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The Southwest Florida Expressway Authority barely survived Tuesday’s Collier County Commission meeting.

Commissioners refused the Authority’s request for a $625,000 loan to fund the Authority. The commission was set to reject the loan, but Jim Coletta, a Collier County commissioner and Southwest Florida Expressway Authority board member, talked the other commissioners into putting off any decision on the loan until the next commission meeting on March 27.

The other commissioners said it made no sense to continue funding the Authority. Collier has already loaned $125,000 to the Authority.

Authority members are looking into a 10-lane Interstate 75 funded by express lane tolls. They are considering tolling the lanes in the contract that will widen I-75 from four to six lanes.

The toll proceeds generated by the two new lanes could then be used to further widen the interstate to 10 lanes when the two new lanes are finished.

Collier commissioners expressed opposition to that idea on Tuesday. Commissioner Donna Fiala said taxpayers had already paid for a six-lane road with no tolls.

"If we do this with tolls the state will never give us any money again," Fiala said.

But toll authority Chairman Bill Barton said the option must remain on the table.

"Our consultants have told us that tolling four lanes does not work," Barton said.

Lee County Commissioner and authority board member Tammy Hall was shocked to hear that Collier is waffling.

"I don't know why they'd want to drop out," she said. "I can't speak to it really because I don't know. Commissioner Coletta's not given us any indication that Collier County was uncomfortable."

Coletta has been involved and supportive of every move the authority's made, Hall said. What Collier's departure would mean seems clear, she said.

"The legislation is Lee and Collier together," she said. "Would there still be an authority? I'd say the probable answer is no."

And without the authority, Hall said, any improvement of I-75 beyond the state's 6-laning is decades away.

"Quite honestly I-75 after this expansion is way, way down the line," she said.

Dave Burr is executive director of the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council who's also a board member. He was surprised to get an email Tuesday afternoon about the discussion on the Collier board.

"This is the first I've heard of it. Frankly I think we're all a little surprised," he said.

As for whether there could be an authority without Collier, Burr said he doesn't know.

"That's another good question," he said.