Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The Jefferson County Commission has now adopted a resolution expressing opposition to the Suncoast Connector toll road and requesting that the state not build any portion of the proposed highway in Jefferson County.
The “No Build” resolution that the commission adopted 4-1 on Thursday evening, Dec. 17 (Commissioner Gene Hall’s was the dissenting vote), marked a departure from more than a year ago, when a majority of the board voted down a similar measure.
The change in attitude resulted in large part from the board’s altered composition, as newly elected Commissioner Chris Tuten introduced the resolution, which got strong pushback from Commissioner Betsy Barfield.
Barfield, who served as this county’s representative on the multimember task force that helped set the guidelines for construction of the controversial road, said she didn’t have a problem with the resolution per se. But she objected strenuously to portions of the document that she said were unnecessarily offensive to the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and the Legislature.
On which two organizations, she reminded her colleagues, Jefferson County relied upon heavily for road improvement funding and general appropriations, respectively.
“I believe that if we’re going to vote for a “No Build” option, that should be the only language in the resolution,” Barfield said. “Much of this language here is conjecture that we have heard from the public.”
Barfield proposed the removal of several of the resolution’s paragraphs, particularly those that alluded to the state and FDOT as forcing the road on Jefferson County, even though it would harm the local economy, result in low or temporary wage jobs or a combination of the two and cause a decline in the sales of existing businesses, among other negatives.
“I want us to be more gentle in our language and more conscious of who our partners are,” Barfield said, suggesting that the strong language might prompt the state and FDOT to retaliate against the county when it came to funding requests.
What’s more, she said, the resolution did not reflect the many county residents who supported the proposed road.
Commissioner J. T. Surles disagreed, arguing that the resolution had wide citizen support as it stood.
“The way that this board voted the first time was not the voice of Jefferson County,” Surles said, referring to the similar measure that he proposed more than a year ago. “I can produce hundreds of emails of people who are against the road, versus those people who are for it.”
Barfield continued to argue for the softening of what she saw as the resolution’s harsh tone. The FDOT, she said, took communities’ input seriously. As it was, the agency was considering three exits in Madison County and one in Jefferson County as the terminus for the highway. The county had merely to convey its “No Build” desire to the FDOT and the agency would respond appropriately.
“I’m asking us to pare down the language and simply say “No Build” and the FDOT will take it seriously,” she said.
Tuten offered that he and several citizens had already modified the resolution’s language, in effect toning it down.
“This is way better than the original,” he said, suggesting that the language may well have been more potent initially.
Local businessman and outspoken Suncoast Connector opponent Mike Willis was one of two citizens to address the board. The other was B.J. Nelson, president of the Aucilla Shores Homeowners Association.
Willis said the resolution needed to be strongly worded, as the point was to send a clear message to the powers that be in Tallahassee that the informed citizens of Jefferson County didn’t want the toll road.
As for offending the legislators, Willis noted that State Representative Jason Shoaf had earlier that evening expressed his singular opposition to the Suncoast Connector.
“Shoaf is against it, and he’s the one I want to try to appease,” Willis said.
Nelson asked the commissioners to consider if anyone of them would want to have the road within proximity of their houses.
“You folks don’t want to see or hear it anymore than we do,” she said. “We want the resolution to be strong, because we want them to know that we don’t want the road in this county. A strong resolution will tell them we don’t want the road.”
Barfield wasn’t dissuaded from her opposition to the strong language.
“I support the “No Build” option,” she said. “But I think the language is offensive. It doesn’t have to have language like this.”
In the end, however, she voted for the measure, if reluctantly.
The two-page resolution states that Jefferson County places great value on its cultural, historical, agricultural and archeological resources and the roles that these attributes play in sustaining the community’s rural lifestyle and heritage.
It further holds that while the community supports economic development and job creation that is organically grown, it opposes the “forced economic development” that the Suncoast Connector would bring.
Which forced development, the resolution holds, would result in low wage and/or temporary jobs, would not address the lack of a trained and ready workforce and would cause a decline in sales and decreased business activity to existing local businesses. While at the same time, the resolution argues, the road would cause local dollars to be spent at national chain businesses, “profiting owners and shareholders outside of the community.“
The resolution goes on to recognize the growth that the downtown is experiencing as a result of private and public investments, business development and travelers and local citizens’ support.
It further argues that the Suncoast Connector would create a necessity for additional infrastructure to move traffic north, in the process creating the need for a bypass around the town, depriving it of the needed traffic to sustain the community.
Not to mention that the road would create a situation that would require the local citizenry to pay for the additional infrastructure, law enforcement, emergency and other essential services that it would necessitate.
And in the end, the road would create undesirable development pressure, including loss of agricultural lands and causing changes to the overall character of the area, the resolution states.
Approved by the Florida Legislature in 2019 and soon after approved by the governor, the legislation provided for construction of three separate toll roads, officially called Multi-use Corridors of Regional Economic Significance (M-CORES).
One of the roads, the Suncoast Connector, is slated to extend from Citrus County to Jefferson County, which the legislation identifies at its terminus. The legislation calls for all three roads to be constructed by 2030.