Country Club Shores prepares to bury wires

The five sections of Country Club Shores have put the town on notice: the residents of the community plan to bury their neighborhood power lines.

In an email Wednesday to the Longboat Key Town Commission, Country Club Shores resident Bob Gault informed commissioners the community is ready to bury its utilities now that voters approved the $25.25 million Gulf of Mexico Drive project Tuesday.

“The leadership of the five Country Club Shores neighborhoods requests that you consider designating Country Club Shores a special assessment district,” Gault wrote in his email. “This will enable CCS registered property owners to vote on under-grounding our 1960s electrical lines in coordination with the GMD project. Hopefully, we can move expeditiously to have an early spring CCS non-ad valorem referendum and to benefit from the contractor mobilization economies from the GMD project.”

Gault requested meetings with each commissioner individually to discuss the approach.

“Time is of the essence in determining cost effective neighborhood electric undergrounding,” Gault wrote. “Country Club Shores is organized and ready to move forward.”

The Town Commission has expressed an interest in discussing ways to construct a fair funding formula for a future referendum that will be put to the voters to have the rest of the island’s utilities buried. A preliminary discussion on the issue will be held at the 1 p.m. Nov. 9 regular workshop.

Contact Kurt Schultheis at [email protected].