By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Three couples who plan to build homes on a grassy field that was used for many years as a Williston High School football parking lot are running into problems trying to convince the city they shouldn’t have to build a sidewalk in front of their future homes that doesn’t really serve any useful purpose in their mind.
The vacant field has been converted to a four-lot subdivision known as Stadium View Acres behind Joyce Bullock Elementary School, but Jay Ronald and Jane Beasley, David and Miheala Butts, and Craig and Heather Hunter told city council members this week that building a five-foot-wide sidewalk that doesn’t connect to anything is expensive and pointless.
“For me, the sidewalk seems pointless. It’s from nothing to nothing. It doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It doesn’t hook to anything on either end,” said Pastor David Butts who is thinking about selling his lot to get away from all the obstacles and headaches associated with building a home at the site.
If the sidewalk was constructed, it wouldn’t connect to any other sidewalks in the neighborhood. On the west end, the sidewalk would dead-end at a clump of trees.
The Williston City Council told the couples the price estimate they received for building the sidewalk, $28,000, was excessive and they should look around for better quotes. Public Works Supervisor Donald Barber said he would be happy to give them a list of sidewalk contractors the city uses and they might be able to get a better price from one of those companies.
The couples were also told they would have to approach the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission about replating the subdivision’s map to remove the sidewalk as a required feature. Audience members estimated the cost of hiring a surveyor to replat the subdivision would be about $5,000. It was suggested they get a better sidewalk price first before going the replating route.
It was also suggested that they attend a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting and offer to discuss the removal of the sidewalk to get a feel for how commission members feel about the idea of removing the sidewalk before spending money for a replat. The commission can’t give them a formal answer in advance but it can give them a sense of where the board stands on the issue.
The plat for Stadium View Acres says that someone must build a sidewalk along the front of the four lots. It doesn’t specifically say who must build it, said Council President Debra Jones, but the three couples are interpreting the plat as saying they are responsible for building the sidewalk in the public right of way for SW 5th St.
Williston High School has been using the vacant field for high school football game parking for a couple of decades. Fans also used a second grassy field next door, which directly faces the Williston football stadium, for parking. The second field facing the stadium has been purchased by the Levy County School Board and will continue to serve as a public parking area. The field borders Dr. K. Reddy’s property on the west end and the clump of trees on the other.
Some football fans have ignored the fact that Stadium View Acres is a privately owned subdivision and have trampled no trespassing signs on the property and parked on the concrete pad for one of the future homes as if the grassy field is still a good spot for parking on Friday nights.
Councilman Zach Bullock said he watched as one football fan drove over a trespassing sign before a recent home football game.
“I saw him run over it. I saw him looking down and reading the no trespassing sign and then he went across the sign like it didn’t matter,” Bullock said.
Police Chief Mike Rolls said he would get in touch with the Levy County School District to work up some type of plan to protect Stadium View Acres from being used as a parking lot for football fans on Friday nights. Orange cones had been placed along the front of the subdivision in hopes of keeping people off the property on Friday.
Nothing was decided by the city council. Jones said the Planning and Zoning Commission, not the city council, is vested with the power to take the sidewalk off the subdivision map. She doesn’t know how the commission feels about the sidewalk or whether it would be willing to remove the sidewalk.
Jones said the subdivision and the sidewalk were discussed when she was a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission. She said the sidewalk was required because it was alongside the school and the thinking at the time was that residents and students could use the sidewalk to avoid having to walk on SW 5th Street.
Realtor Cookie King said the city has been inconsistent in requiring sidewalks for some subdivisions and not others. She cited five subdivisions that were approved after Stadium View Acres but weren’t required to have sidewalks. City Planner Laura Jones said most of the subdivisions King cited were lots and not subdivisions and are irrelevant.
The issue certainly isn’t dead.
Jay Ronald Beasley said he is willing to look for better sidewalk quotes and would be willing to talk to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission, but the cost of the sidewalk is far too high as it stands now. He said the high cost would add to the mortgage expense. He said the sidewalk would be built on the city right of way and the city should bear the cost of building it, not the homeowners in his view.
“This is going to be our retirement home. We budgeted a certain amount of money for the purchase of the property, the purchase of the home,” he said. “We found out later that a sidewalk would have to be built at the cost of the home builders, which is us.”
————————
City of Williston Regular Meeting October 4, 2022; Posted October 8, 2022
