Serving up a dish of rocky road

Took a drive Wednesday through some old stomping grounds.

My first and only foray into home ownership occurred in the Inverness Highlands. My then-wife and I bought a new site-built home on Kent Street, where we lived for 13 years.

I have many memories of the Highlands. Unlike traditional developments, the Highlands seemed more like a sprawling neighborhood. The houses do not look the same. If people didn’t call it the “Highlands,” we might never know it as such.

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When I think of the Highlands, though, it’s that road. South Apopka Avenue slices the length of the Highlands. Hard to get anywhere in the Highlands without traveling on Apopka.

Like many of its asphalt brethren throughout the county, Apopka is in bad shape. It needs resurfacing in the worst way.

Which is about to happen. That’s great, but as I drove through the Highlands on other horrible roads (the Highlands is packed with failing streets), I couldn’t help but wonder how the county plans to repair roads since commissioners kicked a sales tax referendum to the curb.

Apopka is a perfect example of the county’s reality. It’s a collector road, meaning neighborhood streets feed into it. Collector roads are not a part of the county’s residential road resurfacing program. Instead, they fall into the SCOP (Small Community Outreach Program) category.

SCOP is a state program for counties under 200,000 in population. We’re the only county in our transportation district to qualify. It says the state will pay 75% of the project costs.

Now. That’s the traditional SCOP scenario. In the last year or two, the state has capped the amount to around $2 million annually.

The state match, however, is based on the county’s estimate, not the actual cost. Let’s look at Apopka.

Tuesday’s County Commission agenda includes the Apopka resurfacing bid. The estimated cost with contingencies was $1.8 million. The state is committed to $1.2 million. The county picks up the rest — about $570,000. What a great deal!

Except: The bids came back much higher than expected. Rather than a $1.8 million project, it’s now $2.5 million. The state won’t move off its commitment, so the county share jumps from $570,000 to $1.3 million — $700,000 and change more than we budgeted.

Where that extra dough comes from, I haven’t a clue. But the county should expect it to happen more and more.

The agenda includes a similar SCOP project for County Road 39. The county is setting aside its $512,000 share even before the bids are awarded. And there’s no guarantee our costs won’t still accelerate if bids come in higher than budgeted.

This is deep weed stuff, and I don’t plan to analyze SCOP projects. They can't come fast enough. 

But it’s a reminder that our road resurfacing backlog problem hasn’t gone away. The County Commission whiffed on a sales tax referendum that could have helped address at least some of these issues, but roads are still falling apart.

So, our question for today:

How important is it? In the hierarchy of Citrus County’s challenges, where does road condition rank? If we want roads fixed, are we willing to consider myriad ways to pay for them? I ask that almost tongue in cheek; the public is in no mood to hear alternative methods for the county government to extract money from their pockets.

I have no answers. The sales tax looked like a good start, but that’s now in the rearview mirror, so we’re left with millions of dollars in road needs and only a piecemeal plan to address them.

We’re going to discuss roads a lot this election season. I’ll go ahead and ask the question of County Commission candidates, including incumbents, right now:

What does our road network look like in five years, and how are we going to accomplish it? And we’d like your answer in detail, please.

That’s it for this Thursday. Have a great day, friends.

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