The Island Transportation Planning Organization has made it clear it does not want a megabridge built between Cortez and Bradenton Beach.
County Commissioner Carol Whitmore appeared before the ITPO at its meeting Monday, Aug. 16, to ask for support in blocking plans by the Florida Department of Transportation to build a 65-foot-clearance fixed span to replace the Cortez Bridge.
“This is our last chance, truthfully, in my lifetime and your lifetime that we can protect the village of Cortez,” she said.
Holmes Beach Mayor Judy Titsworth and Bradenton Beach Mayor John Chappie voted in favor of a motion to support a 45-foot-clearance drawbridge as a compromise to the megabridge.
Anna Maria Mayor Dan Murphy, the third voting member of the ITPO, did not attend the meeting.
Chappie, who wrote a letter to the DOT in May 2018 outlining his opposition to the 65-foot-clearance bridge, saying it would damage the character of Bradenton Beach and Cortez, again spoke against the span at the meeting.
“The high bridge is just going to destroy the ambiance of our two communities,” Chappie said.
Titsworth said the DOT has been determined in its efforts for the big bridge.
“They had their minds made up from the beginning,” she said.
But Whitmore said there is still time to change the DOT’s plan.
“I have nothing against the DOT,” she said. “But I know you can still change it.”
Whitmore is the only commissioner on the seven-member county board opposed to the big bridge, and she told the ITPO she was at the meeting representing only herself.
The DOT announced its plans last year for the bridge replacement. The agency says it expects to release a project development and environment study within the next few months.
A $6.4 million contract for design has been awarded, but design work cannot start until the PD&E is released.
The DOT is further along in its plans for replacing the Anna Maria Island Bridge with a similar 65-foot-clearance fixed span.
A PD&E study for replacement of that bridge received final approval in 2016 and work has begun on a $6.2 million design plan for the 65-foot-clearance fixed-span. That design work is not expected to be finished until fiscal 2022-23, DOT spokesman Brian R. Rick told The Islander last month.
The DOT included plans to replace the Longboat Pass Bridge this month, but a PD&E study is not expected to start for a few months and the agency has not decided what type of bridge will be built.
All three Anna Bridge Island bridges were built in the mid-1950s and have undergone considerable repair work through the years. The DOT considers them functionally sound but structurally obsolete.