County: "The levee was constructed as a road"

Engineer reminds leaders of project goal

Ahead of Sunday's article, which will reveal the staggering cost of installing taxpayer-funded, automatic, electric gates on Towne Road, two emails are worthy of highlighting pre-publication.

The first is an email from a public works employee to Commissioner Ozias and elected DCD Director Bruce Emery. It succinctly summarizes what the current opponents of Towne Road, the Tribe, and (at times) county leaders have seemingly forgotten:  the project was never to convert a trail into a road, the project was always planned, designed, and funded to keep the century-old road open and relocate it atop a levee which was built, with explicit specifications, to accommodate the road.  Despite posted signs prohibiting pedestrians from recreating on the levee, the county allowed walkers continued access which fostered the notion that the levee surface was a trail.

Note, the above email was sent just two days after Jamestown Tribe’s Habitat Manager suggested that a popular movement be created to convert the Towne Road Levee into a park.

The second email, from one landowner to Cathy Lear (the county biologist who managed the Towne Road Levee Setback Project) discusses a vandalized gate.

This gate was again mentioned in a November 16th email from the landowner to Commissioner Ozias.  In the email, the landowner requests that Commissioner Ozias recruit the prosecuting attorney to stop Jeff Tozzer and "Towne Road supporters" from harassing the landowner's family.  The landowner says, "I also believe that Jeff could be purposely breaking into the gates on the road and leaving them open so that the county will be liable if something happens on the road until it is paved."  

As stated in the above email, the gate was bent outward, indicating that a vehicle drove through it from the "levee side".  Jeff Tozzer, the Towne Road supporters, and over 75,000 County Taxpayers have no vehicular access to the levee surface and therefore could not damage a gate from the levee side.  The privilege of driving atop the county roadbed is currently limited to emergency responders, a handful of residents, and one family -- not the Taxpayers who have paid for the road, will continue to pay for the road, and are currently banned from using the road.

Hopefully, the (possibly ongoing) investigation led by Commissioner Ozias, Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols, Sheriff Brian King, and Chief Criminal Deputy Bundy, has concluded that this damage could only have been done by someone who had vehicle access to the levee.

Sunday's article will arrive in subscribers' inboxes at 6:00 am.  Brew the coffee and settle in to read a frenzy of emails exchanged between county leaders, one landowner, and the commissioner who promised to purchase the automatic, electric gates with taxpayer funds.  Perhaps most surprising is that while county leaders communicated to the public that the "open road" options 1,2, and 3 were a possible outcome, the county had already committed to "closed road" option 4.

The gate on East Anderson Road, prohibiting unauthorized access to the north end of Towne Road, is bent outward.