Road Projects Scrapped, On Hold

Transportation is the lifeblood of a county and the key to its economic development and wealth.
Well-maintained roads serve as the fuel that propels potential business and industry to locate in the area.
But the slumping economy has resulted in fewer homes being built. Fewer homes means less impact fee money for the county.
And less impact fee money translates to a delay in capital improvement projects.
For taxpayers, it ultimately means they will have to drive down roads that won't get improved quite as soon as the county planned.
But the picture is bigger than mere potholes on local roadways.
Transportation is a required element of the county's comprehensive planning process - comp plan, for short.
That means improvements to the county's transportation system must be funded to keep pace with growth. Failure to do so can cause developments or projects to not be approved due to a lack of concurrency.
Put another way - the capacity must be there or planned for the development to be built.
Without capacity, there could technically be a moratorium on building in Hernando County in certain areas because it
would be in violation of its comp plan - a no-no, according to the state.

Hernando County's comprehensive plan states there must be capacity to allow for new development. It says the county has to make sure funding is available, either through impact fees or agreements from developers who will pay their proportionate share of transportation improvements.

However, it has been the county's inability during the last decade to come up with a reliable re-occurring funding source for capital improvements that has led to uncompleted road projects.

It has also put Hernando County in a perilous position because, with the downturn in the building industry, impact fee money has been drastically reduced. As a result, capital improvement projects are not being accomplished.

Projects Moved Back

Hernando County, for the most part, has relied solely on impact fees to fund road improvements. Other counties, especially Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco, have passed one-cent sales tax increases to fund capital improvements.

However, needed capital improvements in the county's enterprise funds, which include water and sewer and aviation, are moving ahead because there is a built-in source of revenue in the fee structure to pay for them.

For example, a new sewer plant expansion is paid for out of the water and sewer district's capital improvement fund, impact fees and developer contributions. And the best part - no general fund tax money is required.

The utilities department's proposed projected total cost of capital improvements for water and sewer project for fiscal years 2008 through 2013 is $151.8 million, an increase from $124.9 million.

Florida Statutes require the county to update the capital improvements element (CIE) of its comprehensive plan every year.

Planning Director Ron Pianta and his staff recently submitted a summary of proposed changes to the CIE, which reflects fiscal years 2008 through 2013.

To maintain the level of service standards in the comprehensive plan, the county monitors the CIE for changes and reevaluations of the capital needs of public facilities.

Completed projects are removed from the capital improvement list and new ones added to meet the demand of population growth, funding changes and future development.

Many road projects in that plan have been moved back, some as much as two years, some completely off the charts.

Russell: Taxes Are Not The Answer

County Commissioner David Russell agrees there should be a dedicated capital improvement funding mechanism, but it's his belief that growth should pay for itself. Now is not the time to be talking about imposing new taxes to pay for roads, he said.

"You can't tax your way into prosperity," Russell said.

Instead, the county must put its efforts into industry recruitment, stricter adherence to developer agreements to defray capital improvement costs and improved project bidding processes.

Once the economy improves, Russell believes some of these road projects that have been delayed will be fast-tracked.

"We're going to have to grow our way out of it," he said.

And while some of these projects are not being completed as fast as anticipated, they are getting done, said Russell, pointing to improvements along U.S. 19, State Road 50 and the Suncoast Parkway.

More Delays

The public works department's proposed projected cost of capital improvements for collector (main) roads for fiscal years 2008 through 2013 is $88.9 million, a decrease from $97.5 million.

The decrease reflects the downturn in the housing market and subsequent impact fee revenue needed to build roads.

Road projects moved out of the program and beyond 2013 are right-of-way purchases along Bailey Hill Road, the construction of McIntyre Road and phase 4 of Spring Lake Highway.

One particularly disturbing setback was Barclay Road North, from Powell Road to State Road 50. That is off the radar until at least 2013. The money earmarked for that project was shifted to the Elgin Road widening project. There was no choice. The county had already spent millions on right-of-way acquisition along Elgin Boulevard.

Even so, the Elgin project is now slated to take five years.

Then there is County Line Road, which has seemingly been on the drawing board for years.

County Line Road from U.S. 19 to Cobblestone was bid out a couple months ago and is in the pre-construction stage. Full construction is slated to begin in January 2009.

That project came in 40 percent under budget and there was a $26 million infusion of federal funding.

County Engineer Charles Mixson said he believes that 40 percent will be rolled over to the next phase of the County Line Road widening project, which is from East Road to Mariner Boulevard.

Also off the radar for now is Irving Street, which was envisioned as a much-needed reliever to State Road 50.

It never got off the ground.

Mixson said the project is not dead. But it can't be started until more impact fee money comes in, he said.

"We don't want to start something until we have money coming in," Mixson said.

However, the widening of Elgin Boulevard was approved before all the construction money was in-hand.

The county's own citizen's advisory committee of the Metropolitan Planning Organization sent a letter recently to county commissioners decrying the fact they had taken money off Irving Street.

The county instead shifted the money to the Elgin Boulevard project.

Irving happens to be the name of a little-known street about a quarter mile south of S.R. 50, west of Barclay Avenue.

Major contributions from developers on S.R. 50 were taken to ostensibly increase capacity on that road via Irving Street.

Irving Street would have allowed motorists to bypass S.R 50. and still be able to shop or eat at the Wal-Mart Supercenter, Bealls, McDonald's, Sam's Club and other assorted stores and restaurants.

At the same time, crews would expand Sunshine Grove Road -- which now dead-ends at S.R 50. - farther south where it would hook up with the new Irving Street.

Cost of the Irving Street expansion was an estimated $10 million. Now that project, which was supposed to be completed by 2011, has been taken out of the transportation improvement plan.