Projects generate jobs

When their new budget starts Oct. 1, Pasco County officials will begin spending more than $400 million on new roads, water projects and other improvements.

The county's capital improvement plan for 2010-11 draws on a range of funds, from accumulated impact fees to the Penny for Pasco sales tax to federal stimulus funding. Road work accounts for a largest single chunk of the spending, which also includes money for emergency vehicles, bus shelters and conservation lands.

That doesn't include millions of federal housing funds Pasco is likely to spend buying and rehabbing foreclosed homes under the second phase of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

The Department of Transportation will spend $65.3 million in Pasco between Oct. 1 and the end of next September, said Kris Carson, spokeswoman for the DOT's Tampa office.

As a whole, Pasco's project list represents a recession-driven shift toward public funds employing people who otherwise might be laid off.

Without those public projects, road-pavers, earth movers and other big-ticket builders would be suffering more than they are, said Brian Turmail, spokesman for The Associated General Contractors of America, a trade group based in Virginia.

"The only game in town for many companies has been stimulus-funded projects," Turmail said. "And even the stimulus is winding down."

The federal government allocated Pasco $13.3 million in stimulus funding for "shovel-ready" projects between 2009 and 2012. An additional $3.1 million has been set aside for new buses and bus shelters in the same period.

Much of next year's spending will help finish off plans set in motion years ago, said Michele Baker, second in command to County Administrator John Gallagher.

The spending also represents a conscious effort by county commissioners to use the public purse to buoy the hard-hit construction industry, she said. "That was the direction we got from commissioners a few years ago as we were going into the doldrums," Baker said.

During the building boom of the mid-2000s, county officials relied on developers to widen roads, extend waterlines and otherwise finance the improvements their projects required. With residential and commercial construction in the doldrums, much of that privately funded work has dried up. There are a few exceptions: the long-delayed work on State Road 56 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in Wesley Chapel is developer-financed. But overall, county, state and federal governments now keep thousands of construction workers employed across the Tampa Bay region.

It's welcome cash at a time when contractors are scraping for work. The Tampa Bay area lost 5,800 construction jobs between June 2009 and June 2010, a drop of about 10 percent, according to recently released federal figures.

"Before the housing bubble burst, it was hard to keep up with demand," said Rob Duke, Tampa division president of cement and building materials distributor Preferred Materials, which has cut its Florida staff by half since the recession began.

"The market has been very challenging for us," Duke said. "The stimulus has helped us tremendously."

The collapse of the housing market forced several well-known Bay area contractors into bankruptcy. Those that remain compete fiercely for the work that's left, said Chris Laface, vice president of RIPA & Associates. RIPA will be taking over the county-funded northern extension of Collier Parkway in Land O' Lakes, a project left unfinished when contractor WDG Inc. imploded last fall. Publicly funded work now accounts for 60 percent of RIPA's contracts, Laface said.

RIPA has avoided layoffs for many of its 225 workers, but the effort to outbid its competitors has narrowed its profit margin, Laface said.

"Right now, to win a decent-sized public job, there's not a lot of margin to work with," he said.

Laface was encouraged by the prospect of tapping into Pasco's $400 million project budget for 2011.

"We hope they can do that a couple more years," he said.

The outlook for the county spending big beyond next year isn't so good, though. The projected 2012 capital improvement budget is less than $150 million.

WHERE THE MONEY IS GOING

Here's a sampling of what Pasco County will spend its money on next year:

$23 MILLION: Boyette Road reclaimed water reservoir, Wesley Chapel

$14.8 MILLION: Widening State Road 54 from Interstate 75 to Curley Road, Wesley Chapel

$12.4 MILLION: New data center for Supervisor of Elections, Dade City

$2.8 MILLION: New fire rescue station at Osteen Road and Massachusetts Avenue, New Port Richey

$2.6 MILLION: Expansion of Land O' Lakes Community Center

$1.8 MILLION: Aerial ladder fire trucks for east Pasco and west Pasco

$1.2 MILLION: Improving intersection of State Road 52 and Moon Lake Road, New Port Richey

$561,049: Adding sidewalks outside River Ridge and Seven Springs middle schools, New Port Richey

$242,000: Improving safety of 90-degree turn on Prospect Road, Dade City

Source: Pasco County Capital Improvement Program, 2010-11