County considers local road funding

The Santa Rosa County Commission could take South End carwash owners to the cleaners if it changes how it distributes funds for road paving and other improvements and maintenance.

"I'm ready to work together as five commissioners to try to look at transportation problems countywide and throw out the working districts,"  Commissioner Tom Stewart said Monday.

Proposed resolutions creating municipal services benefit units - MSBUs - for Fairmont Road, Tavira Street and Timber Land Road turned into a discussion of how the county funds road maintenance and improvements.

Currently, each of five  "working"  districts, based on equal lengths of road, receive equal shares of road funding. Commissioner Gordon Goodin, a Navarre resident, said rapidly changing demographics in the county's South End - Working District 5 - have created a situation in which some property owners receive fewer county services compared to property tax paid than property owners in other districts.

"I think it's an unfair situation that we ... require (South End property owners) to do an MSBU to get their roads paved,"  Goodin said.

MSBUs fund projects that benefit a narrowly defined segment of the local population. Property owners expected to benefit from the project are assessed a share of the cost, usually over a period of years.

For more details on this story, see the Aug. 14 issue of Navarre Press or subscribe to our online edition.