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County's private roads may get signs
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET, Times Staff Writer INVERNESS -- Arrowhead resident Sonny Groves told the story of a neighbor who recently went into a coma. An ambulance circled the community's signless dirt roads for about 10 minutes, searching for the woman's home, until Groves finally motioned the crew to the right house, he said. "We feel the county should help us out in some way," Groves told the County Commission on Tuesday. Most of the commissioners agreed. Setting aside the county's historic reluctance to use public dollars on private roads, the commission told staffers to come up with a proposal to place street signs on private roads throughout the county. The proposal likely would come back to the commission for a vote March 26. "You may say that it is illegal to put street signs out there," Commission Chairman Jim Fowler said, referring to opinions from several state attorneys general prohibiting the use of public dollars to improve or maintain private roads. "But I believe if it is legal to send a police officer out there in a green and white (patrol car), and an ambulance out there to try to find a sick person, trying to render them aid, or a school bus to pick up children, it's got to be legal to put a street sign so those people know where they're going," Fowler said. Commissioners Roger Batchelor and Josh Wooten, whose district includes Arrowhead, agreed that residents' public safety hinges on whether emergency responders can find their homes. If their streets don't have signs, those commissioners said, the county should provide them. Although they also supported the motion asking for a staff proposal, commissioners Gary Bartell and Vicki Phillips questioned the legality and fairness of using tax dollars to pay for private street signs. "I would like to be able to say yes, it's legal, and yes, we'll do it," Phillips said. "But I've been around and around this discussion since before I was a commissioner. To my knowledge, nothing's changed. . . . It is not legal for us to expend public funds on private roads." If the county provides the signs for Arrowhead, out of fairness it must also be willing to provide street signs for other private roads, she added. Last year, county staff estimated it would cost $73,000 to install street signs on the 700 or so miles of private roads in Citrus County. Throw in regulatory signs, such as stop signs and speed limit signs, and the cost to the county rises to about $347,000. Fowler and Wooten said the county should only provide street name signs, not regulatory signs. But Bartell warned that a street sign policy could open the door to other requests. "What happens if the next one comes up and says we need stop signs because people are running (the intersection)?" Bartell asked. "That's public safety. And if you're going to talk public safety to win this one, you better talk public safety to win the next one." Public safety didn't win the argument four years ago, when Arrowhead residents pleaded with the county to restore their flooded dirt roads. An attorney general's opinion allowed the county to help make private roads "passable" during a declared state of emergency, but otherwise cautioned the county not to spend its tax dollars improving private roads. However, County Attorney Robert Battista said Tuesday that the county could place street signs on private roads if commissioners found that the signs met a public safety need that is "specific and beyond the ordinary." The dollars that pay for county road improvements come from property taxes, gas taxes and impact fees -- all of which are paid by residents on public and private roads alike, Wooten said. "In my opinion, we put the signs up and tell the people thank you very much for paying your taxes," Fowler said. -- Bridget Hall Grumet can be reached at 860-7303 or bhall@sptimes.com.
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