Shared road maintenance

Hum - double post.

Either everyone who drives pays about the same into the pot & all roads are taken care of from there (govt run & taxed & maintained)....

Or everyone pays based on their frontage on the road.

No way does the 1st person pay more than the back person. Nor does the back person pay more than the front person. That WILL create a whole flurry of bad feelings. Would be the weirdest way I've ever heard of to do it. I'd tell someone where to put that plan!

You have to base it on frontage (linear feet) on the road. The fella with a big property can subdivide, and then you got 2, 3, 8 more people - how do you divide it up now? Real easy if it's by the foot, and no one can argue - done deal.

You go by feet of access. If it's 1000 feet long, person with 1000 feet (owns both sides) pays for 50% of costs; person with 100 feet of access on one side pays 1/20 of the cost. Doesn't matter a fig who drives on it the most or has the biggest vehicle - you all have an eqaul oppertunity to drive on it or not - _your_ choice on that. If the road adds a service to your property, you pay for it same as anyone else. Period.

Costs get divided up based on frontage. That is the closest to being fair. It ain't perfect, but it gives everyone the same chance at the same benifit for the same cost. Close as you can get.

Don't mean to be knocking you, just seems like a real odd way to do it your way. Doesn't seem anywhere near fair to me.

--->Paul

No Doc, I didn't expect the dust to be so bad, but I don't see why that's laughable. All the gravel roads I lived on previously didn't have heavy machinery rolling down them four times a day.

Why don't you try a little of that Buddhist philosphy on your signature and practice a little compassion?

I already explained how our (private)road works, but I have to say I hear what DocM is saying. Every 5 years or so a letter goes around asking for a suggested CONTRIBUTION to the road fund to fix the really bad spots. There is a paragraph that says "we" realize that people are at different levels of disposable income, with different abilities to pay, and its left with "if you can't pay now, youcan put some aside for the next time"(or you can fill in potholes with your own sweat and that will be "payment" too). On the lower part of the road live richer folks with CCRs that put liens on people if they don't pay(one person hasn't paid for 20 years!). I'm just saying "being nice and flexible with what is considered payment"(letting people labor or use their own equipment) works a LOT better than demanding payment. And really, it IS a gravel road, learn to live with it!

Sometimes we luck out when some one is trying to sell and they fork it out to grade the entire road to their house.

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I agree that road maintenance should be split up based on need. The guy who drives the big Hummer or monster 4WD truck doesn't need the road maintained as much as the gal who drives the Hyundai Spec. The gal with the subcompact should pay more for road maintenance....that's fair.

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Ah, but does the monster truck dig up the road more than the little Hyundai?
And how fast do they drive?

Now, what happens when you have short roads off the main access (near the end)? One has 4 families and the other has 7 and all have to use the main rutty road (all deeded access roads) that needs work. Both of the branching roads are maintained by the people that live on them. Do they pay half the amount others pay? What?

So I'm reading that many people have their own view of "fair".
Comes down to frontage or ownership or everyone being assessed the same amount - with or without a road board.

Is this what everyone is reading?

Up at my Cabin we pay $65 per year per Lot.For road maintenance,Showerhouse,and Trash Pickup.

If a person doesn't pay they are not given the Combination to the Gate,Water,or Showerhouse.

So far I have had no problem getting the road taken care of.

big rockpile

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Yes, but you are "required" to pay this amount. I beleive the issue in this thread is what do you do when the people who live on a road are not required to pay anthing for road maintenance.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

Hey Cabin Fever: Any ideas/answers to my last post??

That's why shared roads not maintained by the govt & no type of agreement set up are a real mess, and an agrivation to avoid if you can.

I would see it as all the properties are part of this private road, and should all be contributing to the big pot, and the whole network of roads maintained out of that big pot.

Anything else gets to be an issue I would think?

Now, I'm not the grand road assessor, & I realize what I think & what people will do is different. So I have no good solution to this thing when different folks get different ideas in their head.

I would think it would be in everyone's interest to get it all together as one private road maintained all from the same pot. Basing it on frontage seems 'fairer' than basing it on use or need - everyone's use & need can change greatly from year to year and all have the oppertunity to drive up & down the whole road every day, over and over. So 'use based' seems very hard to figure. 'Frontage' stays pretty much the same, and would be a known quantity for anyone plannig to buy or sell along there - not subjective as 'use' or 'need' is. It gets too difficult to make a fair assessment of those, as demonstrated with the big truck vs the small car - one uses more, the other needs more, who do you please? It just doesn't work out.....

Of course in the examples mentioned, when one person does a major upgrade & wants to pass off the bill to everyone else without prior agreement, that's for the birds!

The private road off of a private road in your example is just mind-blowing. That needs to be just one private road, or look for someplace else to live - way too many 'issues' coming from that mess......

--->Paul

I share a private gated road and it was pretty bad in some places when I bought my land - I approaced the neighbors about fixing it and they were just fine with it the way it was and even told me that the road could not be fixed and that they prefered that it didnt get fixed. WRONG answer. I paid for it myself, had it done right the first time and they had no say in the matter. They never have offered to pay.

I use to have to maintain two miles of road getting to my place. The county took over mainteance on one mile of it. The rest belongs to me. I have several neighbors who use the road, and one oil company.

One neighbor didn't believe in shared maintenance. Where the road branched to my place off the main road, I started pulling "my gravel" off the unused road, and pulling it back onto my 'curve'. After one winter, with no gravel, there was an inpenetrable mudhole. Neighbor scolded me......told him to start helping.... he didn't, and I didn't fix the hole . Came home one summer from AK and another neighbor had used the road for logging, and fixed the danged hole!!!

Oil company a few years back started neglecting their share of road work... they'd mess it up bad! Asked em to fix it. They were 'busy'. Said I'd fix it if they didn't. ........waited till they got some work trucks past the bad spots, and got my front end loader and dug a hole six feet wide, six feet deep, with a pile of mud 8' tall...they came out, and the fun began! Told em I had to go home...was tired, and "busy". Asked em as I was driving off, if they had time to fix it 'now'. They had to get a dozer and a couple loads of gravel.

NOW, I just 'ask' them should I 'work' on the road ....they ask me can they wait till such and such day to come down and work on it!

Sometimes being un-nice pays off.

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You sound suprized that they didnt offer to pay you for the damage you did to a perfectly fine road