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Lee OKs plan for Cedric extension

• An extension will connect Cedric Street with Lovers Lane Road in Lee County.

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — Winding through a pecan orchard, a new 1.8-mile extension of Cedric Street will ease the flow of Lee Countians east and west, and lighten the load on busy U.S. Highway 19, officials said Tuesday.

After heated budget talks and a decision to wait on imposing fees for county fire and emergency medical services, the Lee County Commission eagerly ratified an agreement allowing the extension to go forward Monday.

The extension will join Cedric Street at Old Leesburg Road, just north of several new subdivisions, make an S-curve across a pecan orchard and join Lovers Lane Road, said Bob Alexander, Lee’s Director of planning and engineering.

“It will be a good collector street and really help the circulation in the area,” Alexander said.

Cedric runs west to the busy commercial district on U.S. 19.

With the agreement filed with the Georgia Department of Transportation, Lee can soon put the project out for bid, Alexander said. DOT is funding 30 percent of the $1 million project; the remainder will come from Lee’s special-purpose, local-option sales tax 4 funds.

The extension also will reduce the time it takes for emergency vehicles to travel from east to west in Lee County’s Century District, and potentially reduce the number of traffic crashes on U.S. 19, he said.

“It’s just good transportation planning to have collector streets every mile or so, east and west and north and south, especially in a growing area,” Alexander said. “A lot of times you need to put these roads in before everything gets built out.”

At a Thursday meeting of the Dougherty-Area Regional Transportation Study (DARTS) committee, another project, the extension of Albany’s Westover Boulevard to Ledo Road, will be presented to members from Dougherty and Lee.

“From the Lee County side, I’m going to say we ought to extend the road further than Ledo,” Alexander said. “I think we ought to take it up to Leesburg.”

The Cedric extension, which began at the urging of former Lee County Commission chairman Eddie Hinman, is a long time coming, Chairman Morris Leverett said.

While Alexander attends the DARTS meeting, Lee commissioners will struggle Thursday with making cuts to a proposed $21,656,472 budget for the coming fiscal year.

A Monday decision rejecting annual $250 fees for fire and EMS protection may change, Leverett said.

The fees would generate $2.4 million in revenue to fund emergency services.

“Most of my people say they’d be OK with it if we can keep the service as we’ve got it,” he said.

The alternative to raising taxes or adding fees is cutting services, he said.

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