Grubbing, Clearing, and Paving Quarterman Road
This is a draft not yet ready for publication. It needs expansion.How much does it cost to pave 3.5 miles of dirt road? Apparently $1,413,097.92 when the county insists on paving it like a state highway at the expense of safety:
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How many other roads could have been paved for $1.4 million?
Most of the residents of Quarterman Road did not want it paved,
yet there are plenty of other roads in the county
majority of whose residents do want them paved.
Why do they still wait while this one got paved to the tune of $1.4 million?
And if this road had been paved like a local rural road, instead of like a state highway (literally, according to state highway standards) it would not have cost nearly as much and probably another road could have been paved, too. And if other roads were paved like local roads instead of state highways, how many more of them could be paved? And paved more safely, since wider is not safer, slower is safer.
You may wonder, what's Clearing and Grubbing?
Tearing up everything that lives inside a sixty foot right of way.
Including
this mature longleaf pine tree
or
this signature oak at the entrance to the canopy:
Before |
After |
The only reason there's anything left on any part of the right of way is because many people around the county rallied to Save Our Canopy Road. We especially thank Students Against Violating the Environment (SAVE). And thanks to former Chairman Rod Casey for "putting his thumb in the chest of the engineer" and insisting on a solution to save some of the canopies. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve the basic problem of the sixty foot right of way.
Why a sixty foot right of way?
Because Lowndes County insists on paving local rural roads just like
state highways, right down to the stripe in the middle.
Nevermind that studies show that
trees make streets safer.
The county government still thinks that someday they might get matching
state funds for paving local roads, like in the good old days decades ago.
That's never going to happen.
even the T-SPLOST list submitted by Lowndes County
contains few if any local road projects.
Probably everyone knows what paving is.
Although some of the steps may not be obvious unless you've watched them,
such as grading, basing, etc., but eventually it involves asphalt.
The picture
shows one side being asphalted on the mile-long straight stretch,
completing turning a local rural road into a safety hazard.
The result is a drag strip. Literally, with Corvettes drag racing.
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On a local rural neighborhood road
with babies in carriages, elderly couples strolling, teenagers, dogs,
horses, and wildlife.
Carolyn Selby called the sheriff's department which ticketted one of the Corvettes.
She also took
pictures of both Corvettes in the act and showed them to the County Commission.
Response?
Chairman Ashley Paulk said
speed bumps are "out of the question".
Here's the VDT writeup on completion of this road project in September 2009. Which, incidentally, turns out not to have been the completion of Scruggs Co. submitting invoices for it and getting paid for them. The last such invoice was approved for payment almost a year later, 8 July 2010, running up the grand total to Scruggs to $1,357,887.92. And the grand total for the whole project apparently to $1,413,097.92.
Now the current county commissioners can say none of them were on the commission when the decision was made to pave Quarterman Road. But two of them, Ashley Paulk and Joyce Evans, were in the audience of the meeting when this happened:
John and Gretchen Quarterman, and Dr. Shawn Vandermark presented documents during the Citizens to be Heard portion of Tuesday's meeting that raised questions whether the decision to pave Quarterman Road was based on information that was both true and accurate.Neither those two new commissioners, nor the two remaining on the commission at the next meeting, Richard Lee and Robert Carter, made any attempt to rebut any of the criticisms of the fictional reconciliation of the petitions for and against the paving of the road. Instead, at the very first meeting of the new commission they all went on record saying they were in favor of paving every road in the county. The minutes for their first meeting record:At one point during the discussion, John Quarterman held up documents at the podium relating to how many residents were for paving versus how many were against and said, "This is a work of fiction." Quarterman stated that some of those listed in favor of paving were really against, and that a majority of residents were in fact opposed to paving.
Ken Klanicki, 2208 Jerry Jones Drive, read a prepared statement to the Commission addressing his concerns regarding the paving of Quarterman Road. Chairman Paulk thanked Mr. Klanicki for his concern, adding that the project had been approved and would move forward. Chairman Paulk added that the Commission was responsible for providing safe travel and that due to the cost associated with maintaining dirt roads, the Commission would continue to pave roads in an effort to effectively manage road maintenance funds.
At that same 13 January 2009 meeting:
Jean Wright, 3246 Stafford Wright Road, addressed the Commission regarding the condition of her road, adding that residents had been trying to get the road paved for the past twenty years. Chairman Paulk stated that he was aware of the problems associated with the road, adding that he would meet with Mrs. Wright and staff to see what could be done to improve the road.Two years later, Stafford Wright Road is still waiting.
Paulk and Evans were on the Commission 24 March 2009 when it let the contract for paving:
Grading, drainage, base & paving of Quarterman Road, Purchasing Agent, Lisa Burton, presented the item with Scruggs Company submitting the low bid in the amount of $1,394,660.47. Commissioner Lee made a motion to award the bid to the low bidder, Vice Chairperson Evans second. Motion carried.Now it's laudable that the Commission managed to pave Quarterman Road for somewhat less to Scruggs than was approved. However, if they hadn't insisted on paving Quarterman Road like a state highway, there might have been enough money to pave Stafford Wright Road, too.
The only reason the speed limit on Quarterman Road is 35 MPH instead of
45 MPH is because
some of us confronted the Commission with some of the safety issues.
Unfortunately, events have demonstrated that that speed limit alone
is not enough to solve the speeding problem.
We did repeatedly predict that speeding problem, in writing, well before
the commission decided to pave the road.
Nonetheless, thanks to former Chairman Rod Casey for at least agreeing
to set the speed limit to 35 MPH.
Since then there are two new commissioners,
Crawford Powell and Richard Raines.
They have at least the opportunity to fix the safety hazard the county
has made of Quarterman Road.
Speed humps would solve the problem, but the commission so far
refuses to do anything about that.
The county spent $1.4 million to turn a dirt road into a drag strip,
yet it won't spend a few thousand dollars to put in speed humps to fix
the speeding and safety problem.
This is not just about Quarterman Road. As long as the county has a policy of paving dirt roads just like state highways, it will continue to turn more dirt roads into streets designed to kill people.
This financial information comes from an open records request filed by Carolyn Selby more than a year ago and finally fulfilled 17 March 2011 after a meeting with County Commissioner Richard Raines. Unfortunately, he indicated the Commission wasn't willing to install speed humps. They could still decide to do so. They could still decide to address the systematic problem of engineering local county roads like state highways and turning them into safety hazards.
As Chairman Paulk said in January 2009:
the Commission was responsible for providing safe travel
-jsq