At their Oct. 13 meeting, Citrus County commissioners heard a renewed account of how Inverness Village 4’s unpaved streets became an unresolved public problem. County Attorney Denise Lyn said she had raised concerns about the neighborhood years ago, but was told it was not a priority. Built without paved roads or a completed drainage system, the subdivision has deep ruts carved by erosion, and rainfall regularly turns its streets into near-impassable mud and sand.
Lyn told the board she learned about the neighborhood after someone contacted her, prompting her to visit and see the conditions herself. As reported by Tampa Bay 28, she said she showed what she was seeing to a county leader over FaceTime and asked several county staff members what was being done. She said the response was that Inverness Village 4 was not a priority at the time, and the Board of County Commissioners ultimately chose not to act.
Lyn said her position did not give her authority to direct staff working under the county administrator; she could make suggestions but not order action. She also said she avoided putting some concerns in writing because written legal opinions could later become evidence in lawsuits, and she wanted to limit the county’s legal exposure.
A Fire Truck Stuck in the Sand
The stakes of the inaction became concrete this year. Citrus County Fire Rescue assessed E. Jay Street on September 1 and found it was, in the department's words, a “grass path only” with no access for engines or tankers. Firefighters said they might need a four-wheel-drive brush truck or an ATV just to reach homes on the street. The warning wasn't theoretical: a county fire truck had already become stuck in the neighborhood's sugar sand in 2025, an incident that raised concerns about whether emergency crews could reach residents in a real crisis.
Vehicles getting stuck on the deteriorated roads has become something of a recurring hazard, the station's report notes, and years of erosion have made some stretches of the unpaved streets nearly impossible to traverse. Citrus County has maintained that no actual roads were ever properly constructed in the subdivision and has declined to take over maintenance of the rights-of-way, even though those roads were dedicated to the public. County officials have argued the county can only maintain a road once it has been properly built and permitted.
A Neighborhood Caught Between Builder and County
Inverness Village 4 spans 392 lots bounded by North Independence Highway, East Arlington Street and North Crestwood Avenue, according to the Chronicle. Residents say they bought lots or houses on unimproved roads that the county never maintained, and many told commissioners they believed an assessment of roughly $6,000 per household would eventually pave the streets. That estimate has been dwarfed by reality: a county consultant later determined that a Multiple Service Benefit Unit addressing the roads and drainage would cost about $109,000 per lot, a figure the county first floated in 2023.
Earlier County Assessment Hearings
Citrus County commission minutes from Nov. 12, 2002, show the board scheduled public hearings on MSBUs for Suburban Acres, East River Road and East Stokes Ferry Road, and High Ridge Estates as part of its 2003 Private Road Construction and Perpetual Maintenance Program, according to the Citrus County Clerk of Courts. The minutes document scheduled hearings, but do not establish the projects’ final costs or outcomes, so they do not provide a direct cost comparison with Inverness Village 4.
Van Der Valk Construction, which built many of the homes in the subdivision, has maintained that responsibility for the roads belongs to the county, not the builder. The company is owned by Chris Matser. Homeowners, meanwhile, have argued that county government should have exercised better oversight as the homes went up in the first place, leaving the dispute over who pays for repairs stuck between residents, county officials and the development's builder.
Resident Janeen Eddie, who lives in the neighborhood, said she felt vindicated by Lyn's account of raising concerns years ago. A dirt road remains the only way to reach her house, left unpaved and unfinished, as Bay News 9 has reported. Eddie said she believes county officials could have prevented much of the damage by intervening from the start. Not everyone has pushed for a slower approach, though — some residents have told commissioners that new-home buyers should not be punished by delays in construction.
Political Fallout and Unresolved Questions
Lyn's remarks came against the backdrop of a bruising political fight. Commissioner Holly Davis had attempted to terminate Lyn as county attorney, raising Lyn's handling of a failed ordinance meant to address the neighborhood's drainage problems as part of her case. That effort to remove Lyn failed, and she remains in the position. County staff had previously proposed requiring any new development adding impervious surface in Inverness Village 4 to provide an onsite engineered stormwater storage facility, after officials said the community's lack of such a facility was worsening the drainage problem — though the subdivision still has no completed drainage system today.
The county has also faced outside pressure. The Southwest Florida Water Management District has pursued legal action concerning development and permitting issues tied to the neighborhood, according to the station's reporting. Citrus County itself has declined to comment on Lyn's statements. Jamie Ang, the county's communications manager and public information officer, said the county would not comment because Lyn is its attorney and the exchange was between her and the board — a response that did not address the substance of what Lyn described.
What remains unclear, even from Lyn's own account, is what each individual commissioner knew at the time or what legal options the county actually had available to force a fix. In April 2023, commissioners did vote to temporarily halt new building permits in the community for three months, one of the few concrete steps taken amid years of complaints. Residents have continued pleading with commissioners for relief ever since, even as the roads they drive every day keep washing out beneath them.
