The Board of County Commissioners held its final meeting of 2024 on Dec. 17 and laid out its legislative priorities requests for 2025.
With the BOCC reaching a consensus, those requests will be given to the county’s legislative delegates, outlining what projects and bills the BOCC would like them to present at the next legislative session.
Atop the list are improvements planned for the intersection of Cortez Boulevard and Barclay Avenue. Considered a critical point of traffic flow, particularly during an emergency evacuation, the county is requesting funding to improve the capacity, safety and traffic operation of the intersection to ensure a more efficient evacuation process.
The request is for $7,500,000, which the county will match in full. Design plans will be finished by the summer with construction expected to begin late in 2025 or early 2026. This project is also part of a larger initiative to improve the State Road 50 corridor from Hernando County to Orange County.
Improvements to other intersections of concern within the county, such as Ayers Road and Culberth Road or Anderson Snow Road and Corporate Boulevard, are also in the works. However, right-of-way acquisitions have already been made for Cortez-Barclay, placing it at the front of the line.
“The reason I went with this one is: 1. Primarily, we have the match and 2. It’s going to be construction ready,” said Scott Herring, the county’s director of public works/county engineer, speaking to the BOCC. “Ayers and Culbreth is still in design. We have to go through right-of-way acquisition. This is doable. We’ve got Anderson Snow and Corporate, which we’ve got another grant from the DOT. We’re just getting ready to go to construction, which will show that we’re actually spending the department’s money.
“So with the timeframe on Cortez and Barclay, I think it’s a very good candidate because we’ll have the construction plans ready to go. I’ve already got the right-of-way. Bid it out toward the end of ’25, starting in 2026, because we won’t have the agreement from the state to even get the funding until the fall of 2025 if it’s approved as a legislative request.
“What I’m trying to get us back to is showing the governor and the Department of Transportation that if you give us money, we’ll spend it relatively quickly. Because that’s a key point in them looking into whether or not to give future grants.”
Still, the Ayers-Culbreth intersection drew considerable discussion, especially after the mention of three significant accidents in the past six weeks at the intersection came up during public comments. There are plans in place to build a roundabout at the intersection, which commissioners and Herring agreed was the safest solution.
“Both those roads are in my district, but this Board fully supports addressing both of those roads,” Commissioner Jerry Campbell said. “It just takes time, unfortunately. My daughter travels that way to go to Lakeland, I travel that way to visit her. I am well aware. It’s horrible, and one injury and one life is one too many. I couldn’t agree with you more. I promise you it’s a priority. It just takes time, unfortunately.”
As for Anderson Snow-Corporate, it too will come before Ayers-Culbreth simply due to its readiness. Herring said bids are being analyzed and that should be presented to the BOCC in January.
“That’s a go,” Herring said. “If I stop that project now, I will lose that money. That was one of the last Small County Outreach Programs we got, so we would not be able to reprogram the money that the state is giving us and the state is giving us over $5 million on that intersection.”
Other legislative priorities include $2 million for the Hernando Beach Wastewater Resiliency Project. That money, along with $1.3 million from the county, would be used to upgrade and repair the conventional gravity sanitary sewer system in Hernando Beach. Those improvements would help mitigate the impacts of stormwater infiltration and enhance the resilience of the community’s wastewater infrastructure.
There will be a request for $7.1 million from the state to go along with $1,010,000 from the county for the construction of the first phase of a public safety training center. The purpose is to provide an adequate local facility to train law enforcement, fire and EMS personnel throughout the region.
Other requests are for $12 million to build an Emergency Operations Center and $2,860,000 for a new medical examiner’s office.
The final request was for $1 million to replace the two generators at Challenger K-8, which serves as a special needs storm shelter. Both the county and the School Board would kick in $500,000 apiece.
