For the second year in a row, the Polk County Commission was presented with a long list of road construction “needs” that sound a lot like economic development wants to open large tracts of rural lands for development and to renew efforts to turn the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern into a busy freight route instead of a network of local rural roads along a major statewide wildlife corridor.
The presentation came during the commission’s annual retreat.
The freight route involves an estimated $170 million plan to realign Deen Still Road to reduce the sharp curves and flooded areas that slow down truck traffic and to construct a direct route through conservation lands—including a portion of Colt Creek State Park—to get to U.S. 98 more quickly.
This idea was first broached about 50 years ago when the Florida Department of Transportation oversaw most of Florida’s paved road network.
It coincides with a current FDOT plan to widen the section of U.S. 98 along the edge of the Green Swamp north of Lakeland and northward into Dade City across the headwaters of the Hillsborough River to facilitate truck traffic.
One of the new road projects involves another Green Swamp highway that would extend what is now a dead-end road called Sanders Road west of U.S. 27 to somewhere along Polk City Road, perhaps at the edge of Holiday Manor, a Black residential community, or farther north at the edge of Hilochee Wildlife Management Area Keep an eye on who owns property along the route.
The same goes another “need,” which involves an economic development project that seems to mesh with Haines City’s development ambitions. That involves extending Power Line Road in a southwesterly direction through rural lands to eventually connect to Scenic Highway at the southern edge of the city’s industrial park and any other potential development plans it will enable along the way and northwesterly to the north side of Davenport along the U.S. 17-92 corridor through more future subdivision sites. The estimated price tag is $171 million and probably likely to increase.
These “needs” contrasts better-documented more tangible needs in existing developed areas such as the Lakeland suburbs around West Pipkin Road and the Winter Haven suburbs along Thompson Nursery Road/Eloise Loop Road.
How will Polk County pay for all of this, you might ask.
An idea floated last year and again this year for a sales tax referendum appears dead on arrival at the moment. Check back in 2024.
That leaves two other options. One involves a plan to consider increasing transportation impact fees, which can be spent only for new projects, not fixing problems that were ignored in the past. Those fees have not been updated since 2019.
Another idea is to shift how property tax revenue will be apportioned after the road budget took over a portion of the voter-approved environmental lands referendum levy several years ago.
It was interesting that today’s presentation didn’t include a discussion of what that means to the funding of other county functions and services.
That is, if subsidizing new deveIopment is the winner, who’s the loser?
Stay tuned.