Residents Reject County Road-Paving Proposal

BY MANDY WALKER
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Residents of unincorporated Boulder County have voted against a county proposal that would have created a local improvement district to maintain the paved roads within subdivisions. The cost of the proposed LID would have been $130 per year for fifteen years for a total cost of $1,950 per property.

Fewer than half of the 10,648 households in the proposed LID returned the advisory ballots with 58 percent voting against the proposal. However, over 70 percent of residents in areas where the roads were rated fair or poor quality supported the proposal.

In a presentation to the Board of County Commissioners on Aug. 26, Transportation Director George Gerstle said, “Clearly people are supportive of it [the LID] when the roads are in very bad shape. There’s generally not a willingness to support it to keep the roads from getting in bad shape.”

Gerstle also said the county’s current policies remain in place and the county will do its best to provide daily maintenance services with the resources available. However, “subdivisions will remain responsible for rehabilitation of their own roads, through individual LIDs or some other payment structure.”

Those individual LIDs will be administratively difficult and costly to support and Will Toor, county commissioner, conceded that “longer term, we need a comprehensive solution.”

Commissioner Cindy Domenico said other counties on the Front Range have adopted the same road maintenance policy with the county providing services for snowplowing and pothole repair but not rehabilitation or reconstruction. She pointed to Larimer and Weld counties as examples where taxpayers have been told to “step up to the plate.” She added that other models included Douglas and El Paso counties, which have created transportation districts to address the issue.

Commissioner Ben Pearlman saw the ballot as the beginning of a conversation and that the county could not allow the roads to deteriorate further. “We will ultimately get to a long term solution where everybody knows the schedule for rehabilitation as well as maintenance because that’s what I think our obligation is.”

Niwot resident Twyla Barrett, who lives in the Overbrook II subdivision, said that she had voted for the proposal because it would otherwise be a nightmare. However, she feels the roads are not in immediate need of rehabilitation and she would rather take a wait-and-see approach. She’s concerned that the county is misdirecting money.

“The county is fog-coating roads for bicyclists for a smoother ride and yet the bicyclists don’t pay taxes,” Barrett said. “They’re taking the money that should be used for infrastructure and using it for their pet projects.” Ultimately she would like to see the number of county commissioners expanded to five in the hope of what she called “a better political balance and geographical representation.”

Realtor Karlynn Spreder with Colorado Landmark Realtors warned that the paving issue was a concern that realtors now need to be pointing out to potential buyers. Although she doesn’t think it’s likely to stop people from buying the property they want, it could impact the purchase price. “I think it will be in the back of their minds while negotiating,” Spreder said.

The president of the Cottonwood Park West Homeowner Association, Dean Carpenter, said his association had not yet had a chance to discuss the results. “We were hopeful that the unincorporated residents would support it,” said Carpenter. “I’m afraid it [a subdivision LID] will be very costly. You have to do a lot of door-to-door stomping to have something like an LID pass, and I don’t know if it’s worth it.

The roads within the Cottonwood Park West subdivision are among the poorest quality roads within Niwot and yet Carpenter thought it unlikely that residents would pursue anything within the next year. “We have some high cost projects apart from the roads to keep our community going,” said Carpenter. “It’s quite a burden.”