City, county suffer communication gaps

The city spruced up Park Street, only to learn the county will tear it up. That's just the latest miscommunication.

By MAUREEN BYRNE

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 13, 2001

SEMINOLE -- After getting the okay from the county to beautify a quarter-mile section of Park Street, the city spent $30,000 to plant crepe myrtles and dwarf Indian hawthorns between Augusta Boulevard and Burning Tree Drive.

But two weeks after the 30-day project finished in January, the city received a letter from the county saying it was going to tear up the road in a couple of years. The county plans to widen Park Street in 2004.

Oops.

The oversight is the latest in a series of miscommunications between the city and county since former County Administrator Fred Marquis retired last year. City Council members have voiced concerns about the relationship between the two governments. And City Manager Frank Edmunds said he is disappointed with some of the county's recent actions:

In December, the city's plans to build a fire station on the east side of the Park Boulevard bridge fell apart because the county changed its plans, Edmunds said.

County officials said they would not honor Marquis' pledge to give the city $100,000 in emergency medical services funding to help finance the station. So the project was scrapped.

Then there was the street lighting problem on Park Boulevard, Seminole's major east-west artery. A plan to light all of the county's roadways, including a 6-mile stretch of the highway between 66th Street and Oakhurst Road, went dark after the funding never materialized.

Karen Greene, street lighting coordinator for the county's highway department, said Park Boulevard could have been lit, but Seminole asked the county to wait because of annexations.

Edmunds denies his office ever gave that order. Another miscommunication, perhaps, but there still are no lights on the stretch of Park Boulevard.

And probably the most controversial issue between the county and Seminole is the redesign of the intersection at 102nd Avenue and Old Ridge Road. A fatal accident there in January prompted city and county officials to look at improving the area.

The county said it would fix the intersection by installing a median to prevent motorists heading north or south on Old Ridge Road from making left turns onto 102nd Avenue. County employees delivered their plan to the city with a note saying that as soon as the City Council approved it, work would begin.

But 10 days later, Edmunds received an e-mail saying any changes at the intersection were the city's responsibility. Although 102nd Avenue is a county road, the bulk of the intersection is in Seminole so the city has to fix it, county officials said.

The city disagrees and lawyers from both sides met last week to discuss the issue. Nothing was resolved and another meeting is scheduled on Thursday.

As far as the landscaping project is concerned, the county already was planning on beautifying the medians after the widening project, said Jan Herbst, the county's director of engineering. "They just wanted it done earlier," she said.

But the county wanted to inform Seminole of its plans to widen Park Street, even if it was after the city landscaped the median.

"It's just information on this end that our highway permitting department overlooked," Herbst said, adding that the county will pay to landscape the median after the road is widened.

Edmunds describes the miscommunication as an "innocent oversight."

"Evidently, the reviewer of that particular project may not have been fully aware of the county's 10-year roadway plan," he said.

But he said he was relieved the county admitted its mistake and agreed to beautify the road after the widening project.

Edmunds said he is disappointed by the recent bungles by the county, but said it may be more of a matter of coincidence that they all happened around the same time.

"The timing was such that they all seemed to come together at the same time," he said.

- Staff writer Maureen Byrne can be reached at 445-4163 or at byrne@sptimes.com.

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