Lake County has launched a two-year plan to accelerate countywide road resurfacing projects and immediately address deteriorating roads, but Rolling Acres Road is conspicuously absent from that plan.
Lake County commissioners last week voted to authorize a $10 million bank loan with a 1.85 percent interest rate to be repaid with sales tax revenue. The funding will allow the county to repave the 63 miles of roads in the “poorest condition,” as well as approximately 28 miles of roads that, “while in slightly better condition, are also in need of repaving.”
Rolling Acres Road has long been a source of concern for Lady Lake officials. It carries an amount of traffic far beyond the capacity for which it was designed and has been declared a “failing” road. Much of the traffic on Rolling Acres Road comes from drivers using it as a bypass around The Villages.
Rolling Acres Road, particularly south of County Road 466 to Lake Ella Road, is full of potholes and is severely deteriorating.
The county currently allocates approximately $2 million in sales tax funding annually to road resurfacing, which allows for about 18 miles a year to be resurfaced.
“A 10-point rating system is used, with the lower rated roads being those in the worst condition and in most immediate need of resurfacing. Roads that decline to a five and lower rating are deteriorated to the point of needing to be resurfaced. More than 300 of the 1,252 miles of paved roads in the county’s network are in need of resurfacing, with 63 of those miles in such poor condition that they are in immediate need of resurfacing,” the county said in a news release issued Friday afternoon.
Local roads that did make the list of projects include:
• Teakwood Lane, on the Historic Side of The Villages, between Aloha Way and Vermont Avenue.
• Third Street in the vicinity of Ann Street in Lady Lake.
• Pine Ridge Dairy Road to County Road 468 in Fruitland Park.
The Lake County Public Works Department maintains 1,252 miles of paved roadways, as well as 144 miles of clay, concrete and gravel roads.