By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                A sizeable crowd appeared at Tuesday’s Levy County Commission meeting to voice strong opposition to a surprise state announcement last Friday that a toll road might be constructed through the county after all.

            When the state scrapped plans for the M-Cores toll roads last year, many thought plans for a four-lane highway through Levy County were ancient history and would die in the ashes of the public firestorm that erupted over the proposal.

            All of that optimism among local residents fighting to preserve their beloved farms, springs, hardwood forests, rivers, streams, and wildlife evaporated Friday when the state published a letter announcing a fresh effort to build a toll road through Levy and neighboring counties.

            The Nov. 12 letter announced that the Florida Department of Transportation and Florida Turnpike Enterprise would hold a kickoff meeting on Dec. 7 to discuss the Northern Turnpike Extension through Citrus, Levy, Marion, and Sumter Counties.

            Reacting to the letter, more than a hundred disgruntled residents poured into the county commission meeting room Tuesday to discuss a topic that wasn’t on the board’s agenda. Commissioners knew why the meeting room filled suddenly. The toll road was on everyone’s mind.

            County Commission Chairman John Meeks said he was as surprised as residents, by the turn of events, but promised he would let everyone speak in the public comment portions of the meeting.

            “This board doesn’t know any more than you all,” Meeks said. “We’re as much in the dark as you.”

            Residents politely but sternly asked commissioners to support their opposition to the turnpike extension. Commissioner Lilly Rooks, who had been the most vocal board member opposed to the M-Cores plan suggested writing a letter to DOT voicing the board’s opposition to a toll road.

            Commissioners instructed staff to write the letter. When asked by a reporter if the letter would express total opposition to any toll road being built through Levy County, or would it take a different approach and give voice to the possibility of allowing a toll road to be made part of an existing highway, as some in the audience had suggested, Meeks said he would defer to staff on how to write the letter.

            Meeks was visibly angered by the DOT letter that was emailed to the board’s administrative office at 11 a.m. Friday, too late for the board to take any action other than to stew over it until the board meeting on Tuesday.

            Along with the letter announcing the Dec. 7 meeting, the state included several “spaghetti maps” showing potential alignments for the toll road if it is ever constructed. The spaghetti maps only inflamed the anger of residents when they realized their homes or farms were in the target zone for possible toll road construction.

            Scott Osteen, who was announced earlier in the meeting as the new chairman of the Nature Coast Business Development Council, Inc., Levy County’s economic development agency, was the first to speak to the commission as a citizen and farmer opposed to the toll road passing through his family farm.

            “As a citizen of Levy County, our family has been here for a very long period of time. The proposed northern route goes across our family farm,” Osteen said. “I’m here for you guys. You tell me what I can do to help you and I’ll help you fight this anyway I can.”

            His comments were the opening volley of comments from the audience. He was loudly applauded.

            Morriston resident Diane Garte said she was against the Northern Turnpike Extension and all the alternative routes proposed by the state. She said any of the options would disrupt the environment and state lands designated for recreation use in Marion and Levy counties.

            “I especially oppose the alternative that would go through the Steeplechase neighborhood. I recently bought property in Steeplechase and am in the process of finishing house and barn construction. I specifically bought in this neighborhood to be able to ride my horses from my property and into Black Prong equestrian trail,” she said. “As would anyone, I have a huge investment of funds in my future. The alternative that would go through Steeplechase would destroy the environment and recreation use that almost everyone in the area utilizes. Please continue to review the alternatives that would not disrupt the lives of those who live in areas with access to recreation land who need rural environments, not to mention the impact to displaced wildlife that would result.”

            Bronson resident Robbie Blake, who lives on Chunky Pond, a large expanse of wetlands rich in wildlife species, said she would prefer the state funnel toll road traffic over the lightly used U.S. 19/98 highway in Levy County rather than build it through the pristine Waccasassa Flats that flows through the Bronson area to Chunky Pond and finally reaches its destination in the Waccasassa River.

            “We need that watershed for many reasons and it will destroy it. It will cut it in half and destroy the watershed. It will destroy wildlife and work against hunters. It will tear up the state forest,” she said, referring to Goethe State Forest.

            Blake, who has lived in the Bronson area for 42 years, said she knew the man who donated most of the land for the forest, James Goethe.

            “He donated that land in perpetuity as a wild place for people to go, and now a horse-riding lifestyle has built up around the forest. It is a traitorous act to destroy that,” she said. “It destroys farmland. It takes whole sections of land out of production. It destroys farming businesses. It destroys the tax base by taking these properties from the tax roll so you all have less money to work with.”

            “People’s homes are their only asset in this county mostly and they’re not going to receive a fair value if forced to move by eminent domain. We don’t need a toll road. What we need is internet.” The crowd erupted in applause.

            Her son, Tobias Pardue, a retired attorney, said the thought of having a 450-foot-wide right-of-way carved out of the Levy County landscape to make room for a four-lane toll road carrying high-speed traffic “is absolutely insane.” He said one of the maps shows the road separating a property he recently purchased and his mother’s home.

            “We all got to stand up against this thing,” he said.

            Laura Catlow, who said she lives in an area with much wildlife, said one of the maps produced by FDOT shows her driveway in the path of destruction from the toll road. She said wildlife lives on her property and she anticipates impacts on the wild critters.

            “Today I want to talk about the impacts on human life and the stress and fear caused by this threat. I’m sure it has been repeated across this county by people who have discovered this issue,” Catlow said. She said she is certain many people are unaware of the latest toll road proposal and she plans to tell people about the importance of the upcoming meeting.

            Brandon Peters, an attorney from Williston, said he represents people being impacted by the threat of losing their property to the toll road.

            “I represent people in this county who are going to have their land taken from them. No matter which of these spaghetti maps are forced upon us, I am one of the people under one of those (spaghetti) models,” he said. “I promise you; I promised the FDOT that the eminent domain procedures that you will bring will be long, drawn-out, and bloody. We will not fall over for this.”

            “When M-Cores advanced the same litany of garbage as a pretextual of excuses to do this to us and other counties, it was exposed for what it was – pretextual garbage,” Peters said. “Every newspaper that wrote about it said so. Every responsible person who studies it said so and here we have the same litany of pretextual garbage.”

            Peters said the question to the county commission is whether the citizens are “going to let a bunch of fat cat politicians from Tallahassee tread on us?”

            “No, no,” the crowd said.

            “Are we going to let a tycoon governor who doesn’t live in Levy County tread on us?” Peters said.

            “No, no,” the crowd said.

            Barbara Byram, representing Rural Levy Says No to Toll roads, an anti-toll road group affiliated with the No Roads to Ruin Coalition, said the organizations are part of 113 groups opposed to new road construction anywhere in the state.

            She said when the M-Cores group wrote the final report before the legislature repealed the program, it found no need for new roads and suggested the state look at improving and enhancing existing roads. It instructed FDOT to extend the Suncoast Connector to a northern location (which hasn’t been identified) as well as construct toll facilities along U.S. 19 all the way to the Georgia border.

            “So that’s why this is happening now? Our state legislature mandated what we’re seeing now. This is not work that comes from the Florida Department of Transportation, but from the Florida Legislature that has no clear background in assessing the needs for transportation in our state,” Byram said. “This is one of the reasons we stand against new road construction. In particular, here in Levy County, we are rural, we are agriculture, mariculture, timber, wetlands, state forests, we are industry and we are a playground. We are an important part of the Floridan Aquifer. We are a watershed. The water that we gather here in this county ends up coming out of the taps of people in the southern part of the state, so new construction would interfere with Levy County’s ability to provide water to other areas of the state.”

            Agriculture is the number two industry in the state. Agriculture is a big part of Levy County, she said. The state’s plan to promote economic growth by increasing the population is a conflict of ideas, she said, noting that if Levy County loses its farmland to population growth, the state loses valuable property to feed all those new people.

            “If all those new people move into our county we can’t do it,” she said.

            The organization, Rural Levy Says No to Toll Roads seeks to preserve the rural nature of Levy County. She thanked Commissioner Rooks for backing the group’s opposition to a new toll road in the first go-around with M-Cores.

            Byram spoke directly to John Meeks next, calling upon the commission chairman, who represents Levy County on the North Florida Regional Planning Council, to bring the toll road issue to the planning council for discussion.

            Her third request was for the county commission to place the toll road on the commission agenda for a future meeting.

———————–

Board of County Commission Regular Meeting November 15, 2021; Posted November 17, 2021