Zephyr Park runs $8 million over budget as council weighs cutting the plan back

The Zephyr Park rehabilitation, the city's flagship recreation project and the source of the promised splash pad, trails and playgrounds, is running roughly $8 million over its approximately $16 million budget, city staff told the Zephyrhills City Council at budget workshops on July 13 and Aug. 10. If the Alice Hall Community Center is demolished and rebuilt rather than renovated, staff warned the gap could stretch to about $13 million. Council members are now openly discussing scaling back what gets built on the 50-acre site.

Nothing has been cut yet. No vote has been taken on a reduced scope. What changed at the Aug. 10 workshop is that the conversation shifted from how to build the whole plan to which pieces survive it.

What the plan promised

The approved program for Zephyr Park is a long list: new restrooms, a splash pad, trails, pavilions, playgrounds, an event lawn, a band shell and the landscaping and utility work underneath all of it. Consultants presented a revised design in July 2025 that reworked the site after Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricane Milton, using drone imagery and field surveys to trace where the water actually stood.

That redesign is the reason some of the cost is where it is. Playgrounds, restrooms and the splash pad were lifted to finished elevations of roughly 82 to 83 feet, about a foot above the interpreted peak high-water line from the 2024 storms. The plan added a raised boardwalk over the lake, moved the band shell toward the event lawn on the southeast side facing the water, clustered exercise equipment into a fitness zone and added a ninja-style challenge course aimed at older kids and teens. Earthwork on a site like that is not cheap, and raising ground in one spot means giving the water somewhere else to go.

Separately, Pasco County has been working with the city on the outfall under C Avenue. The city's public works director told council last year the county intends to engineer a much larger culvert, up to 6 feet by 12 feet, to move water off the site faster.

How the money was stacked

The roughly $16 million was never one pot. Staff described a package built from about $3.2 million in state appropriations, a $10 million Community Development Block Grant request and roughly $3.36 million from a previously designated local nursing-home account. Paired together, and assuming the grant came through, that package got the city to about $16 million for construction.

Firm pricing was always the test. Council selected Reeves Young LLC, an Atlanta-based firm, as construction manager at risk at a special meeting on Nov. 17, on a 4-0 vote, with the job of putting real numbers on earthwork, playgrounds and structures. Mayor Melonie Bahr Monson, who did not have a vote, said at the time that this was the city's biggest parks project and that she expected it to top out around $20 million. She also said she did not think council asked enough questions before making the award, and raised concerns about sending money out of state.

Her $20 million figure now looks conservative. Sixteen plus eight is $24 million.

The Alice Hall question

The bigger fork in the road is the Alice Hall Community Center, funded through a $5 million bond. Renovating it and rebuilding it are two very different numbers, and the difference is roughly the gap between an $8 million problem and a $13 million one. Council has begun revisiting how that rehab fits into the park plan at all.

None of this is happening in a quiet budget year. The Aug. 10 workshop also covered a proposed 3% water and sewer rate increase, adjustments to RV park base rates, a first reading of a sanitation rate ordinance following a rate study, and a proposed 5% across-the-board pay increase with some discussion of going to 6%. Council also approved a $500,000 commitment toward paving streets in a private development inside the CRA. In July, staff walked members through expected revenue effects from Amendment 3 on the November ballot.

What happens next

Council wrapped up Aug. 10 by scheduling more budget workshops to work through funding sources and next steps, including public outreach on property tax education. Those sessions are where a reduced scope, if it comes, will take shape: which amenities get phased to a later year, which get dropped, and whether the community center is renovated or replaced. Regular council meetings are held the second and fourth Monday of the month at 6 p.m. at City Hall, and budget workshops have been running earlier the same evening. Agendas and packets are posted at zephyrhills.gov.

Families waiting on that splash pad should watch the phasing discussion closely. Elevation work, utilities and stormwater capacity are the parts a city cannot skip. The play equipment is the part that is easiest to move to phase two.

Keep up with city budget decisions and everything else happening in town at Zephyrhills Community Website, and tell us what you would cut or keep at Zephyr Park by joining the conversation in our Community Forum. For more coverage like this, read our government and politics stories and our community news.