servers stopped working, Chavarria said.
And the bill to get them and everything going again started adding up.
Commissioner Warren Sturman says he’s not so worried right now about the details.
“I’m sure the numbers will be scrutinized and verified by FEMA,” he said. “For the short run we decided not to burn through $175,000 a day. In our next meeting I’m hoping to get into the nitty gritty.”
Susannah Bryan can be reached at or on Twitter @Susannah_Bryan
