Below the Surface

The debate concerning the naming of a road linking north and south business districts in Port St. Joe would be a fine comedy routine if there were not some significant points to be gleaned from the rubble.

That the city commission set off to do something good – solicit public input concerning the naming of the road – and ended up with a dash of posturing and division illustrates that many good things have a way of biting one in the rear flank.

The rhetoric over naming a road that does not even exist was in keeping with a time when we seemingly can’t agree on even the most innocuous of subjects.

But in her attempts to make a case, Amy Rogers may have inadvertently raised a point that resonates throughout the county.

Now, Ms. Rogers can be a polarizing figure and her stances at times have left this newspaper scratching its head.

Give her a subject and she’ll have an opinion and if even not always a seemingly informed one, she is engaged in the community, for better or for worse as they might say.

But when she suggests that before building any new roads some of that money to be used ought to be considered for just upgrading existing roads, there is a ring of truth there.

No, this connector road would be not be built without a unique collaboration that makes it nigh near impossible for the road to be built without the road bond funds at least one commissioner has pledged.

But is that really the best use of those dollars, Ms. Rogers has asked, even though her argument sometimes gets lost in digressions and statements that are inflammatory at least and confrontational at best.

She has a point and that is the spending priorities of public officials put in charge of taxpayer dollars.

While County Commissioner Nathan Peters, Jr., to whom most of Ms. Rogers have been directed, as been particularly nasty in responding – no love lost between those two – the more important question is whether, indeed, Mr. Peters should be using road bond money to add to infrastructure when there are so many issues to be addressed with existing infrastructure.

There are strings tied to this money, sure, but this is sort of like that people in glass houses sort of thing: when the roads in your district are pristine and in uniformly fine shape, no problem with this symbolic and economic step forward.

If not – well, that is the $35,000 or so question in this case.

For starters, let’s not confuse what this road bond money is.

While elected officials love to talk about grant funding and how it paid for new police cars and sprucing up Highway 98, the reality is grant fund is just a warm and fuzzy way of saying tax money.

These are tax dollars, typically tossed into a pool for which cities and counties can apply to stand in line for a chance to dive in.

Assert that they are not property tax dollars be expended until the sun sets, but this is still taxpayer money.

And given the way the federal and state governments are changing spending priorities, the way programs and those grant-funded wading pools continue to disappear, the belief that road bond money is just another of those golden geese that will never stop laying eggs is foolhardy planning.

As one example, there is no telling what the federal and state government may decide about how gas taxes are spent, locally and beyond. Public officials should not get used to a teat that could run dry.

Further, as the city’s current dilemma with its new multi-million water plant and its aged pipes and valves so fully illustrates, city and county officials can not start too soon the task of addressing what will surely be acute and chronic infrastructure issues in the coming years.

The city is in a costly and complex situation due in large part because over the decades, in flush times and thin, no one seemed to be paying much attention to the continuing age and use being put on crucial infrastructure throughout the county.

Another example – county officials have been told by Verizon that service issues since a switch from Alltel to Verizon – the latter purchased the former – is due to Verizon having to undertake repair and upgrade of infrastructure, towers, etc., that Alltel could not afford.

Given just these two examples, among so many others, somehow it does not seem out of line to question elected officials about their spending priorities.

And if Mr. Peters’ lone response is to assert that the roads in “his” district are fine, leaving him free to spend road bond money on a new road, he needs to hop in the truck and take a drive around “his” district.

Or review city commission meeting minutes for the number of times commissioners have mentioned problems with road paving in specific areas.

Yes, in the case of the connector road a confluence of events judiciously met to, hopefully in the near future, create this bridge between separated communities.

That does not mean, especially in this election year, that questions about government spending priorities are both well-founded and worth exploring for every taxpayer in this county.