by Matt Wright
Historically, paving hasn’t been an easy undertaking in Lakeland and the city has been playing catch up recently. The fiscal year for 2016 was the first year to have an official paving budget for Lakeland, which was implemented under former Mayor Wyatt Bunker. This meant for many years neighborhoods were being approved, developed, and utilized without complete road maintenance planned. Many officials thought this put us at a disadvantage to be able to properly maintain roads. However, since 2016 Lakeland has had many roads paved and the recent annual budget shows the following streets and subdivisions have been planned for paving this fiscal year: Cobb Road, Creekside Manor, Lakeland Heights, Veranda Woods, Canada Woods, Stonebridge-Kimberly Trace, and Stonebridge-Section D.
City staff and officials understand there are still several other neighborhoods that are in dire need of repaving, and they plan to address those issues next year. Several thoroughfares involving heavy construction, both in subdivisions and main roads, have to be addressed after heavy machines finish. Otherwise, those roads are repaved and just get torn-up again because of the heavy equipment which leads to wasted money and tax dollars. To state the obvious, paving is expensive, especially with inflation over the past year. To put that into a dollar amount, most neighborhoods in Lakeland cost $500,00 to repave, while several are over $1 Million to pave.
City Engineer Emily Harrell has explained to the Board of Commissioners (BOC) in past meetings the bidding for paving contracts takes place in the colder months and then paving commences in the late Spring or Summer of each year. Conditions to pave require temperatures above 40 degrees which eliminates a substantial portion of the year considering weather delays also play into the scheduling. Budgeting for the paving next spring and summer has already taken place via the BOC budgeting process but according to officials additional funding that comes in over the year could lead to projects being completed faster than scheduled.
