August-September 2015 Board Meetings

There will be no WVID board meeting in September. Next meeting is scheduled for Oct 13th at the City of North Port, City Hall. At September's meeting there were only a few items of interest:

1. Supervisors voted to spend about $635,000 to re-sod US 41 from the west monuments all the way down to the Thomas Ranch/Gran Paradiso construction entrance. They are replacing the current sod with St. Augustine sod which is supposed to greatly improve the look of the landscaping along 41. The contractor (Valley Crest) will also be reducing the size of planting beds along both sides of 41 by about 50%; replacing them with new sod. Purpose of this was to improve the visibility of the developer's (Pulte and Lennar) frontage landscaping. Work should begin this fall and be completed by year's end.
2. Lennar announced that a second entrance to Gran Paradiso should be open by very early 2016. It will be located at the roundabout on West Villages Parkway between US 41 and River Road.
3. The Supervisors directed the district engineer to do an "update" of the original (2005) plan of development for the West Villages. This first phase of the district's development is coming to an end. The new master developer wants some road alignment changes to match their upcoming next phase of development for the district. This next phase will also be accompanied by a new round of public bond debt obligations to pay for this next phase of development (roads, water, sewer, etc.). The good news for us "old timers" is that most of this new bond debt will be paid for by the future home owners in these new "units of development". Stay tuned for announcements about this new plan of development and its associated bond debt.
4. Supervisor Marty Black, in response to a question from the public, stated that the WVID had initiated a traffic light warrant study with the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) last summer for a traffic light at the entrances to IslandWalk and Gran Paradiso. The FDOT responded late last year that such a traffic light installation would be viewed favorably. At issue was who would do the engineering for the light and who would pay for it. Marty stated, and rightly so, that this light was NOT in the current WVID development plan and would therefore NOT be designed or paid for by the district.
5. In the IslandWalk September newsletter, an article there stated that Pulte and Lennar had jointly agreed to the design and installation of a traffic light at the development entrances. The stated time frame for this to happen was late 2016. This is good news for residents in these two developmnets as crossing the divider can be a hair raising experience at certain times of the day; expecially in-season when traffic volumes are much higher than normal.