Toll road debate continues unabated

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

Jefferson County Commission Chairwoman Betsy Barfield recently came under fire at a board meeting because of her absence from a public forum on the proposed toll road, the opposition to which continues unabated.
On Thursday evening, Nov. 7, Michele Arceneaux, of Concerned Citizens Committee of Jefferson County, a group that opposes the Suncoast Connector, accused Barfield of cowardice for not attending the forum and called for the latter's resignation.
“You are fully aware of the will of the people and yet you downplay the opposition to the task force,” Arceneaux said. “If you can't honestly represent the people you should resign the task force and your commission position. We want someone who represents us.”
Barfield apologized for not attending the forum that the Jefferson County Republican Party had hosted on the previous week, but she assured Arceneaux that she had no intention of resigning the task force or her commission seat.
“I don't plan to resign,” said Barfield, who is Jefferson County's representative on the Suncoast Connector Task Force, the advisory board helping guide the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) on the the toll road that stands to impact Jefferson County – one of three proposed corridors that officially are called Multi-Use Corridors of Regional Significance (M-CORES).
The SunCoast Connector is an extension of the Suncoast Parkway, which presently terminates in Citrus County. The legislation that lawmakers approved in the last session calls for this road to cross Jefferson County on its way north into Georgia and beyond.
The local opposition to the road centers on its potential to harm the county's natural environment, the downtown's economic vitality and residents' quality of life in general.
Doug Darling, president of Citizens for Responsible Government of Jefferson County, was another who took Barfield to task for not attending the forum and suggested that resignation might be in order.
“We need to have another forum and you need to be there,” Darling said. “If not, you need to resign.”
Others of the several citizens who addressed the issue included Mike Willis, Jack Carswell, Byron Arceneaux and Phil Calandra.
Willis, whose Jefferson County roots date to the 1800s, started out by defending Arceneaux.
“Michele didn't want to say what she said, but she felt it needed to be said,” Willis said.
He called the forum a joke, given that it was supposed to have been to inform citizens about the toll road and the county's other controversial project – the proposed high-voltage transmission line – only to have four of the five advertised speakers not show up.
Willis asserted that the overwhelmingly majority of county residents opposed the toll road. People in Jefferson County, he said, didn't take kindly to being told what to do, even if came from legislators.
“We're different here,” Willis said. “We're not used to having people telling us what to do. I ask that you take a stand against the toll road the same as you have on the transmission line.”
He was referring to the high-voltage transmission line that NextEra plans to run across the county, against which project the commission has hired an attorney to fight, even if it requires going to federal court.
Willis urged the commission at minimum to pass a resolution asking the Legislature to remove Jefferson County as the named terminus for the Florida leg of the new road.
“As a native of Jefferson County, I don't want to see myself staring across the turnpike one day and saying, 'Where the hell was our leadership?'” Willis said.
Calandra, the sole citizen to speak in favor of the road – or more accurately, question the size and motive of the opposition – brought down some fire on himself.
“I think it has a role to play in the county's future,” Calandra said of the road, adding that as vocal as the opposition group was, it didn't represent the entire county.
He likewise took issue with the results of the poll conducted by the Monticello News relative to the toll road, which found that 92 percent of the 1,609 people who voted online or in person at the newspaper office, opposed the road.
“What concerns me is the misrepresentation that everyone in the county is against the road, and that's not so,” said Calandra, questioning if the poll results had been vetted to determine how many out-of-county people had cast votes.
He labeled the opposition as a well-funded special interest group with an agenda of its own.
Calandra's remarks drew an immediate rebuttal from Carswell, who is also deeply rooted in the county.
A self-described retiree and “busybody” who regularly roamed the county visiting friends and family, Carswell said he could vouch for the widespread opposition to the toll road.
“I can tell you that my friend Mr. Calandra doesn't know what he's talking about,” Carswell said good-naturedly. “The 1,609 people in the survey, that's a pretty good representation of 10 percent of the people in the county.”
Byron Arceneaux also took issue with Calandra's representation that the survey had not been vetted and the results were somehow skewed by the votes of out-of-county residents. His wife Michele, he said, had taken the trouble to examine the online votes and stripped out those that weren't from the county.
And when one did, he said, the number who voted in favor of the toll road actually dropped in number. The overwhelming majority of people, Byron asserted, had in fact voted against the project.
Darling, meanwhile, suggested that Calandra might be complicit in a group that was apparently promoting the toll road, based on the content of postcards mailed from an address associated with an economic development group.
“I find it ironic that Mr. Calandra is impugning the survey results when his name is listed with the group,” Darling said.
Calandra denied having any knowledge of whatever postcards might have been mailed. But one thing he knew, he said, was that it felt like the opposition was a well-orchestrated and well-funded interest group that didn't represent everyone.
“It's what special interests do,” he said. “Some people tell me this is the best thing that can happen for the county.”
Which latter comment triggered another onslaught of comments and refutations from opponents of the project, including Jana Grubbs, Susan Stubbs and Justin Johnson. All told, the discussion on the toll road took up a good portion of the commission meeting, even though the item was not even listed on the agenda.