Waiting for work to get going

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Waiting for work to get going

Opinions

Thursday, 21 January 2010 00:50

Osceola County officials say that after earlier delays they are back on track and ready to begin construction this month on three federally funded road-resurfacing projects.
The projects – Buenaventura Boulevard from Boggy Creek Road to the Osceola-Orange County line, Neptune Road from U.S. Highway 192 to Old Canoe Creek Road and John Young Parkway from U.S. Highway 192 to Carroll Street – involve $4.6 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus package.
In August, we reported that the county had fallen behind on completing construction plans, which are required by the U.S. Department of Transportation as part of project approval. A member of a Metroplan Orlando citizens advisory group came to us with his concerns about the delay, which is what prompted our story and then an editorial critical of county administration. Officials at the time admitted there had been delays, pointed to county layoffs as the culprit and promised to get the projects moving.
As a result of the hoopla, the county Public Works department put together a team of consultants and staff to speed up completion of the plans and help meet the Department of Transportation’s deadline and ultimately secure funding – and local jobs – for the three projects.
In response to all this, we don’t believe the county would have acted as quickly had the advisory board member not spoken up about the delay and we had not reported on it. There wasn’t a peep from county officials that the projects had been delayed because staff couldn’t get the paperwork done.
According to the latest Metroplan Orlando update, the projects were set to begin construction in mid-January, and be completed by March 31. Well, it is past mid-January. Resurfacing equipment is parked along John Young for that project, but as of Monday work had not started. And no equipment is in position along Buenaventura Boulevard.
We also wonder why the county ended up having to use consultants to get relatively simple plans for resurfacing projects completed. Other counties completed plans sooner than we did for projects that added road capacity, which involved much more engineering work.