Infrastructure, grant funding chief concerns in Lee County for 2015

LEESBURG — Lee County’s elected officials did not get real specific with their wish lists for their state legislators Monday night, but they left no doubt they could use some grant assistance to accomplish their “to-do” lists in 2015.

Members of the Lee County Commissi0n, Lee County Board of Education, Leesburg City Council and Smithville City Council gathered at Grand Island Golf Club Monday evening to meet with state Rep. Ed Rynders, R-Leesburg, and State Sen.-elect Greg Kirk. Kirk, R-Americus, who won the election this year to replace veteran John D. Crosby of Tift County as lawmaker from Senate District 13.

Both Rynders and Kirk pledged to work with the individual agencies represented at the meeting, but Rynders said, as always, the state budget determines what can be funded.

“It always about the budget,” Rynders said. “That’s the only bill we have to pass.

“The governor is talking about juvenile justice reform (during the 2015 General Assembly) and he’s talking about re-examining at the educational funding formula. There’s a study committee relating to sales tax or revenue enhancement for the Department of Transportation … there’s a lot of big items.”

Rynders said officials may have to “lower the bar of expectations.”

He encouraged Lee officials, however, to be proactive in seeking whatever grants may be available.

“No one ever bats at thousand, but I tell people to keep things in the pipeline,” he said.

Kirk, who takes office in January, said Lee County is one of nine counties in his district.

“There are a lot of good things happening here,” he said. “Lee has a unique niche in the area … with lots of possibilities.

“Collaboration is the key. The more you collaborate and come together, you find out we have common issues. When we come together, we can accomplish a whole lot more,”

Rick Muggridge, chairman of the Lee County Commission, told Rynders and Kirk that roads, building maintenance and infrastructure improvements will dominate his group’s budget and efforts in the coming year.

“We have responsibility as conservatives to take care of things that have been entrusted to us,” Muggridge said. “Some of those things are the roads and buildings. That is reflected a great deal in our budget this year. I think 2015 will be a lot about roads and about buildings and water and sewer infrastructure.”

Muggridge said Lee County has 511 miles of roads, with 23 of those miles maintained by cities in the county and another 93 by the state. The other 395 miles of roadway are maintained by the county, he said.

“They say pavement lasts about 30 years,” he said. “If we replaced all of our pavement every 30 years, we’d need to resurface about 13 miles of road annually. In the last three years, we have resurfaced a total of four miles. That is why this Board of Commissioners took the painful step, so we could resurface more roads.”

The “painful step” referenced by Muggridge was an increase to the tax millage rate this year.

Lee hopes to resurface six miles of roadway in the next six months, Muggridge said.

“We’ll begin at Lovers Lane, Doublegate, Stocks Dairy Road and New York,” he said.

Emphasis also will be placed on maintenance of the county’s 26 buildings, maintenance that commissioners say has been delayed in recent years in an effort to hold down spending and the tax rate.

Muggridge said emphasis will be placed on the Lee County Courthouse to “make it the source of pride it should be.”

Muggridge said Lee County hopes to get a state grant to make sewer system improvements in the neighborhoods of Glendale, Raintree/Creekwood and Lehigh Acres.

“We’re also going to lobby hard for the Dougherty County section of the Westover road extension,” he said, noting it’s the No. 1 project on the long-range priority list by the Dougherty Area Regional Transportation group.

“That will be good for Lee County,” he said, “and good for Dougherty as well,”

The extension would include a cut-though for traffic, connecting the Albany Mall area to Ledo Road and Lee County.

Sylvia Vann, chair of the Lee County Board of Education, told the legislators that the bond referendum passed by Lee voters in May has allowed the School Board to make several significant improvements, with more on the way.

“We’re adding 1,300 computers in our schools,” she said. “That means an additional lab in every school with the high school adding two new labs.”

The school system also made significant improvements to its atheltic facilities including a new artificial turf football field and new bleachers for the Lee County High School gymnasium.

Vann said one of the major additions during the year will be a multi-purpose facility which will be located at the north end of the football field, but attached to the main school structure.

The facility will include locker rooms, a weight room, space for cheerleading practice, coaches offices, classrooms and meeting rooms.

“We hope to do the bidding on this in February or March,” Vann said.

Vann said the school system wants to build an eight-court tennis complex in Leesburg to be used by the school system and the community. She said funding assistance will be sought from the Lee County Commission and the Leesburg City Council.

Leesburg Mayor Jim Quinn said the city is using a combination of state grant funds and local dollars to make significant improvements in its water system, including the construction of a 250,000-gallon water tower to replace an existing 100,000-gallon tower. Those improvements should provide a significant difference in the water pressure for some Leesburg residents.

Quinn said the city hopes to complete construction of a new public works building and initiate long-awaited renovation work at the train depot in downtown Leesburg. Also, he said, the north bypass should be completed by the end of 2015 to alleviate school traffic congestion in the downtown area.

“Downtown Leesburg should look different a year from now,” he said.

Smithville Mayor Jerry Myrick said the City Council plans to continue to seek grants to make infrastructure improvements in 2015.