Items lost because of a roadwork notification failure will be replaced.
By NORA KOCH
Published April 18, 2004
PALM HARBOR - Cindy Hutchings spent a recent Tuesday desperately trying to put up a chain-link fence taken down by road workers the day before, rushing so her three dogs could go back outside.
Had she known in advance, Hutchings says she would have paid someone to move her 8-year-old fence off Pinellas County's right of way before the county started its massive road-improvement project on Omaha Street.
"They could have just told me and I would have moved it," said the mother of two, who has lived in her downtown Palm Harbor home for 11 years. "You'd think during the planning this would have come up."
And it should have, Pinellas County officials say. Standard procedure is to give residents a 30-day warning to remove items from the county right of way before work begins.
The public works department has planned for years to improve the road, but when construction recently began, the department admittedly failed to send out proper notice to residents. Without notice to move stuff or lose it, many residents say they lost fences, trees, hedges, shrubs, plants and other items that were on the county's right of way.
Internal communications broke down on this job, said Charlie Norwood, director of geographic services for Pinellas County's public works department.
"Normally what we do before the contractor starts is stake the right of way and send a letter telling people to take their stuff out of the (right of way). We didn't do that," Norwood said.
"The contractor just showed up and pulled most everything out - and people are shocked about it."
The department is acting quickly to right its wrong, with eight workers canvassing the neighborhood, making phone calls and knocking on doors of 130 affected residents to find out what was lost because of the notice failure.
So far, the department has compiled a list of oak, palm and pine trees, various plants and shrubs, hedges, a rose bush, a few mailboxes and fences, said Jim Meloy, real estate administrator for the department. Meloy said the county will reasonably replace everything possible.
"These are things that were growing in the right of way. It provided shade, it was aesthetically beautiful," Meloy said. "We want the neighborhood to look nice again."
For now the neighborhood is a landscape of construction equipment, ripped up roadways and piles of sand. The $3.4-million project, which will be completed in phases over a 14-month period, spans Omaha Street from New York Avenue south to Tampa Road.
When the project is done, most of the two-lane road will be divided by a median, and the entire stretch will be lined with sidewalks and bicycle lanes. The project includes a stoplight at Nebraska Avenue and new water mains and storm sewers, according to county engineers.
After construction, the county has promised to replant the street median, from which scores of trees were removed before work began. Residents became incensed when rumors circulated that the median would not be replanted, but county officials say replanting the median was already on their to-do list.
After public outcry, the project was prioritized on a long list of beautification projects, said division engineer Ivan Fernandez. The landscaping plan was presented at a meeting last week.
Once construction is complete, the county plans to put about 60 trees in the dozen median sections between Hawaii and New York avenues, said Anne Kramer, a landscape architect who coordinates the county's road beautification program.
The areas will be planted with white and lavender crape myrtles, cabbage palms and other ornamental plants.
That gives resident Wendy Read some solace, though she is still smarting from the abrupt removal of plants outside her home on Omaha Street.
"In 30 minutes, my hedge was gone," she said.
Workers took a 75-foot-long hedge, on which she draped Christmas lights for years, as well as a dozen cherry laurel trees, nearly 50 bromeliads and various other plants. Much of the foliage, located on county easement property, was already planted when she moved in.
She managed to salvage many of the bromeliads and two palm trees.
"But 30 days' notice, and we could have gotten some stuff out of there," she said.
While she is pleased by the county's initial reaction, Read has started to replant on her own and already purchased a new hedge.
For Hutchings, she's just waiting for the loud, dusty construction outside her home to end. And she's glad that her three rescued pooches - Jazzy, Obie and Matika - can stay outside within the rigged fence and watch. Those 24 hours without the fence were a hassle, she said.
"I'd walk one, then come in. I'd walk another, come back and walk the third," she said. "And then it was time to walk the first one again."
