MARION COUNTY, Fla. — A Silver Springs area resident wants to know what the county is doing with special assessment funds collected to improve unpaved roads in the neighborhood.

John Morehouse lives on Southeast 23rd Avenue, an unpaved lime-rock road in the Silver Springs Acres area.

He and other residents in the community pay a yearly special assessment of $150 per lot to maintain the roads.

“The water just stays in the center of the road,” Morehouse said. “Potholes form, and water just stays in the road.”

The road is graded, but Morehouse said crews aren’t doing enough to prevent potholes and flooding.

“They barely put the grade on the road, and they barely scrape the road,” he said. “They just put dust in the potholes.”

The special taxing district covers 8.5 miles of road.

A spokesperson for Marion County said the money coming in for the special assessment isn’t enough to offset the costs required to keep up the roads.

The amount collected annually is $81,000, and $64,000 of that goes to funding the grading and general maintenance of the roadways, the Marion County spokesperson said.

The county allocates $6,000 to administrative fees, and the remainder of the annual collection, about $10,000, is used to stabilize other roads that have an insufficient lime-rock base or are lacking a lime-rock base completely.

Morehouse said he thinks the program has more than enough to maintain and improve the roads in his neighborhood.

He’s trying to help his parents sell their house next door, but it has proven to be difficult.

“When a realtor tries to sell the house, they tell the buyer it’s on a dirt road, a lime-rock road, and they see the condition of the lime-rock road, it puts red flags in the buyer’s mind,” Morehouse said.

Paving the roads would be costly as well. Jones said it would cost $1 million per mile.

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