During Tuesday’s Milton City Council meeting, the last before the newly elected members’ swearing-in, Mayor Guy Thompson brought a resolution to the council declaring the council’s support for widening Highway 90 through downtown Milton and it passed eight to one. Expanding Highway 90 is an option in the Florida Department of Transportation’s (FDOT) Project Development and Environment (PD&E) study looking at ways to relieve traffic congestion on Highway 90. The three options heretofore for Highway 90’s expansion were Monroe Street, Berryhill Street and expanding Highway 90 to four lanes.
Thompson said he, City Manager Brian Watkins, and City Planning Director Randy Jorgenson a year and a half ago spoke with FDOT District 3 Secretary Tommy Barfield advocating moving the study forward. Thompson said the original time frame of the study was set for 2035, the year Amy Wiwi, with Metric Engineering, the consulting firm handling the PD&E study, declared U.S. 90 would fail. Barfield moved the $2 million study forward and it is currently underway. “We can’t afford to wait on an alternate route,” Thompson said.
Mainstreet Milton, a nonprofit 501C3 organization funded through public and private funds, is confusing the issue according to Thompson. Mainstreet Milton sent a letter to FDOT Secretary Ananth Prasad July 15, this year, advocating for a southern route, circumventing downtown and going through lands preserved by Florida Forever. The letter, in short, said the costs and environmental concerns may be overcome. For the Highway 87 connector, it stated, “the least expensive route was not the one chosen. Cost was considered, but it was not the deciding factor. Thus, it should not hold a disproportionate amount of weight in the Highway 90 decision.”
As to crossing wetlands, the Mainstreet letter sited Florida statute governing state lands, providing a pay clause for use of those lands where money may be paid to mitigate the problem. The letters says two significant islands on the river need protection and are for sale.
“You cannot do that with historical district. You can’t pick it up and move it,” the letter states. Sammy Carroll, president of Main Street Milton signed the letter.
Thompson said the motivation for the southern route is personal gain with members of Mainstreet Milton and the Santa Rosa Historical Society holding property along the proposed route. He also said the southern route was no longer an option and the Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) agreed to reject the recommendation made by two other organizations, the Citizens Advisory Committee and Bicycle Pedestrian Committee, chaired by Mac Thetford Wednesday morning.
Vernon Compton, president of the SRHS, board member of Citizens Advisory Committee, and secretary for Mainstreet Milton cited the 2,008 signatures collected physically and electronically in support of saving the downtown area from any action by widening Highway 90 through downtown.
“All we ask is for the southern route to be included in the study,” Compton said. He said it was hard to understand why the city would support a route possibly destructive to historic property in Milton. “The process is not being allowed to work,” he said.
Look for more on this story as it unfolds.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Southern bypass route no longer an option