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Fee dispute stalls TDK extension

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

It will take an estimated $42,800 to fund the final redesign of the proposed extension of TDK Boulevard to create another traffic route into Coweta County.

But none of that money is likely to come from the Peachtree City Council, based on interviews with individual council members this week. Three council members have expressed strong opposition to additional funding for the road.

The five-member council only needs three votes for any measure to pass.

The redesign of TDK is necessary to detour around the runway safety area for Falcon Field, officials said.

The current path would have the road going through the runway safety area, which has drawn criticism from the Federal Aviation Administration and led the city to work on a redesign of the route.

The city is responsible for design, engineering and right of way acquisition while the county is responsible for actual construction of the road, according to an intergovernmental agreement the agencies signed Feb. 7, 2003.

The Airport Authority may soon kick in $10,000 to the project to pay for the initial redesign, as a proposed agreement with the city is on the authority’s agenda for its Wednesday night meeting.

After the new design plan comes in, “there will be issues that need to be resolved,” said City Manager Bernie McMullen. The largest will undoubtedly be money.

The city will still be on the hook for an estimated $32,800, not including land acquisition, which officials hope will involve land swaps and not land purchasing, McMullen said.

The costs will cover surveying, final design and an environmental study, McMullen said.

Mayor Steve Brown has vehemently opposed the city spending more money on the redesign of the road for several reasons, including his opposition to the benefit of the road.

Brown contends the road’s projected traffic load will come from development that will occur on the Coweta side, leaving little traffic relief benefit for the city’s industrial park, which TDK proponents say will be significant.

Councilmen Murray Weed and Steve Rapson both said this week they want to spend no more city money on TDK.

Councilman Stuart Kourajian said he was undecided on the issue and Councilwoman Judi-ann Rutherford could not be contacted by press time.

Kourajian and Rapson both expressed support for the road’s usefulness in their comments this week.

Rapson said the road has already been designed three times, the last design coming on a request from State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh after it was learned a new design would allow the county to avoid some rock and save about $140,000 on construction. The city agreed to chip in $25,000 for that redesign in the spirit of cooperation, Rapson said.

With the latest redesign necessary to avoid the airport, Rapson said he offered to try and renegotiate the TDK contract with the county so the city would be reimbursed, based on the percentage it spent on the road, should the county get state funds from the Department of Transportation for the project.

“I think TDK is a good road to build, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m done writing checks from the city,” Rapson said.

Weed said he was assured by Seabaugh that the city’s original expense “would be everything we would have to spend.”

“He promised me our original expenditure would be it,” Weed said. “As far as I am concerned no more money for the project means any more money.”

Weed also said he was “gravely concerned about the amount of traffic relief, if any, this project would provide to citizens of the city. Apparently I was correct to be worried.”

Kourajian said he didn’t want to commit about how he was leaning on the funding issue because he is still gathering information and determining what the council’s consensus is.

“We’re looking to do the right thing and building TDK is the right thing to do,” Kourajian said. “We’re looking at how to get it done.”

McMullen noted “you can debate” whether the intergovernmental agreement requires the city to do the redesign work.

The agreement “refers to the current road alignment and the current design,” McMullen said. The city completed its part of the agreement, which included a cash payment of $200,000 to the county, before it was determined that the road path needed realignment to avoid the airport, he added.

To make room for the new road path, it’s likely that land will be needed from Pathway Communities and Sequoia Golf, which owns the nearby Planterra Ridge golf club, McMullen said.

Two of the greens at Planterra will likely need to be relocated for the road project, but the city hopes to accomplish the right of way acquisition through a land swap instead of paying cash, McMullen noted.

The city has been in preliminary talks with Pathway and Sequoia Golf, but nothing can be finalized until the new redesign takes place, McMullen said.

“It’s a complicated issue,” he added.