BOCC approves 2008-2009 budget and millage

CHIPLEY – The Washington County Board of County Commissioners approved the Fiscal Year 2008 – 2009 budget and millage after the final budget hearing Thursday evening. The budget totals $37.648 million and the millage rate per $1,000 is 8.087.

Florida Landings came before the Board to hold a public hearing in regards to their plans for developing 1,883 acres of land on the east and west sides of Buckhorn Boulevard, three miles west of U.S. 231, in the southeastern corner of Washington County.

The overall plan is to start building a community in that area by Spring 2009 and have stabilized the community’s self sufficiency in 10 years.

“Our main focus is building a ‘green community’ that is environmentally friendly and self-sustaining,” said Scott Henderson of the Henderson Planning Group. “There will be a school, businesses and the community will have a complete septic-sewer plant.”

Henderson said that the water from the community would be collected in reservoirs, cleansed and recycled to be used in the irrigation of the golf courses and other areas needing watered.

A 50-75-foot buffer would surround wetland areas and the gopher turtles would be relocated to a wild life conservation area to the south.

The Board approved sending the Development of Regional Impact (DRI) to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA). This will be one of the many steps involved in presenting, “brain-storming” and making revisions to plans for the development.

A Visioning Meeting will be held October 15, which will be an open discussion meeting between the development team of Florida Landing and citizens to form ideas and make revisions.

The Board approved adding the Public Schools Facilities Element to the Washington County Comprehensive Plan.

This process is normally approved by DCA after being adopted by the County and then required agreements would be negotiated.  But, in this case DCA requires the existing Interlocal Agreement approved in 2006 be amended after the approval of the amendment that would allow the Planning Office to add the Public Schools Facilities Element to the Comprehensive Plan. One of which was to amend the student capacity for grant applications to be strictly ‘brick and mortar’ classrooms and not portables.

County Engineer Cliff Knauer came before the Board with the project being done at Falling Waters.

“We’ve got a potential crisis on State Park Road regarding the construction of the Falling Water’s Bike Trail,” said Knauer. “There are ruts in the road that have nearly doubled in depth, making them about seven inches deep each.”

Knauer explained that it was probably a base failure and that they should repave the road from the base up. “If not, we’re going to be faced with the same problem every time we repave it,” he said. “It seems this same thing has been going on every two years since that road’s been paved and as far as I can tell it just means that the base itself is collapsing in areas.”

He said that some residents have noticed that it’s the same areas that are caving in every time the road has been repaved.
It appears that because of the road cracking, the constant rain that has been falling in that area was pooling water in the open cavities and the heat was expanding it to cause sinkholes in the road.

“We’ve got $5,000 left in the project’s funding for lighting, but I don’t know which you’d rather have, lighting or this problem fixed ahead of time,” Knauer said.

Chairman Joel Pate suggested that Knauer assess the damage, bring back estimates for repairs and further discussion would be made from there.