North end South end

North end/south end...are road repair $$$ split fairly?
Paving money allocations vs. tax contributions sparks Commission spat

by Deborah Nelson
March 11, 2007

Should Santa Rosa road repaving dollars be distributed equally among five Districts, or according to who needs it most…and pays the most taxes?

A County-funded repaving job along sparsely populated Molino Bridge Rd.; and resurfacing jobs on Bell Creek Road and Nowling Road raised that question at a recent Commission meeting. All three roads are located in the Chumuckla area north of Milton.

Although Commissioners ultimately approved the $29,059 repaving project and the $85,477 resurfacing jobs; the projects sparked debate over whether road dollars are being divided fairly.

Each of Santa Rosa’s five working Districts receives the same amount of repair money, each year. The funds come from electric franchise fees.

But, some argue, proportionately speaking, that means less money goes to Gulf Breeze and other fast-growing areas…who contribute more revenue to property tax coffers.

Officials, during a February 19 meeting, sparred over whether it’s time to rethink how repaving dollars are allocated in Santa Rosa County.

“I just wish that I had that luxury in my district to be able to pave a dirt road,” Commissioner John Broxson remarked of the Molino Bridge Road project. “I don’t.

“We were severely impacted by the hurricanes, we’re just trying to catch up,” Broxson adds, “and I don’t know if we’ll ever catch up with the allocation that we have. And we’ll never be able to pave any dirt roads.”

Broxson says residents in his District, which includes Gulf Breeze, usually have to pay for repaving, via a special MSBU tax.

MSBU taxes cover roadway materials, and the County provides labor and equipment.

Broxson questioned whether using District 3’s money to repave Molino Bridge Rd. (instead of charging an MSBU tax) would set a problematic precedent.

“What is the precedent here that makes it an exception?” he asked the Board.

Commissioner Don Salter, in whose District the Molino Bridge Rd. project falls, says the paving job is not out of the ordinary. “Each year I pave two to three dirt roads, he noted.

“Each year up in the north end of the county. So this is not setting any precedent.

“This is just simply another dirt road in the north end of the county that we feel like needs to be paved,” Salter explained. “We try to [pave] one, two three roads a year in District 3 and resurface the remainder.”

That includes the Bell Creek project. The County recently purchased International Paper right-of-way land in the Chumuckla area to open up access to local boat ramps Keyser and Webb Landings.

According to the Property Appraiser’s website, Keyser Landing Road appears to be one and the same as Bell Creek Road.

But rumors that Bell Creek Road is being resurfaced to facilitate further area development just aren’t true, says Salter. The project will resurface the road’s western 2,725 feet, according to officials.

“There seems to be some speculation that we’re going to resurface this road for growth and development,” Salter remarked. “This simply goes down to a cemetery. It’s an old road, we’re gong to be faced with a decision either tear the old road out and make it a dirt road, or go ahead and upgrade it and save the road.”

Public Works Director Avis Whitfield says Bell Creek Rd. has been slated for upgrade, due to drainage issues.

“Because it’s a dirt road it stays in poor condition frequently after heavy rains,” he noted. “It’s probably the poorest paved road in Santa Rosa County.”

As for dirt road pavings like the Molino Bridge Rd. project, most of the County’s MSBU work (for which residents pay) is located in the south end, says Whitfield.

That’s because higher density subdivisions in those areas make it more cost effective for residents to split construction costs, he told the Board.

“But when you get into the northern end of the county you start getting the large parcels, and then it makes it very expensive for people,” Whitfield notes.

“There’s very few lots when you have large parcels…it would certainly be cost prohibitive for much of the north end [to pay MSBU charges], and they would never see roads paved. Because you couldn’t afford to do it.”

It’s not fair for south end residents to get stuck with MSBU payments, Broxson counters.

“MSBUs still costs somebody something,” he points out. “And they’re paying pretty heavily in some areas for these MSBUs. Some of these houses are spaced way apart.

“We deal with that all the time when we have these MSBU hearings, people complaining about how they’re living on fixed incomes and they can’t afford to pay for this and they have a real challenge with that.”

Meanwhile, south end road money is being stretched to accommodate growth, says Broxson. Blacktopping, he notes, eats up his District’s budget.

“Down in my District we don’t have enough money left over to do dirt roads,” he observed. “We simply have so many streets that have to be repaved, so we don’t have any money left over for dirt roads.”

Broxson suggested the Board take another look at how the road money pie is divided.

“I guess I’m saying at some point we need to look at reallocation of these funds in such a way that we will at least have enough to repave all the paving that needs to be [done],” he remarked.

“Not to take away from anyone else, but if all the roads are paved as they should be, and I’m sure you did that in this District, then that same standard should apply all through the County…

“I just don’t want us to establish a precedent that’s going to be hard to justify. When people come to me and ask me to pave their dirt roads. It puts me under a lot of pressure and I don’t think that’s the kind of pressure we want to have in these situations.”

“I’ve been a commissioner going on seven years, I’ve been paving dirt roads for seven years. That is not setting a new precedent,” Salter remarked.

Under debate: should road repair money be evenly split, as is currently is; or distributed based on need.

“I’m not certain that there are roads that I’ve set up for paving that are as worthy as the ones that are in Commissioner Broxson’s district,” Commissioner Gordon Goodin, who represents the Navarre area, remarked.

“And this is not to set a north versus south statement, but simple facts are that just a little less than half the population of the county lives in Commissioner Broxson’s district, yet he gets 20 percent of the road funds every year.

“Simple logic tells you that the amount of traffic traveling over his roads is disproportionate to my district, for instance, which is one of the more sparsely populated districts.”

Goodin says he’s not advocating getting rid of MSBU projects, but suggests it may be time to consider need, instead of the current five-equal-slices split.

“It’s an idea that 20, 25 years ago the road districts were put in place to try to make sure there was some equity in funding, and it was probably a good idea then, but we’ve outgrown that,” he contends.

“And I’m certain the same thing is true in areas of Pace that have had the rapid growth. We see the charts of where the building permits have been pulled over the last 10 or 15 years and it just stands to reason that some of those areas have some dirt roads that need to be paved perhaps more quickly or sooner than what the funds are being distributed would allow for.”

Let growth determine roadway funding, Goodin suggests.

“I think we’ve got to address that in these high concentration areas,” he told the Board.

“...I like the idea based on need, based on traffic counts, because it will adjust itself over the course of time, and ignore those artificial boundaries that we have set up many, many years ago. Generations ago.”

Not everybody agrees the system is unfair.

“There may be more equity in the system then what it appears just looking at the surface,” Whitfield remarks.

The county spends proportionately more; in labor and equipment, building south end MSBU roads, Whitfield contends. Last year, he says, the Public Works Department paved 8.5 miles in Broxson’s district.

“That’s by far more than we paved in any other commissioner’s district,” he notes.

“And when we do an MSBU, a lot of that cost is borne by the county. Because we’re providing all of the labor, and we’re providing all of the equipment at the county’s cost. You’re not seeing a dollar figure on that, it just comes out of our road and bridge budget.

“In effect,” Whitfield contends, “we are putting the effort, the resources from the road and bridge budget where the needs are.”

But south end residents pay more taxes, Goodin points out.

“I’d be very judicious where I’d use the argument that the county’s providing all that,” he remarked.

“Because even though there’s a little less than half the population in Commissioner Broxson’s district, they’re providing substantially more than half the ad valorem taxes that are collected in this county, so its almost getting them twice.

“You’re getting them on the MSBU and then they’re paying more than their proportionate share of the taxes as well.

“I wouldn’t go down south there and make that argument because they’re not going to like that, at all.”

Can't we all just get along?

The exchange resurrected the venerable topic of who’s subsidizing who as Santa Rosa grows.

“I distinctly remember that many years ago when I first moved to Santa Rosa county that a huge amount of revenue that supported this county came from Jay,” Commissioner Tom Stewart remarked.

But in the end, it’s all the same revenue pot, Stewart told the Board.

“It’s going to move back and forth -- and arguing where the taxes are paid or not paid is not productive to anything in this county or to any of the residents in the county,” he remarked.

“Regarding south end, north end, east end, west end; we don’t need to go down that route, every time we go down that route, somebody loses, were all elected by the county as a whole.”

Stewart points out that most of the county’s roadway resources focused on the south end, after 2005 storms.

“I believe it to be a fact that immediately after Hurricane Ivan there were roads erupted in the south end of this county—the streets were gone, they were disintegrated, they floated away,” Stewart recounts.

“And my road crew and other road crews in this county spent the first six or seven or eight months exclusively in the south end of this county while those situations in my district when untouched. And I applaud that. I support that because I knew how bad it was down there.”

“You’re actually making my point,” Goodin noted.

“That’s why we should do away with these artificial boundaries because we should treat it all as one, and set the priorities based on need. And as the need changes the priority will change with it.”

That’s already the case, Stewart maintains.

“MSBU process is MSBU process,” he remarked, “and its probably been more favoring the south end than it has the north end.”

“How does it favor anybody…they’re helping themselves?” Goodin replied.

“The MSBU does not pay for anything except the material,” Stewart explained. “The labor and the clay work and all that’s done by the county as a whole.”

Not everybody was convinced south end taxpayers are getting the short schrift.

“I remember not too many years ago you could drive all up and down Hwy. 98 and you saw very little population down there,” Salter recounted.

“Somehow those roads got paved down there for those people to move down there. And I would tell you that most of the population at that time was in the central part of the county.

“So nobody had a problem taking the tax dollars out of the central part of the county and building and paving roads in the south end so people could move there, so now why do you want to go back now and shift it away from there and take all the money to the south end?

“We can argue this thing all day long, but that’s the problem I’ve always had, population used to be in the central part of the county, taxpayers paid to put infrastructure in the south.”

“What infrastructure?” Goodin interjected. “Most of those roads have been paved in the last ten years -- that’s inaccurate. I can pack this house with people who have lived on clay roads as recently as five years ago.

“Some of the major roads down there were paid for by the taxpayers of this county back in the 70s and 80s, and built infrastructure down there,” Salter explained.

Goodin maintains those roads in question were actually state-funded projects.

“Doesn’t matter where the tax dollars come from,” Salter explained. “It’s all tax dollars and I’ve heard you say that before.”

“They were state roads,” Goodin clarified. “County dollars were not being allocated that way. They never were.”

Ultimately…the north end got the last word in.

“Put the infrastructure in and they will come,” Salter replied.

The Board did not make concrete plans to reexamine how County road repair funds are allocated.