by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Mayor John Peyton is ready to get the Better Jacksonville Plan back on the roads again.
Peyton’s staff is working with City Council auditors to put the finishing touches on a reworked, $830 million road construction and renovation bill. The new bill redirects where the City will spend its money. The severely over budget overpasses planned for southeast Jacksonville are being reconsidered while local roads have been bumped to the top of the pecking order.
“We made a decision that local roads had to be first in line,” said Brad Thoburn, the mayor’s chief of state and federal affairs. “Those projects have been on the books for a while now unfunded, and we thought that was an important part of the promise of the Better Jacksonville Plan was to clear out those backlogs.”
And there’s a practical reason why those projects need to come first, said Thoburn. While the City hopes to receive state and federal funding for state roads, local roads will have to be improved on the City’s dime.
“Nobody else is going to pay for them,” said Thoburn.
Some of those road projects have been expanded in scope, while others have been trimmed to provide the funding. The mayor’s bill also transfers surplus funds from completed projects.
For instance, the St. Augustine Road expansion from Hood Landing to Interstate-95 has been increased in scope from a three-lane to a five-lane expansion at an added cost of $5.3 million. That money will come from trimmed down projects like a proposed Hood Road extension. The rework eliminates a section from Shad to Sunbeam road at a savings of $4.8 million.
The mayor’s office is still working with Council auditors to work out the logistics involved in shifting funds among construction projects funded by the voter-approved BJP bond issue.
But that work is almost done and the mayor’s staff is optimistic that the bill could move quickly through the Council once it’s taken up later this month. Thoburn predicted the bill could pass at the Council’s Nov. 22 meeting.
“We’d like to have it done in the next month,” said Thoburn. “It’s been in the Council’s hands for a good, long while and they’ve had plenty of time to kick it around.”
Thoburn said the version of the bill being readied for Council was prepared with input from Council auditors and individual Council members. The scope of the projects was realigned using JTA traffic counts, projections and models.
A quick turnaround is important to get needed infrastructure projects back on track, said Thoburn. But there are financial implications as well. With construction costs climbing, further delays will end up further eating into the project’s bottom line.
“At some point, if we don’t pass the rework, it will impact some of the projects, but we’re not there yet,” said Thoburn.