Company quitting as Pompano’s redevelopment contractor

A company that oversees tax-funded property investments in Pompano Beach will quit working for the city in three months.

Redevelopment Management Associates cited hostility from city commissioners as the reason for walking away from its contract with Pompano Beach, which pays the company $1.1 million a year.

Two city commissioners voted to fire the company at an emergency meeting in December because the co-directors of Redevelopment Management, Kim Briesemeister and Chris Brown, bought three parcels in blighted areas in the northwest corner of the city, where the company has overseen tax-funded property redevelopment.

But most of the city commissioners, including Mayor Lamar Fisher, voted at the emergency meeting to retain Redevelopment Management.

Briesemeister claimed the personal property purchases that she and Brown made were proper and were disclosed to Pompano’s city manager.

Mayor Fisher and another city commissioner, Rex Hardin, also were informed of the property purchases that Briesemeister and Brown made through two limited liability companies, Old Towne Flagler LLC and East Village 2300 LLC.

Mayor Fisher told the Sun-Sentinel that the pending resignation of Redevelopment Management as the contractor in charge of the city’s redevelopment agency wasn’t surprising because the agency relies heavily on funding from Broward County, which wants Pompano Beach to dissolve the agency sooner than 2040, when the city has scheduled its expiration.

The city and the county have sued each other since 2014 over the lifespan of the Pompano Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, and a likely settlement of the litigation would reduce the county’s spending on blight-busting property redevelopment in northwest Pompano Beach. [Sun-Sentinel] – Mike Seemuth