Feeling stuck in a situation with no easy answer has led the residents of the Hamlin Ford community in Dobson to reach out for a lifeline anywhere it may be found.
The problem is a little stretch of roadway, little being the operative word, because it is a small private road and cannot be brought under the control of the state department of transportation.
The private road is the lifeline to the rest of the world for these residents, but for how long?
Dave Stanley has been working this issue and had reached out for help to the county’s economic office, State Rep. Sarah Stevens, and made a visit to speak at the open forum of the Surry County Board of Commissioners meeting this week. The road in question is Patriot Place in Dobson, the access point for his neighborhood which runs atop a small roadway over a dam.
Several homes are located across the roadway dam that goes over a pond at the entrance of the neighborhood. Stanley told the board that a large number of seniors live in that neighborhood across the narrow lane.
Neighbors are concerned about the structural integrity of both the roadway and the dam itself, for underneath the roadway is a 22-year-old metal culvert that is failing. Evidence is showing erosion and already water is being seen draining beneath the culvert. Eventually, that erosion could buckle the road, and destroy the dam with it.
Mike Stanley, Dave Stanley’s son, told the commissioners when the pond rises up the road washes out, and the postal service cannot deliver the mail to the residents. Brenda Freeman expressed her concerns about emergency services being able to reach her neighborhood should the road become inaccessible.
“If that road washes out, they’re just gonna be trapped,” said neighbor David Shelton. He concurs that the roadway is a problem, “It’s a hassle,” and has been seeking answers about how to at the very least get it paved over.
“You just don’t know what you’re getting into,” he said about the dangers of driving over the dam at night. In the dark he said it can be hard to tell if there is water covering the roadway, and ice is another situation entirely.
He shares similar complaints with Stanley, a heavy rain can wash away his gravel driveway and the roadway leading to it. Both men report paying hundreds of dollars a month to have additional gravel brought out, just to try and maintain what is already in place. “It keeps costing more and more to take care of it.”
The state will not help these residents with their problem because of the private road designation. There is a process by which to convert a private road to a public one, it requires bringing the existing roadway up to state standards.
Minimum requirements regarding width, drainage, and the ability to turn around need to conform to standards. “Private roads need not meet minimum construction requirements but must meet minimum construction requirements before ever becoming a part of the state-maintained system,” state guidelines read.
That is a bit of logical limbo to get through when roads do not need to meet any standards but must meet all the standards if it ever wants to be made public. That leaves a lot to chance for residents who may not be aware what the plan for their subdivision looks like, or if there was one at all.
Also, for folks seeking an isolated life down a private country road, no thought at all may have been given to what situations 10-20 years down the line may look like. Or, for that matter who would be overseeing the road upkeep.
All the planning in the world would have mattered little because, as Stanley recalled being told in 2008, a public road cannot double as a dam. So, this problem was always going to arise, and now its head is rearing up.
If there is recourse to be found, it appears to be on the backs of the neighbors who live there. Stanley said he has gotten estimates for the cost of paving their private road, and then also for the culvert repair, and they total nearly $80,000.
Private road maintenance can be a tricky thing and is usually found within the declarations from the developer as to who or what apparatus will be in charge of the private roads. For Hamlin Ford, it falls to the residents who have been contributing monthly to homeowners’ fees that in part are to be used for maintenance of the roads. “But we can’t afford anything like this,” Stanley told the board.
He said he has been looking for any rural grant program that may be able to assist with the conversion on the road from private to public. Some grants for road development can be found, the most recent ones in North Carolina were offered from FEMA in response to Tropical Storm Fred.
To his credit Stanley came armed with information and the knowledge he has been working the phones tirelessly. “He’s called my office a couple of times,” Commissioner Mark Marion said of his constituent.
Rather than ask the commissioners for the money to fix the road, Stanley asked the commissioners to look into a pair of grants he found listed for rural road improvement. Patriot Place is going to need repairs in phases, one to repair under the roadway and another hopefully to get it paved for the residents who are tired of coughing up to buy more gravel.
The clock is ticking on these repairs and the prospect of having to deal with a calamitous roadway failure is not something these residents are eager to address on their own.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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