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Money crunch takes toll on county roads

As the cost of building roads soars, impact fees to pay for such projects haven't kept up.

By ASJYLYN LODER
Published January 12, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - The rising cost of building roads has outpaced revenue from Hernando County's impact fees, leaving the county to wrest additional road money from new developments while taxpayers pick up the rest of the tab.

"The problem is that the costs are accelerating faster than our fees are accelerating," said Dennis Dix, the county's transportation expert.

New development is not entirely to blame, Dix said. Rather, new development is pushing already strained roads toward the failing point, making it unfair to saddle new developments with the entire cost.

That's the case with Elgin Boulevard. Originally designed as a two-lane residential street, Elgin has become a busy east-west connector parallel to SR 50 and Spring Hill Drive. As new developments spring up along it, such as the new 1,250-home Sterling Hill subdivision, Elgin has begun to slip toward a failing grade, Dix said.

Dix estimated that right of way alone along a 3,500-foot stretch of the road from Village Van Gogh to Mariner Boulevard will cost $10-million. On Tuesday, the County Commission approved a deal with the owners of the 93-home Buchan subdivision, asking the developer for $59,383 in addition to the $9,211-per-home impact fee.

While that's less than 1 percent of the projected cost of right of way, it would be unfair to ask the developer to pay for the traffic generated by existing developments that paid lower impact fees and no additional road costs, Dix said.

The county doubled the transportation portion of its impact fees from $1,885 to $3,627 last year, but the increase is not keeping up with the rising cost of right of way and construction, Dix said.

"This is across the board. Local governments are going to be scrambling to keep their road programs intact," he said.

Because prices are rising so quickly, the state Department of Transportation has begun revising its road cost estimates more frequently.

"Usually, we update our estimates once a year, but now Tallahassee is requesting that all DOT offices update our estimates twice a year," said Kristen Carson, spokeswoman for DOT's District 7 office. "The reason we are doing that now is because the estimates have gone up 30 percent in the last six months, and that's due to the rising costs of steel, cement, fuel and other building materials."

On the county's A through F grading scale, the stretch of Elgin from Village Van Gogh to Mariner is already graded E, meaning it is operating at 90 percent of capacity, Dix said.

"Is the road completely broken? No," Dix said. But he forecasts increased backups, accidents and "cycle failure," when too many cars back up at a traffic light and not all can clear the intersection during one cycle. Those problems will steadily worsen as new homeowners move in, he said.

The county has not yet decided whether it will expand Elgin on the north or south side of the existing road. It is likely that homes will have to be demolished or removed to make room for the expansion, Dix said. At current costs, he estimated that it will take nine years to complete the project.

Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or 352 754-6127.

[Last modified January 12, 2006, 01:23:25]