CRESTVIEW — When students arrive at Riverside Elementary School or Shoal River Middle School with muddy shoes, one commissioner said it won’t be due to the county.
Paving equipment will soon land on Okaloosa Lane’s 2,000-foot dirt segment after what Okaloosa County Commissioner Wayne Harris called “hellacious problems trying to get right-of-way for it.”
“We got the last piece of property!” Harris said, adding the county received confirmation late last week.
However, because the owner of a 14-acre property on the west side of the lane wanted too much money for about 50 feet of an 8-to-10-foot-wide right-of-way, a planned sidewalk can’t be built, county officials said.
RIGHT-OF-WAY
Acquiring right-of-way from 10 property owners on either side of the dirt segment delayed starting the paving project for several years, Harris said.
While many were eager to see improvement come to their neighborhood road and sold the county land bordering the project, a couple of holdouts delayed the project, Harris said.
“We had people who wanted to get rich off the county,” Harris said. “One owner’s property was so valuable to her that it would’ve come to a million dollars an acre.”
Rather than pay the owner’s asking price, “We adjusted the road so we didn’t need her property,” Harris said. “We only needed 8 or 10 feet for 50 feet or so. She would’ve gotten fair market value.”
WORK STARTS SOON
County engineer Scott Bitterman said now that property critical to the project has been acquired, “We expect that work will start taking place within a handful of months.”
First, a culvert that channels water under a significant “dip” in the unpaved segment will be replaced with a bridge, he said.
“As soon as the bridge is done we’ll follow that up with the paving,” Bitterman said.
Harris has made paving dirt portions of Okaloosa Lane and Fairchild Road, near Bob Sikes Airport, two top projects during his tenure as commissioner.
He said he is pleased that when his term expires, both will be underway.
HOLDOUTS
When residents notice Okaloosa Lane is missing some sidewalk, Harris said he wants them to understand the county tried to acquire necessary right-of-way.
However, due to one holdout landowner, a sidewalk along the road’s west side will be forfeited.
“She’s not getting a sidewalk nor is she getting any improvements to her property,” Harris said. “People think it’s us (county officials) delaying the project, but it’s people who want to make money off the taxpayer. They don’t realize they’re just hurting themselves. It’s their own tax dollars.”
“In the end, I think a paved road is going to be better than no paved road at all,” Bitterman said. “We’re just going to have a gap in the sidewalk, unfortunately.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Okaloosa Lane to be paved