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Highlands Today

Wright Wants To Improve Upkeep Of County's Roads

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By JIM KONKOLY

Highlands Today

Published: September 23, 2008

SEBRING - Highlands County Administrator Michael Wright puts a high priority on maintaining the county's roads because, he said, "that's one of the basic things we do in government."

In about a month, he said, he hopes to provide specifics to flesh out his general goal of upgrading the county's upkeep of its 1,200 miles of roadways.

"We're going to put more of a focus on that this coming fiscal year," Wright said about fiscal 2008-09, which begins Oct. 1.

"I've talked to the board (of county commissioners) one on one, about shifting our emphasis and putting more of an emphasis on road work in the neighborhoods," Wright said.

"It's more of a concept than it is specifics right now," he added, "because we haven't got our specifics worked out yet."

During this current fiscal year, which began just over 51 weeks ago, Highlands County did virtually no road resurfacing. In typical years before that, the county spent about $1.3 million on resurfacing.

Wright said the specific plan he will present to the county commissioners will be "a combination of things, for both the existing paved roads and the paving of the dirt or unpaved roads."
Highlands County maintains just under 1,000 miles of paved roads and just over 200 miles of unpaved roads, according to Brian Miller, the road construction inspector in the county's Road and Bridge Department.

Wright said he hopes to see more unpaved roads turned into paved roads.

"Long term, it's less maintenance, and it's better for the community as a whole," Wright said. "I've lived on dirt roads."

Miller gave an emphatic thumbs-up to Wright's goal of paving more miles of unpaved roads.

"I think that would be a great idea, because then, hopefully, for quite a few years the maintenance on that road would essentially go away," he said.

"Right now," Miller explained, "on the dirt roads, we have to go out with a machine and grade them, some of them every week, and some of them twice a week. If the road would be paved, that work would go away and that would ultimately end up saving money."

If Road and Bridge crews spend less time grading unpaved roads, Miller added, the crews could spend more time trimming trees, cleaning out ditches and catching up on other work assignments.

In past years, Miller said, the county's goal was to resurface between 30 to 40 miles of asphalt roads each year, and usually did at least 22 or 23 miles.

For the past year, he said, "we didn't spend any of the county's money budgeted for resurfacing." The commissioners had budgeted $1.3 million for that purpose, but pulled the plug on resurfacing as tax revenues were forecast to drop, which they did.

"I know that four or five years ago, the money spent (on road resurfacing) was in the high end of the $800,000s," Miller said. "And then it gradually went up every year, to the $1.3 million, as they tried to stay up with the costs going up."

Besides construction work on Phase Two of the Sebring Parkway, a major road building project, the county did only one road maintenance project, which was funded by a state grant. Miller said county crews improved County Road 621, which runs from U.S. 27 in Lake Placid, around the south end of Lake Istokpoga, to U.S. 98.

Wright said some of the road maintenance plan he envisions will involve "in house" resurfacing work by county Road and Bridge crews.

"That's one of the details we're trying to work out right now," he said. "We're trying to see how we can shift some of our resources around."

Wright noted that the county's asphalt plant, the first owned and operated by a local government in Florida, is on track to begin operations in eight days.

"We'll hopefully be producing asphalt, or be able to produce asphalt as needed, by Oct. 1," he said.

About the total road-work plan he'll take to the commissioners, Wright said, "We'll try to work the details out in October. Spring is when you want to do your paving. But keep in mind, you have to do a lot of road work before you put the asphalt down. And Kyle Green (road and bridge superintendent) has got to have some time to get his crews lined up and suitably trained."

Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or e-mail jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com

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