Parking Graders

Jeff Massey lives on a farm outside Chipley that his father purchased in 1959, and on most days, he will see maybe six cars on the way to his job as Washington County administrator.

“A friend of the family works the farm and we’ve got 70 acres in peanuts this year, but the rest of it, I like to hunt,” Massey said.

It takes Massey about “four-and-a-half minutes” to walk from his house to his blind, and he doesn’t walk very fast. He entitles himself to one deer a year, and if it’s a buck, “it’s gonna be a big buck.”

“Plus, Johnny always gives me plenty of peanuts to boil,” Massey said. “That’s a heckuva lifestyle. It’s a blessing to me.”

Massey’s job has a lot to do with growth management. Particularly as a parent whose three children scattered to find work when their school days were over, Massey appreciates the point of view of people who say the county needs more jobs capable of supporting a household. But as someone who is more than a little bit country, he understands, too, people who fear that development may change the county’s character.

“I have lived here full time for the past 25 years and I have seen a lot of changes, but all that is coming over the next few years will make those changes seem like nothing,” Massey said. “The pace of change is going to greatly accelerate.”

Massey points to Sunny Hills, a community begun in the late 1960s and whose developer, the Deltona Corp., which had envisioned a city of 60,000 people, abandoned the place when it failed to take off. Now, after decades of dormancy, the Hills are alive with the sound of building.

Sunny Hills is not just an enclave of activity, however. Throughout its 616 landlocked square miles, Washington County is preparing for what’s next.

Massey has, in particular, made high-speed broadband internet service a project that he calls his baby.

“The pandemic really exposed how badly we need internet,” Massey said. “There was no telemedicine from the hospital, no distance learning for the kids. But even before COVID hit, we were working on making internet available countywide.”

The county successfully applied for a $1.5 million rural infrastructure grant from the state and supplied a 50% local match.

“We hired a contractor (WildStar Networks) and I can say that this fall, we will have the county built out to our original design,” Massey said. Remaining will be the work of filling in any service gaps that may be discovered at that point.

Sunday Road, outside of Chipley, was paved recently as part of a state-funded project. Other state-funded paving work will include South Boulevard, Brickyard Road, Davidson Road and Crystal Lake Road. Photo by Mike Fender

“We have customers paying for internet right now, and every bit of feedback I’ve received has been not good but great,” Massey said. “I had a guy tell me last week, ‘Jeff, I got my four grandkids at my house, and they were all livestreaming on different things — during a storm.’ That’s what I want to hear.”

The Washington County project has included the installation of 190-foot monolithic poles placed on 20-by-20-foot concrete pads and topped with the latest broadband technology manufactured by Tarana Wireless.

“WildStar specializes in rural installations,” Massey explained. “The first county in the country that utilized them was Walton County. Before we hooked up with these guys, I watched what was going on in Walton, and we put out a bid and ended up with them. Broadband is very exciting. We all know that we can’t live without it these days, and it will bring us out of the caveman days a little bit.”

Massey maintains as a goal “parking graders” and in that regard is making progress.

With federal funds authorized by FEMA following Hurricane Michael, the county has paved almost 70 miles of roads at this writing and will be able to pave twice that amount with the allotted money.

“You’ve got to cross every T, but we haven’t had a penny clawed back by FEMA,” Massey said with apparent pride. “We are doing things correctly. We secured a line of credit, and then we secured a second line currently in use. That’s just a testimony to good management of public funds.”

Meanwhile, the county is completing state-funded projects: South Boulevard, Brickyard Road, Sunday Road, Davidson Road and Crystal Lake Road.

Photo by Mike Fender

“We are being very aggressive in trying to get our infrastructure hardened to accommodate the future growth that is on the way,” Massey said. That is, he is trying to move projects along as quickly as government agencies and protocols will allow.

“I come from the private sector,” he said. “I worked for 30 years in the solid waste business. The last 15, I managed a regional landfill for Waste Management, and I was used to doing things the private sector way. When I got into government, I found out that you better be patient. It doesn’t move at the speed of business.”

Going forward, county budgets will need to reflect new priorities, new ways of doing things, new road surfaces.

“The way we’re doing things is not going to work in the future,” Massey said. “We have all these graders because we have all these dirt roads (600 miles, prior to Michael), but if we’re eliminating dirt roads, we can eliminate some of them. We have to think about what our maintenance strategy is going to be. If we have a severe storm and it washes out a road in a place, we need to be able to go in there and saw-cut it and patch that ourselves. I could contract that out, but if it’s an emergency situation, I can’t wait on a contractor for two weeks. We’re evaluating everything, and I think it’s going to save us money in the long run on our public works department.”

The county anticipates that many of the jobs in its future will be located at its newly certified industrial park.

“People like our industrial park,” Massey said. “We have acreage and can accommodate continued growth there, but here’s the kicker: We have the Florida Gulf & Atlantic railway running right there. We are working with them right now to provide spurs into the park. All of the companies that I have talked to say that it is cheaper for them to move products and materials by rail rather than by truck.

“Plus, we have an interstate highway running east and west, and there are two four-lane highways (77 and 79) running north and south in the county. And we are attractive to businesses because they can afford to set up shop here.”

Additionally, the county this year purchased 14 acres at the junction of Interstate 10 and Highway 77.

“I signed an option on the property 3 ½ years ago, and we got it for a very good price,” Massey said. “It’s worth a lot more than we paid for it, and it’s another opportunity for us. One or more businesses can locate there. We just want to make sure they are the right businesses.”

Massey said the county is open to light manufacturing, technology and logistics businesses. He said the county has prospects in the pipeline.

Photo by Mike Fender

“We haven’t even tapped into the south side of the interstate,” Massey said, “and we have an off-ramp off I-10. We have a very talented economic development committee in this county, very smart people, and we want to make sure that we don’t bite off too much to chew. We want to make sure that we can bring any project we start to fruition.”

The county consciously worked to make Sunny Hills attractive to renewed development and has spruced up its front door. It worked with Florida Power & Light to replace street lamps on Sunny Hills Boulevard with LED replacements, and the difference, Massey said, “has been like night and day.”

“We maintain the fountain at the entrance to Sunny Hills and take pride in it. We mow, pick up trash — these are things we needed to do way before Deltona decided to come back. The people were sitting down there in no man’s land with no help. We started making these improvements, and people thanked us.”

New businesses are coming to the county seat of Chipley, due in part to the passage in January 2022 of a referendum allowing the sale of alcohol by the drink.

“Chipley is headed toward a little revitalization,” Massey said. “We’ve got a couple of really good businesses coming in soon. They’re fixin’ to start construction. We’ve got a Beef O’Brady’s coming and we’ve got a Grease Pro coming, but it’s not your average Grease Pro. It’s a bigger facility with a car wash and a tire store.

“That’s something we have lacked in this community.”

Massey raves about employees and commissioners who have enabled the county to make achievements that had never been accomplished before.

“That’s a reflection of great leadership,” he said. “What do they say in the proper world? We’ve gotta be ‘results-oriented.’”