Venice Mayor John Holic is coming out and denying reports that are making their way across social media that the downtown Beautification Project is over budget by more than a half-million dollars.
The beautification phase is one of three that make up an overall $18M project that started with repaving more than 70 miles of road.
Despite running behind schedule -Tampa Avenue is still under construction- Holic says the entire project is running as scheduled, financially.
One of the unforeseen issues that came up were sidewalks that needed to be replaced.
Holic says the city did set aside an $800K contingency fund prior to the project starting- around half of that has been spent.