An update on road repaving from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) did not end well for the state agency representative. His presentation about the 11-mile repaving project was met with hostility from the members of the council – who want to see the roadway expanded – at the state’s cost.
Freeport City Council members lambasted Jordan Barnett, the Florida DOT-affiliated representative for the current delays and congestion on the main thoroughfare – especially where it intersects with State Highway 331. Councilwoman Elizabeth Brannon vented that it took her 15 minutes to drive the mile from her house to the council chambers for the council meeting. “I don’t think you understand, or DOT…can conceive how bad our traffic is here,” she said, “It’s absolutely horrendous what we have to deal with here.”
Now, she says the roads will get more congested, beginning at the end of next year. FDOT plans to start an $11 million repaving project from Business 331 in the middle of Freeport out east to Bruce and SR 81. The project includes some widening for turn lanes at Black Creek Boulevard and Windswept Boulevard.
What led to the presentation?
Freeport has more than doubled in population in the last decade – and has continued to grow more than four percent a year.
Despite the rapid growth, councilmembers complain state infrastructure simply has not kept up with the city’s needs.
City Attorney Clay Adkinson expressed concerns about communication and the infrastructure issues that the City is experiencing on State Highway 20. The amount of growth and development in the city is placing a heavy and unsustainable burden on the city’s two primary traffic arteries. (Hwy. 331 and Hwy. 20) The City Council is aware that those citizens who access Hwy. 20 are less than happy about the congestion that makes the task of going to the grocery store one of the biggest challenges for most every resident.
City Councilman Eddie Farris, in frustration with the “talk” that has taken place over the years with little or no action, said, “For years and years, FDOT would keep on saying, “Oh, we’re going to correlate [collaborate]. We’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. [But] you never see it. And here, just like Councilwoman Brannon said, ‘It’s frustrating.’ It’s frustrating our citizens when …this [Hwy. 20] is our main road, and Hwy 331, and we’re needing help, and it is a shame that we, as a city, have got to take our taxpayers’ money, our citizens’ money, to do something to a state road to try to alleviate and help with the traffic.” Farris spoke about traveling on vacation to South Florida with family and about seeing the many visible road improvements that are being made everywhere, but not in Waltheton County. He indicated that FDOT is not treating the City of Freeport fairly and the traffic issues are not a priority.
Councilwoman Elizabeth Haffner added her concerns about overdevelopment to the litany of critiques against state government in general. “We’ve tried to control the growth here as best as we can, but with the legislator bringing new bills … Florida wants to build, build, build, but there’s no money to then fix the roads…It’s all reactive. There’s no productivity, and I understand that’s the way that state government works. But we’re the ones that people are stopping in the grocery store, and everywhere I’m at, [saying] what are you [all] doing? Y’all are doing nothing…But when you can’t really deny anything because of what the legislators have done, then we’re still the ones stuck…in a mess here because of our growth that we’ve tried to control.”
