Federal stimulus to pay for three sidewalks

April 23, 2009
By: Ben Rettig
Your Capitol Bureau

Franklin County will build three new sidewalks with federal stimulus money, but County Highway 67 won’t get repaved unless the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) pays the bill.

Alan Pierce, the director of administrative services, said the county will receive $512,000 for two sidewalk projects on Saint George Island and one sidewalk project in Apalachicola. “We just got notice on April 16,” Pierce said.

According to Pierce, these are the locations of the three sidewalk projects.

• The Apalachicola project extends the start of Bluff Road sikewalk back to Avenue M.

• The first St. George Island project runs along Franklin Boulevard from the fishing pier to the Gulf Beach Drive bike path.

• The second St. George Island project included various sidewalks in the SGI commercial district. The exact locations will be decided in the next 30 days, Pierce said.

“County Highway 67 was placed on the application list for (stimulus) funds, but the Florida Department of Transportation kicked it out,” Pierce said. County Highway 67 is a hurricane evacuation route, which runs north from Carrabelle and has flooded in the past.

Tommie Speights, the District 3 public information director for the Florida Department of Transportation, said County Highway 67 would not qualify because it would cost $10 million to resurface. “We did not have the funds,” Speights said. “The main reason (Highway 67) did not make the list was because of the amount of money it would take.”

Speights said County Highway 67 did meet some the federal stimulus criteria yet money had to be shared with 16 other counties in the district. “We only had X number of dollars to put out,” Speights said.

Franklin County is in Florida Department of Transportation’s District 3, which runs from Jefferson County to Escambia County.

Speights said the money had to be divided between the 16 counties based on population and the gas tax. “We just did not have $10 million to give Franklin County, Speights said.

Pierce said FEMA may be able to assist Franklin with repaving of County Highway 67, yet nothing has been designated lately. County Highway 67 has needed work for the past 20 years, he said.

Pierce said the bulk of the federal stimulus money is for big projects in urban areas and there is very little being spent in small areas. Yet, he said, 400 people in Franklin are unemployed. The $512,000 will not be enough to change the unemployment situation, Pierce said. The three Franklin County sidewalk projects will employ a “couple dozen people for a couple months.”

“All rural communities are in the same boat,” Pierce said. “We are at least 60 days until they start work (on the sidewalks), and we are going to try and spread the work out as much as possible.”

Congressman Allen Boyd (D-Florida) said, “I supported the stimulus bill in Congress because it provides critical funding for area projects that will help create jobs and strengthen our economy.”

For more information on the federal stimulus, go to be found at http://www.recovery.gov and http://www.dot.state.fl.us and click on Federal Economic Stimulus.