Supervisors in Community Development District 4 vigorously defended their decision Friday to put yellow center stripes on the district’s golf cart paths.
They also blasted engineer Richard Busche of Kimley-Horn for his recent comments about the striping in media reports and at a meeting of the Project Wide Advisory Committee.
Striping supporters say it improves visibility for golf cart operators, especially at night.
Busche said the striping makes the paths more like golf-cart highways when they should be multi-modal. He also apparently crticized the way the striping was done in CDD 4.
“All of this to me is anecdotal opinion, but it has ‘engineer’ wrapped around it,” said Supervisor Paul Kelly.
Supervisor Don Deakin said the striping conforms to guidelines in the Manual on Traffic Control Devices published by the Federal Highway Administration.
“I think it muddied the waters to imply that the striping was illegal,” he said. “We are not arbitrary, but we are independent as we should be.”
Supervisor Chuck Kazlo said he thought the district did “a good job” with the striping even though a few people opposed it. Supervisor Jim Brockman said the striping makes the paths “safer for everybody.”
Board chairman Jim Murphy said Busche was wrong to comment on the District 4 striping at a PWAC meeting.
“What they did was unprofessional and unethical by going to a group that has nothing to do with it and making comments about what this board did,” he said.
But Murphy said the board does not want the striping to violate any legitimate guidelines.
“If we violated something, we want to get it fixed,” he said. “If we didn’t violate it, then quit talking about it.”
The board directed district manager Janet Tutt to find an engineering firm other than Kimley-Horn to review the district’s path striping.
Tutt encouraged board members to attend other district meetings next week where Busch and other officials will talk to those boards about path striping.
District attorney Valerie Fuchs warned the board that they could have lawsuit liability if they went against their engineer’s recommendation by striping the paths. She did not say whether the other districts would expose themselves to liability if they move ahead with path striping after listening next week to the engineer’s arguments against it.
