County Commissioner Rock Meeks shows a map of the Suncoast Parkway study area colored in yellow. Commissioner Matt Brooks is on the right.

By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Levy County Commissioners walked away from an Aug. 27 Florida Turnpike task force meeting wondering why the state provided little guidance on where it plans to build an extension of the Suncoast Parkway other than from Citrus County north to the Georgia border.

            Commissioner Matt Brooks said State Senate President Bill Galvano told local elected officials and others serving on three turnpike task force groups they would be responsible for taking charge of the projects from this point forward without providing any details.

            “Mr. Galvano pretty much got up and said, hey, we’ve brought it this far; now it’s the task force’s job to take it the rest of the way. I was kind of dumbfounded to be honest with you. I didn’t know it was my responsibility make this happen,” Brooks said.

            Brooks was appointed by the county commission to serve on the Suncoast Connector Task force. The Suncoast Parkway toll road currently extends from the Veterans Expressway in Tampa to State Road 44 in Citrus County. The state plans to extend the Suncoast Parkway north to the Georgia line.

            Brooks, speaking at Tuesday’s county commission meeting, said Levy County officials were given a map showing a broad Suncoast Parkway study area colored in yellow – which includes Citrus, Levy, Dixie, Gilchrist, Lafayette, Taylor, Jefferson and Madison counties. The map was missing proposed routes through those counties.

            County Commissioner Rock Meeks was appointed to serve on the Northern Turnpike Connector Task Force, which is studying the extension of the Turnpike from its northern terminus at Wildwood westward to the coastal area. Meeks was given a Northern Turnpike Connector map showing the study area as encompassing Citrus, Levy, Marion and Sumter Counties. The study area is painted in green. The map showed no proposed routes.

            A third study area, which doesn’t affect any northern counties, is the Southwest Central Connector, which is a separate task force. The Southwest Connector would be constructed through the counties of Polk, Hardee, DeSoto, Highlands, Charlotte, Glades, Lee, Henry and Collier. The map showed no potential routes.

            Brooks said the Aug. 27 task force meeting was chaotic when groups wishing to publicly comment on the studies rushed from room to room trying to get time on the microphone.

            “There were literally people running in and gasping for air to get to the microphone to speak. It was a little odd,” he said.

            Brooks said the two task forces that he and Rock Meeks are involved in, are required to complete their reports by October of 2020. The state wants to break ground by Dec. 31, 2020, with the projects completed by 2030.

            “This is a 300 mile stretch of road. It’s going to touch a lot of counties; It’s going to touch a lot of sensitive areas,” Brooks said. “I don’t know where we’re going with this now. I’m not sure, still, what’s being asked of us as a task force.”

            Brooks said a tentative public meeting is set for Oct. 23 in the College of Central Florida Conference Center. An Oct. 24 community open house is planned in Dixie County. Both meetings will involve taking public input on the Suncoast Connector.

            He said state officials appeared to place a great deal of emphasis on how the Wekiva Parkway was constructed south of Levy County and how elevated corridors for wild animals to pass through were built in environmentally sensitive areas.

            “They really hit on that road hard, so to me it was almost a sign of – this is what’s going to happen; this is what we’re going to do; here’s our road that we’ve constructed to show how it’s done,” Brooks said.

            Brooks said state officials often used the terms “multi-modals and multi-use” when describing the toll roads. They talked a lot about transit, high speed internet and economic development, hitting on topics that rural Florida counties have lobbied for over the years.

            “But there’s still no meat and potatoes to say, what does that really mean for Levy County. Is that going to be one interchange and some development? What does that mean? What does that mean for us,” Brooks said. “I can’t even sit with our county planner and bring suggestions for our board if we don’t know where it’s going because we don’t know about the zoning, land uses that would have to be changed. If we wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, the impacts on populations, property values; there was a not a whole lot of meat and potatoes for us.”

            He said Citrus County officials were vocal and spoke in favor of extending the Suncoast Parkway north.

            “They were very pro – let’s get this road going. Don’t let it sit in Citrus County,” he said.

The Suncoast Parkway currently dead-ends at SR 44 in Citrus County.

Commission Chairman John Meeks said he wasn’t surprised to hear that Citrus County is strongly in favor of extending the parkway north through their county.

            “Part of that is selfish because it’s dumping these people out in the middle of their county. They want it to keep going,” he said.

            Meeks said Levy County is being placed in an extremely difficult position. He said the county is being asked to support a project without knowing much about the proposed route.

            “At the end of the day the state knows what they want to do, they know what they want to accomplish and you are seeing a lot of that in these early meetings – no proposed route,” Meeks said. So how do you fight it? How do you support it? How does this board say, hey, we think this is a great idea?”

            Brooks said he doubts one road construction company would be hired to build the full 300-mile Suncoast extension. He believes several companies would be hired and there would be multiple construction starting points.

            He said the Florida Department of Transportation, which is in charge of all three of the task force groups, plans to send out a formal summary of what took place at the Aug. 27 meeting.

            Commissioner Rock Meeks said he was surprised when Galvano made a statement in the task force meeting indicating the entire state would be on central sewer. He doubted that plan would be practical in rural Levy County where many of the residential land parcels are 20 acres and many people live in poverty.

            “I saw that they were setting people up for failure as far as that goes,” Meeks said. “I think they are trying to drag way too much into this road corridor. I think the internet is great, but they need to leave sewer out of it.”

            Meeks said 44 people sit on the Northern Turnpike Connector Task Force but only four of them are county commissioners. All the members will have input into the final task force report.

            “You have other people that’s going to forward information to dictate where this road goes through a county they don’t live in,” Meeks said. “It seems like the weeds got so tall in that meeting, I don’t see how they’ll have anything written down by Oct. 1, 2020. Are we going to have any input where the road goes to; no, we’re not going to have no charts, no graphs; we’re not going to put any pencil on paper where the road goes.”

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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting September 10, 2019; Posted September 15, 2019