BY DAN HILDEBRAN
The Clay County Commissioner, who represents the Lake Region and a community leader in High Ridge Estates, asked Clay County commissioners last week to prioritize roads over water and sewer utilities in the neighborhood east of Keystone Heights.
The county’s Community and Social Services director, Gabriel Gunn, told commissioners that the county staff has been working to secure a Federal Environmental Protection grant to fund additional road paving in the neighborhood. She added that staff has also been communicating with Clay County Utility Authority officials to estimate the costs of bringing water and sewer service to High Ridge Estates.
Commissioner Betsy Condon told her colleagues that in meetings she has had with neighborhood residents, the conversations begin and end with roads.
“There are 20 miles of dirt roads that have no infrastructure in High Ridge,” she said, “and so they have no under drainage. They get these large gullies that will swallow a whole car. And we’ve had cars that go underwater and have to be fished out.”
Condon said some residents go without trash pickup service because the roads are impassable for garbage trucks.
She also said paying for water and sewer service is not feasible for many of the neighborhood’s cash-strapped residents.
“I am not in favor, in any way, of this (commission) doing anything for (High Ridge residents) that causes them to have another bill, which is what CCUA would do for them if we don’t improve their roads.”
Carey Morford, Pastor of the Mission of the Dirt Road, thanked commissioners for the county’s improving involvement in the neighborhood.
“When I started Mission in 2016, our vision was to see the High Ridge neighborhood transformed into a healthy, strong, revitalized community,” she said. “Many people believed that was a pie-in-the-sky dream.”
She added that, over the last eight years, the county staff’s attitude toward the neighborhood has changed from indifference to compassion.
She singled out Assistant County Manager Chereese Stewart for increasing residents’ awareness of Community Development Block Grant funds available for home rehabilitation.
Morford said the EPA grant the county could apply for would be a game-changer for the neighborhood.
