Escambia County staff outline MSBU and grant options for Plantation Road repair

Escambia County engineering staff on a virtual town hall described options to address long-standing maintenance problems on Plantation Road, saying the roadway is privately owned and outlining how property owners could form a Municipal Service Benefit Unit (MSBU) or have the county accept the road for public maintenance.

County engineer Joy Blackman told attendees the orange segment shown on staff maps has never been dedicated to the county and therefore “this road is not owned by Escambia County currently.” She walked through two options: the county could accept a donation/dedication of right-of-way, perform full right-of-way upgrades to county specifications and then maintain the road in perpetuity; or property owners could keep the road private and pursue a maintenance-only MSBU for less-extensive work expected to extend the pavement condition for roughly 10 years.

Blackman said preliminary design costs are “about a $130,000,” and that the District 4 commissioner has agreed to cover that design cost from discretionary funds to serve as seed money for grant applications. Staff estimated that a full construction MSBU would not be expected to exceed $1,350,000 and said they hope to secure grant funding using the completed design; absent grants, construction costs would be financed through an MSBU assessment process.

Blackman described the MSBU process: county staff will prepare applications and send them to each property owner; because the area includes residential and nonresidential parcels, staff said petitions require a supermajority of residential property owners and unanimous consent from nonresidential owners before the Board of County Commissioners holds a public hearing to adopt an ordinance establishing the MSBU. The transcript contained both a 60% and a 66% figure when describing residential thresholds; county staff clarified the requirement as roughly two-thirds of residential owners and 100% of nonresidential owners.

On financing and terms, staff described a financing-rate example of roughly 4% and noted that a full MSBU could be amortized over 20 years while a maintenance-only MSBU would run no longer than 10 years. Blackman said maintenance MSBU per-property payments shown in the live slide were substantially lower than full-construction assessments but that some of the per-property example figures were unclear in the live presentation; she said staff will post the detailed spreadsheet to the meeting documents so affected owners can review exact per-parcel assessments.

On scope, Blackman said corrective work if the county accepts the road would include repairing base failures, correcting low spots and inlets, camera inspection and possible replacement of storm pipes, and adjustments to intersections to meet county standards — measures intended to reduce future maintenance needs by fixing underlying problems. She also said Escambia County generally does not pursue condemnation as a method of acquiring private roadways and instead relies on dedication or donation.

Next steps Blackman described include coordination between the District 4 office and county engineering to finalize assessment spreadsheets and application materials, posting the per-property spreadsheet to meeting documents, and walking property owners through petition and application steps. No formal vote or Board action occurred at the town hall.

The virtual meeting ended after staff invited further emailed questions to district4myascambia dot com and confirmed the recording and presentation materials would be posted for review.