Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 16, 1991 TAG: 9103160198
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Through a state program, residents of the Stewartsville subdivision would split the cost of fixing up their road with the state highway department.
Once the road was in good-enough shape, the state would accept it into the highway system and the residents would no longer deal with the woes of living along a private road.
That was the plan, at least.
A year later, though, the idea has fallen by the wayside.
Even with the revenue-sharing program, Scenic Acres residents couldn't gather enough cash to pay their part of the cost - a figure state officials estimated to be far greater than the residents' estimate.
Homeowners in Scenic Acres aren't the only ones disappointed.
The Scenic Acres issue was the first to raise the revenue-sharing program with Bedford County officials last February, but it was just the start in a county with 150 to 300 miles of private roads.
During the year, residents of seven or eight other subdivisions approached county officials expressing interest in splitting the costs to improve their private roads with the state, said County Administrator William Rolfe.
To date, though, only one subdivision's project has been approved.
About one mile of road in Bass Cove subdivision will be improved and taken in by the state, Rolfe said in a recent report to the Bedford County Board of Supervisors.
"The program is much more complicated than originally envisioned," Rolfe wrote.
As it turns out, only one type of private road qualifies for the program, drainage easements must be staked by the property owners, and any speculative interest in undeveloped property fronting the road must be figured in and shared.
"This results in the project being shared not on a 50-50 basis but at some higher percentage for the property owners," Rolfe told the supervisors.
Still, Rolfe is optimistic about what the program can do for private roads in Bedford.
"We had to get a lot of kinks out of it," he said. No matter what, paying part of the hefty cost of improving a private road is going to beat paying the whole cost, Rolfe said.
"With state estimates at $250,000 a mile for road, that's a high figure for a neighborhood to come up with," Rolfe said. "This does it for half."
Many people who purchase land on private roads don't realize immediately what basic services - like repairs and snow removal - they won't get, he said.
Bedford County's supervisors last week agreed to sign up for the revenue-sharing program again for 1991-92. Rolfe said he expects perhaps four or five subdivision roads to be improved next year.
Scenic Acres' road, though, isn't likely to be one of those.
Cheryl Ferris, a resident there, said the push to raise funds for the program among her neighbors has been abandoned.
"There's nothing we can do," she said. "We just couldn't get enough money up."
Ferris and other parents wanted the road accepted into the state system mainly so Bedford County's school buses could enter it. As a private road, the buses cannot.
Instead, clusters of children gather along the side of Virginia 755 - just outside the development - waiting. Parents worry that the waiting kids, the busy road and a blind curve will lead to an accident one of these days.
The residents got an estimate of $43,000 for making some improvements to the road, Ferris said. With the split with the state, they might be able to gather enough from fellow homeowners, they hoped.
But state officials came back with a much higher estimate.
They said the road would cost some $339,000 and that the residents would have to collect $191,614.26 of it, Ferris said.
"It was ridiculous," Ferris said. "Ridiculous."
So, she said, the children are still gathering in bunches just outside their development to wait for the buses.
The only change is a school bus warning sign now posted around the curve in the road.
"I wish we could have gotten it done for the kids," Ferris said. "You really have to watch them like hawks."
by CNB