TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (FOX49) — Every time Sandi Hall sees a parent walking a young child along West Tharpe Street, she worries about what could happen in the few feet separating them from passing traffic.
“Every time we see a family; a parent with a child just walking, like, ‘Oh God, don’t drop his hand,’” Hall said. “It’s extremely important that they get it done.”
Hall is the executive director of Miracle Years Child Care Center, which has operated along West Tharpe Street for 26 years. She says some families who live nearby walk to the center, navigating stretches of a busy road where sidewalks are missing.
“It’s hard for them coming in and out,” Hall said. “They’d rather walk than drive because the traffic is so bad.”
The safety concerns are not new.
A Capital Region Transportation Planning Agency analysis of Tharpe Street between Ocala Road and Capital Circle Northwest documented 709 crashes from 2012 through 2016, including 333 injury crashes and one fatal crash. The analysis found the corridor’s crash rate was nearly 20 times the statewide average for comparable two- and three-lane undivided roads.
Now, city and county commissioners are again confronting how to pay for long-promised improvements to the roughly 2.6-mile corridor.
The project is managed by Blueprint, a joint Tallahassee-Leon County agency overseen by city and county commissioners and funded largely through local sales-tax dollars. Plans call for sidewalks, turn lanes and a closed drainage system to replace the open ditches that line portions of the road. Blueprint completed the project’s environmental study in May and is moving into design.
But the financial picture looks much different today than it did three years ago.
From ‘fully funded’ to a $52.8 million need
In 2023, commissioners reduced the project’s scope from a four-lane widening to an enhanced two-lane road focused on sidewalks, drainage and traffic improvements.
That change reduced the planning-level cost estimate from $68.8 million to $49.5 million and allowed Blueprint to move anticipated construction from 2037 to 2030.
A May 2023 email provided to FOX49 by Leon County Commissioner Christian Caban went even further. The email from Blueprint staff listed one result of the board’s action as “becoming fully funded” and said construction had been advanced seven years.
“I have an email in my inbox from staff saying that it was now fully funded,” Caban said. “To find out this summer, now three years later, that there was a $52 million funding gap, that doesn’t sit well with me.”
Blueprint’s own agenda materials confirm its May 2023 long-range plan showed the re-scoped project as fully funded within projected program revenues. But that did not mean $49.5 million was sitting in an account waiting to be spent.
Blueprint Director Autumn Calder told FOX49 by email that the 2023 plan was a long-range projection and that the agency funds projects in phases as they advance.
Today, the estimated cost is $62.3 million. Blueprint has allocated $9.5 million so far, leaving a projected $52.8 million funding need through 2040.
Blueprint says no money already allocated to Tharpe has been transferred to another project.
So what changed?
The completed engineering and environmental study replaced the old $49.5 million planning estimate with the new $62.3 million figure. Calder cited that updated study in her response to FOX49, but did not provide a detailed breakdown of what specifically accounts for the roughly $13 million increase.
The financing assumptions also changed.
The 2023 plan anticipated using a $20 million State Infrastructure Bank loan. Blueprint now says that loan is no longer expected to be available after changes to the state program. The agency also projects lower future sales-tax collections because of changes in state law.
That leaves Blueprint looking elsewhere for money.
Commissioners consider changing priorities
Blueprint has applied for federal Safe Streets and Roads for All funding. Its share of the application is about $20.1 million and, if awarded, would help design and construct the first segment from Ocala Road to Mission Road. Federal officials are expected to announce awards in December.
If the grant does not come through, Blueprint says design will continue and existing money is expected to pay for the most critical sidewalk section, between Trimble Road and Valley Green Drive, while the agency continues pursuing additional funding.
The debate Thursday centered on whether commissioners should do more than wait.
Caban and several other commissioners argued Tharpe should receive a greater share of future local sales-tax dollars. Caban has specifically questioned continued spending on portions of the Airport Gateway project while Tharpe remains incompletely funded.
“When we make promises to taxpayers, when we get up here and we vote on projects like this, we have to deliver for them,” Caban said.
Commissioners ultimately voted unanimously to have staff study changing the current project priorities, including the possibility of shifting future money associated with part of Airport Gateway toward Tharpe.
That does not mean money was transferred Thursday. Any reprioritization would require additional analysis and a formal process before commissioners could approve it.
And moving more money toward Tharpe would not necessarily get construction started sooner.
“Reprioritization may change the amount of sales tax revenue that could be allocated to the project, but it won’t change the timeline for the start of construction,” Calder told commissioners Thursday.
Blueprint still expects construction to begin in 2030 because design, permitting, property acquisition and other work must happen first.
What additional money could change is how much of the corridor can be built once construction begins.
For Hall, after watching families navigate the road for more than two decades, the government financing debate ultimately comes back to something simpler.
“I think it’s very beneficial for the community, for the businesses, for the families, for the safety,” Hall said. “And if it’s there to give, give it. If they have to find it, find it.”