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BRIDGET HALL GRUMETColonial Hills residents rejected the project, but the county approved it. Then a company's bankruptcy and other issues got in the way.
HOLIDAY - As the heavy equipment rolled into Colonial Hills this month, some of the residents scratched their heads.
They had voted in the fall of 2002 on a $617-per-home assessment to repave their roads, but nothing had happened for more than a year.
"I was surprised," said Pat Mabry, a resident on Peacock Drive who said the worn roads need the work. "I didn't think (the road repaving project) even passed because it hadn't started in such a long time."
The effort to repave 131/2 miles of roads in Colonial Hills, a community straddling Grand Boulevard and Moog Road, has been full of surprises.
A contractor dispute and a water-pipe problem delayed the resurfacing for months. In the meantime, some banks told several homeowners that a $617 lien had been placed on their homes, even though the road work hadn't started.
Most surprising to some, the County Commission approved the road paving assessment in February 2003 - even though residents originally rejected the plan, 683-618.
At the suggestion of the Colonial Hills Civic Association, the county dropped from the plan seven roads where residents overwhelmingly voted no. That tilted the count to 596-566 in favor of the assessment - the minimum 51 percent needed to move forward.
"That doesn't sound so right," said resident Paula Weisbach, who voted against the paving assessment because she thought it was too expensive.
The county went a step further last week with a repaving project in the Port Richey community of Embassy Hills. The County Commission imposed a "forced assessment" of about $660 to repave some of the roads there - even though homeowners had voted against the paving assessment nearly 2 to 1.
Commissioners acknowledge this could be the beginning of a trend: the county approving road paving assessments in older neighborhoods, even when the majority of the residents voted against it.
The logic: The work needs to be done, and it will cost less now than in several years.
"It's difficult to operate under that scenario," Commissioner Ann Hildebrand acknowledged. "But we have no other means of paving that street. It's just the fact that it's going to cost them more money down the road" to repave it.
The streets in the oldest parts of Colonial Hills are pushing 35 years old. Some are threadbare, with hubcap-sized potholes that are 3 or 4 inches deep.
Others look decent.
"Why should I pay $700 when this side is okay?" asked Pedro Soto, a Seaford Drive resident who voted against the paving assessment in 2002.
Most residents on Seaford Drive and six other streets - Staunton Drive, Tuckahoe Place, Glenside Drive, Hopewell Drive, Appomattox Drive and Halifax Drive - voted against the assessment because their roads didn't look so bad.
Those votes could have doomed the repaving project. Then the Colonial Hills Civic Association had an idea: It sent a letter Dec. 6, 2002, asking the county to drop those seven roads.
"Those streets were done some time ago, and they're in good shape," association president Earl Scheel told the Pasco Times. "Those people had no reason to want to repave the roads. So if we dropped them out, then we had enough votes to repave the streets ... that really need it."
County officials visited the seven roads and agreed they could be dropped. Commissioners approved the rest of the project in February 2003.
Then the other problems began.
Two months after the county approved the project, Grubbs Construction Co. filed for bankruptcy.
The company had not started on Colonial Hills. Nor had it been paid for the $1-million project. But Grubbs had a contract to do the county's paving projects, and the bankruptcy put everything in limbo.
"I couldn't give them any more work, and I couldn't fire them," said Jim Widman, the county's engineering director.
After the county settled with Grubbs, DAB Constructors Inc. picked up the Colonial Hills project last fall. But crews had to wait for the county's utility system to lay some new water pipes in the area.
Already irked by the delays, some residents made an annoying discovery when they tried to refinance their mortgages, get a loan or sell their house. The banks told them the county had placed liens on their homes for the road work.
John Belli heard the news in March 2003 when he applied for a home equity loan from the MacDill Federal Credit Union.
"They notified me that they could not give me a loan because my home had a lien on it," Belli said. "I went back to these people (at the county) and said, "What's the deal?"'
He said county officials told him he had to pay, so he wrote a $617 check for the project. That cleared things up with the bank so he could get his loan.
But Widman said the banks must have misunderstood. The county filed a notice of its intent to place liens on those homes once the work was done, he said, but it hadn't placed the liens yet.
Now, after all the delays, the crews are finally preparing the Colonial Hills roads for repaving. Residents should start seeing new blacktop in the next few weeks, Widman said.
If all goes well, the repaving should take about five weeks.
"I'm very optimistic that it will be done very soon," Widman said.
- Bridget Hall Grumet covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is hall@sptimes.com