Date: May 14, 2009
by: Robin Hartill | Community Editor

The Moneuse home, located on Lyons Lane.

Chris and JoDene Moneuse saw a sign of roadwork Wednesday, April 29, when they pulled into their driveway. Workers from Bob’s Barricades, which was contracted by AJAX Paving Industries Inc., had installed an orange sign reading “End of roadwork” in the front yard of their Lyons Lane home. The sign was put in place to notify drivers coming from Gulf of Mexico Drive of the repavement project’s perimeters.

Across the street, in a state-owned wetland area, there was another sign facing the opposite direction telling drivers headed toward Gulf of Mexico Drive “Roadwork ahead.”

“It’s ridiculous,” JoDene Moneuse said. “It’s obvious that it’s the end of construction.”

But the warning sign was just the beginning. When project workers installed the signs, they accidentally severed Verizon FiOS lines, cutting off cable, phone and Internet service to FiOS users east of the Moneuse home. On Friday, May, 1, a Verizon crew came out and repaired the lines — but also knocked over the “End of roadwork” sign and left a 4-foot hole and several trash bags in the Moneuse yard.

The Moneuses didn’t water their yard for nearly a week because they worried that the dirt would spill over into the street. Now, they also say that the area where Verizon workers dug the hole needs to be re-sodded.

The afternoon of May 6, the problem came one step closer to resolution. A second Verizon crew came to the Moneuse home and began to fill in the hole.

Darren Alfonso, the repavement project’s public information officer for the Florida Department of Transportation, said that the sign in the Moneuses’ yard was placed properly, in accordance with guidelines from the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

Alfonso said that Bob’s Barricades will most likely have to pay for the costs of repairing the Moneuses’ yard.

But for now, the “End of roadwork” sign is off of the Moneuse property. It’s now on the corner of Gulf of Mexico Drive and Lyons Lane next to a town pump station, where the Moneuses say it should have been in the first place.