By Hannah Grover
Chad Hamilton has spent more than a decade trying to improve the road conditions in his neighborhood.
Hamilton’s road is an example of one of many Torrance County roads that the county does not maintain. The County Commission is looking for ways to improve conditions on what are known as secondary roads without imposing taxes on the entire population.
“Doing the status quo isn’t going to change anything,” Commission Chairman Ryan Schwebach said during a meeting earlier this month.
The one-mile stretch of road Hamilton is focused on is in such rough condition that emergency vehicles cannot always drive down it.
Islands of grass and brush grow in the middle in places where cars have avoided driving due to major dips. In places, the dirt road cuts up onto a slope because traffic has left the main drive in an attempt to find smoother ground.
“It’s not like we’re asking the county to chip seal it and paint it and put lights out there,” Hamilton told the County Commission earlier this month.
But the county can’t go in and grade the road without opening a proverbial Pandora’s box.
“The minute we put that county blade on that road, we’ve got problems,” Commissioner Kevin McCall said, explaining that people living on other unmaintained roads would want the county to come do the same for them.
McCall gave an example of a mobile home park near his house where the access roads are unmaintained and in poor condition.
Schwebach said these roads became a problem because, decades ago, developers never built the roads up to the specifications that the county needed to take over maintenance on them or, in some cases, the developers opted for the residents to pay for road maintenance rather than the county.
“What we’re trying to do is figure out a way to address these roads in an equitable manner within the entire county,” Schwebach said.
One method the county may use to address these roads is a special assessment district. The county could create special assessment districts where property owners would have their properties assessed at a higher level to pay for the road improvements. The special assessment district could be created either through a petition process where the majority of the property owners vote in favor of the district or through county commission action.
While the assessment itself is not a tax, it does result in higher property tax bills. This is because the assessed value of the property is used to calculate the property tax rates.
According to county manager Jordan Barela, Torrance County has never used special assessment districts before. The County Commission heard a presentation earlier this month that educated commissioners about how these districts work.
Schwebach expressed interest in also finding a way to prevent new developments resulting in unmaintained roads.
“It’s one thing fixing the wounds, but let’s stop the bleeding also,” he said.
