Homeowners in one South Florida neighborhood say a project meant to help make their community safer is actually making things much worse — and they have to pay for it. 7’s Courtney Allen investigates. The Ranches neighborhood is one of the oldest communities in the City of Parkland. So are th e streets. Barry Charnick: “The roads haven’t been done here for almost 45 years.” Homeowners feel their neighborhood has been neglected over the decades. The city owns all the streets in The Ranches, so they question why their tax dollars never appear to have gone toward repairing them. Renee Porter: “They have never maintained our roads before, where is all those tax dollars?” Work is finally underway to repair the streets. But homeowners aren’t too happy with what they’re seeing. Renee Porter: “They took our canals, they made our canals wider. They chopped the canal banks to a bare minimum, so they’re not stable any longer. We have video of school buses and a car trying to pass and the car moving over nearly going into the canal.” Homeowners say some of the streets are now too narrow, and have led to accidents where cars ended up in the roadside canals. We took a tour of the neighborhood. Even in a golf cart, there were some streets where passing other vehicles left little room for error. One street was converted into a one-way, but traffic still flowed in both directions. Barry Charnick: “But what if there was a school bus coming this way?” The homeowners agree the streets need to be repaired, but they are upset the city is making them pay for it – but not with the taxes they’ve paid over the years. Renee Porter: “They decide they’re going to finally repave our roads, and we get an assessment of millions of dollars.” Cities can use tax revenue for road repairs, but if they can prove the project creates a special benefit for the residents, they can pass the cost on to them in the form of a special assessment. Barry Charnick: “They told us that our special benefit was actually that the roads are safer, that we can get to our roads easier.” The work is part of a $15 million project to improve stormwater drainage in the neighborhood. The city is paying for work like: “dredging the roadside canals,” “replacement of culverts” and “bank restoration.” Homeowners will pay nearly $5 million for roadwork, including resurfacing some streets and rebuilding others so they slope toward the canal to help with flooding. Renee Porter: “My assessment over 20 years will be $48,000.” This is the neighborhood’s second assessment in three years. A stormwater assessment was created by the city in 2023. Homeowners in The Ranches pay much more than the other neighborhoods. Barry Charnick: “And to date, the total number of dollars that they’ve spent on The Ranches neighborhood, from the assessments we’ve been paying, is zero.” Homeowners think the city should cover the roadwork bill because they say the drainage project is directly causing street damage that can’t be ignored. Barry Charnick: “But to then sort of reclassify what is obviously stormwater work as road work and then attempt to bill us for $4 to $5 million amongst a small group of families here in this neighborhood we think is unfair.” Several residents filed a lawsuit against the City of Parkland. They claim the project does not meet the legal requirements to levy a special assessment against them. The City of Parkland moved to dismiss the lawsuit. With about a year of work and 20 years of assessments to go, they are bracing themselves for a tough ride ahead. Courtney Allen, 7News. We reached out to the City of Parkland. A representative referred us to their motion to dismiss the lawsuit. They also tell 7News that the width of the streets in The Ranches has never changed, and the accidents were caused by other factors. CONTACT 7 INVESTIGATES:[email protected] ...read more read less