BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Clay County Commissioners voted unanimously to close the southern half of Melrose Road. The closed portion begins south of Lily Lake Road and continues to State Road 21, approximately 1.2 miles.
Reggie Tumlin requested the closure. He owns the property on both sides of the road for the 1.2 miles north of State Road 21.
County Commissioner Betsy Condon, who represents the western one-third of the county, called the road closure “a complicated issue,” with the overwhelming majority of residents favoring closing the grade.
She added that Tumlin’s petition has become a divisive issue in the neighborhood, with some residents afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation.
“People were afraid to come even tonight,” she said during the June 11 meeting in Green Cove Springs. “I appreciate all of you who came out and all of you who’ve called me, and some of you, I consider you friends, so it is a very difficult decision.”
Dangerous road, crash fatality
In his petition to close the dirt grade, Tumlin said the road, in some places, reduces to a width of 12 to 14 feet.
“This portion of the road is not designed, constructed, and permitted to acceptable industry standards for safety, vehicular and pedestrian traffic, has no signage, and is driven on by many motorists that are put at risk to the hazards of this minimally maintained single-lane dirt road with curves and heavily treed edges resulting in limited sight-distance,” he wrote in the application. “People travel down the road at high rates of speed, and there has already been at least one fatality in the past few years where a driver lost control of his vehicle and ran into the trees.”
Drug sales, vandalism, dead body
Tumlin added that because of the road’s secluded surroundings, his property had become a magnet for illegal dumping and illicit drug sales.
“Just recently,” he wrote, “a pickup truck was stolen in Bradford County and was stripped in a chop shop and then hauled to this segment of the road and dumped on my property. Years ago, a dead body was found next to this portion of the road, and it was dumped on my property from this segment of the road. The body wasn’t found for a couple of weeks after being dumped from the road. The vandalism is so bad that timber companies will not work or store equipment near this road. In addition, I had to move all our heavy equipment off the property to my residence due to the vandalism that comes from this dirt road.”
Tumlin further claimed that his grandfather constructed what became Melrose Road and that the family never granted an easement to the county for the trail. It only gave the county the right to grade the dirt road.
A 1998 memo from then-County Engineer Don Miller appears to back up Tumlin’s claim. Miller said a records search yielded no deed, easement, or any other document allowing the county to claim any rights to the road.
Nearly 100 signed petition
With the application, Tumlin provided commissioners with a petition containing nearly 100 signatures of residents supporting his request.
Most people who spoke at a public hearing about the closure supported the application. Many complained about speeding and reckless motorists using the thorofare as a cut-through from County Road 214 to State Road 21.
Joseph Foy said one of his daughters was nearly hit while boarding a school bus by a speeding driver who ignored the bus’s stop lights.
Melrose Road homeowner Corey Meade told commissioners that off-road vehicles use the dirt grade in addition to cars.
“Recently, it’s become a speedway for four-wheelers, dirt bikes, and side-by-sides all day long,” he said. “They just put up a 25-mile-an-hour sign out there. It’s more of a recommendation because nobody drives 25 with that road being situated the way it is. There’s no real way to enforce that. Police officers have nowhere to sit out there to enforce a 25-mile-per-hour zone.”
Road saved my life twice
Meade said he recognized that closing the road would inconvenience commuters. He added that his wife, who works at the veterans’ hospital in Gainesville, will take a longer route if the southern half of Melrose Road is inaccessible.
William Beck opposed the closure and said his wife had saved 32,000 miles in her commute to UF Health Shands Hospital over the last 20 years by using the cut-through.
Beck added that a Clay Electric line crew recently blocked Melrose Road with large trucks, and the work effectively closed the road between Lily Lake Road and County Road 214. He added that if the southern half of Melrose Road had been closed during that time, many residents would have been trapped on their properties.
Gordon Curtis told commissioners that the southern portion of Melrose Road saved his life twice because it was open.
“Once, there was a tree down between Lily Lake Road and 214, and they came in and got me,” he recalled. “I had broken my neck in five places. Once more, it saved my life when I had a heart attack. They had a trailer blocking the road, and they came up from the other end to get me and to take me to Shands.”
Legal liability
County Engineer Richard Smith told the board that because the southern part of the road is in such poor condition, he could be sued if the county took no action, allowing the unsafe artery to remain accessible to motorists. He added that if the county did not close the road, it would have to invest significant money to make it safe.
Condon said that based on Smith’s recommendation to block public access to the road, she favored closing it.
Commissioner Mike Cella acknowledged that Condon had been working on the potential road closure more than her colleagues, including holding a public meeting in December, which 80 people attended.
“The thing that puts me over the top is the owner of the property,” Cella said. “Unless we’re willing to make an extensive investment in that particular road…I think that we risk everyone’s safety by keeping it open, and if the owner of the property decided that he was not going to allow us to go in there and do what we had to do on his property, then obviously, we would be in a position where that would still be open and people would still be using it.”
