Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on transportation:
Should Hillsborough County pay to fix a state road? Commissioners don’t see eye to eye
Sunday, August 7, 2016 6:12pm
TAMPA — Hillsborough County Commissioner Stacy White has an unusual request for next year’s budget: He wants the county to pay for improvements to a state road that runs through his district.
White has proposed spending $877,875 on six intersections along Sun City Center Boulevard, also known as State Road 674, to help relieve congestion in southeast Hillsborough. With an Amazon distribution center in Ruskin, other nearby developments and the winter residents who flock to Sun City Center, White said, traffic is a permanent problem there.
Most of the road work amounts to extending turn lanes to prevent backups along SR 674.
“I don’t want to see us make the same mistakes with respect to growth management that we’ve made in other parts of the county,” said White, a Republican who campaigned for office as a fiscal conservative. “I want to make sure that we’re ahead of the curve here.”
But routes such as SR 674 are typically maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation. Some of White’s fellow commissioners are questioning why the county would pick up the tab.
“If the DOT thinks it’s worthy, then they can fund it,” said Commissioner Sandy Murman, also a Republican.
The state already has plans to repave SR 674 in 2018 so Sun City Center residents asked to have the intersections improved, too, while work is already under way.
After study, the FDOT determined that four of the 10 intersections between Cypress Village Boulevard and U.S. 301 met criteria for federal safety funds because of the high volume of accidents there.
But the other six intersections had so few rear-end collisions and sideswipes that it couldn’t qualify for federal assistance and the FDOT won’t pay to fix them with state money.
FDOT officials did tell White and the county that the state would include the remaining six intersections in the work plan for SR 674 if the county pays for them.
White called that a win-win.
“I just don’t want to miss the opportunity to partner with the state where they’re willing to work with us and get this all done in an efficient manner,” he said.
Commissioner Al Higginbotham, a Republican who represented White’s district before moving to a countywide seat in 2014, said that in his eight years representing east Hillsborough, no one told him these intersection projects were needed — including FDOT.
“I’m not sure why we’re paying for a state road. There’s no precedent for it,” Higginbotham said. “The people that were charged with the maintenance oversight don’t think it’s needed, it’s an option. So why are we paying for it?”
White’s SR 674 proposal is one of 16 facing an up-or-down vote in September when commissioners decide on last-minute expenses to include in next year’s budget. White has also asked for $1.08 million for an ambulance at the Fish Hawk fire station and $5,000 to help the Newsome High School marching band pay for its trip to New York City for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
There’s another element to the decision on SR 674: Hillsborough is weighing a new plan to pay for transportation projects by dedicating one-third of all new growth in county property and sales tax revenues to roads, bridges and transit.
Commissioners have not yet determined which transportation projects will get priority when money starts to come in. If approved, White’s project would essentially jump to the front of a line that stretches into hundreds of millions of dollars in needed road work.
Before White flagged it, fixing SR 674 was not on the county’s list of planned projects, said Mike Williams, director of transportation planning and development.
Murman said the county’s plan for fixing its transportation system should be thoughtfully laid out and not influenced by the individual interests of commissioners.
“I think the bane of our existence is pet projects,” she said.
Williams said fixing intersections along SR 674 would certainly relieve congestion there, calling the existing turn lanes problematic and outdated. It would be easier and probably cheaper, he added, to let the state handle it as White suggests while the road already is torn up.
He couldn’t say, though, whether it should be a higher priority than other road work the county has identified.
“It’s not a bad project,” Williams said. “We just have lots of needs.”
