City of Milton Mayor Wesley Meiss plans to seek the council’s input on pursuing road repair work during next week’s Executive Committee Meeting on May 4th. The mayor wants the council’s input on implementing a strategy in order to repair city roads in need of refurbish or resurfacing.
“This is something the community has said that they want, they want to see some roads paved,” Meiss said. “There is a lot of roads that need attention.”
Meiss wants to explore funding options and set a schedule to repair each road project a little bit at time.
“There is (no road work) listed for the fiscal year 2015, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be,” he said.
Meiss wants to discuss funding options with the council and city staff. Among those options are to seek grant funding, or using surplus or reserve funds from the city’s fiscal budget to assist with repair work.
“Sometimes, we have money left over,” Meiss said. “If it looks like we have some money, then we could go ahead and take care of some of these projects.”
The city staff provided a list of city roads stating the condition of all city roadways, from ‘Poor’ to ‘Excellent.’ A highly listed road on top of the city’s concern’s is Alabama Street.
“Alabama (street) is an expensive one, because it is so long,” he said. “It’s probably the number one street that (Milton residents) agree that needs some mill work and resurfacing to be done.”
Alabama Street is just among many Milton roads listed as ‘poor’ by city staff. Other options could be repairing roads in residential areas. Among the list are 76 city roads listed as poor.
Meiss said funding to repair roads would be for city managed roadways within city limits and not roads maintained by the county or the Florida Department of Transportation, like the Stewart Street and U.S. Highway 90 for example.
Other than repairing these poor roads in order to offer a smoother drive for commuters, Meiss said repairing these roads also provides other benefits.
“One is safety… it is also impacts property value,” Meiss said.
Should a potential homeowner visit Milton, Meiss said the road conditions could be taken into consideration before a family purchases a home within city limits.
Meiss wants to hear from citizens about their thoughts on road work, by emailing him at Wesly.meiss@ci.milton.fl.us.
Want to go?
What? City of Milton Executive meeting
When? Monday, May 4 at 4 p.m.
Where? City Hall, 6728 Dixon Street, Milton
What? Discussion on city road repair
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Milton: Mayor plans to seek council, public input on repairing city roads