Plans for a toll on the Navarre Beach Bridge moved closer to reality Monday. Santa Rosa County commissioners voted unanimously to approve design of a toll system and a rate study to help establish the amount of the toll.
Approval of the task order authorizes payment of $385,665 to Jacobs Engineering to design a new tolling station at the north end of the bridge, consisting of a new toll gantry, with toll-by-plate equipment for southbound vehicles only. The rate study would consider the possibility of tailoring a fee structure allowing different rates for beach residents, workers, and county residents as a whole.
District four Commissioner Ray Eddington, who lives in Navarre, has been calling for fellow board members to replace the current 65-year-old bridge. And, he’s been pushing for a toll to raise needed funding, in the interim.
“You know we need a toll, if we’re gonna get a bridge and we got to put some of that money towards a new bridge,” Eddington said. “And, I know we got to put some toward repair of the old one, because we just spent $8 million and getting ready to spend another $3 million of taxpayer’s money.”
That’s a reference to mounting repair costs for the bridge that opened in 1960 and has now been rated as “functionally obsolete” by the Florida Department of Transportation because it does not meet current design standards.
Additionally, the estimated cost of constructing a new bridge is between $150 million and $350 million.
“We got to do something,” he declared. “We’ve got to get a new bridge and it’s gonna take a lot of money. But I believe we can get it done the right way, if we just work at it.”
In her remarks to the board, Navarre resident Tamara Fountain recognized the need for the toll, as just one of the sources needed to pay for new bridge.
“We’ve already been told by every leader in the state that we’re going to have to come up with our own matching grant funds if we’re going to quality for any kind of FDOT help,” said Fountain. “I want to make sure that money is put in a segregated fund and allowed to grow, and that we would not use it for anything else other than grant-matching funds for the purpose of a bridge.”
But, Fountain questioned spending the toll on maintenance of the bridge, because the county doesn’t toll any other bridge in the county for maintenance.
District 3 commissioner Rhett Rowell echoed similar concerns about using toll revenue for bridge maintenance of the bridge.
Board Chairman Kerry Smith, from District 2, said he has no problem with using some of the toll for bridge upkeep.
“That’s one of the reasons I support the toll, would be to fund repairs, because that’s not going to buy a new bridge,” Smith said in reference to the estimated $2 million annually the toll projected to generate. At that rate, he quipped, “It would take 100 years for that to buy a new bridge.”
If Santa Rosa commissioners follow through with their plan, a toll for the Navarre Beach Bridge will be nothing new. It previously operated as a toll bridge from the time it opened in 1960 until the toll was eliminated in 2006.
