On January 28, 2025 three of us homeowners offered public testimony before the Lane County Board of Commissioners. I’ll post the video separately. Here’s a letter that I left behind for them – it’s a longer form of my testimony. Hopefuly it will give you some background on the issue.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Lane County Board of Commissioners
Re: Local Access Roads (LARs) within the UGB
As a supplement to my public testimony this morning, I would like to offer this information about Local Access Roads within the Urban Growth Boundary.
Local access roads (LARs) in the UGB are almost exclusively in River Road and Santa Clara. There are at least 500 homes on LARs in RR, and another 200+ in Santa Clara. These are not real LARs – gravel roads out in the country that connect one or a few houses to the county road. Almost all of them in the UGB are paved residential roads, with population density as high as, and sometimes higher than, county-maintained roads in these neighborhoods.
LARs in our neighborhood are not another type of road – there is nothing that physically distinguishes these LARs from County Road System roads in these neighborhoods (other than signs of neglected preventative maintenance) – some are wide, some are narrow, some are dead-ends, some are through-streets – just like County roads. Some have no curbs or sidewalks, just like County roads. Some LARs have curbs, gutters and sidewalks. LARs are interspersed with County and City roads throughout the neighborhood. (See pink-colored streets on the maps I have attached for River Road and Santa Clara.) These roads are misclassified as LARs.
As far as why these roads are LARs, Dan Hurley has explained to me that the County didn’t used to have standards for admittance into the County Road System, so admission several decades ago was happenstance.
From my experiencing talking with people as I walk the neighborhood, most homeowners are completely unaware that they live on LARs, including homeowners who have been here for decades. There may be a regulation requiring that home sellers disclose to potential buyers LAR status, but since homeowners have not been informed, they could not comply. Our last River Road Community Organization chair, who was also a former Planning Commissioner, was unaware that he has been living on an LAR for the past 15 years. The current RRCO co-chair recently developed many homes on Benjamin Street, and in all the paperwork done, she never encountered LAR status information. There is no way online to discover that one lives on an LAR, except by going into the County online maps, opening up the Transportation section and turning on the Jurisdiction layer – which homeowners would never do.
Homeowners are not only unaware of their financial responsibility, but also of their legal liability for road conditions – that they could presumably be sued if conditions cause injury or property damage. It is not clear if homeowners’ policies cover such road liability. Such liability coverage is of course written for governments.
While some homeowners are well off, there are many working-class residents, as well as many seniors with low fixed incomes in these neighborhoods. Having to pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for road maintenance and repairs would be financially devastating for many.
A few roads are in very bad condition, but most are not as bad. Dan Hurley speculates that back in the 80s or 90s when County coffers were flush with timber and federal money, the County probably did one-time maintenance on most LARs. That means though that roads have had no preventative maintenance in 30+ years, and they are showing impacts of that neglect. Since the County never informed homeowners and it was next to impossible to find out, homeowners couldn’t have properly cared for the roads even if they could have afforded it.
Fairway Drive, which is a through street between W. Hilliard and Horn, is experiencing serious issues, with deep alligator cracking and many potholes. Residents do not agree on whether to do anything – some like that the potholes deter and slow down traffic, some want to fix it to make it safe and to preserve their property values. According to LCPW, the only way that everyone could be compelled to pay for repairs would be for 60% to agree, sign a petition, submit that petition to the County, and convince the County that conditions are so dire and repairs are so important that the County is willing to brave opposing homeowners’ wrath and impose assessments, and property liens on those who refuse to pay. Needless to say, preventative maintenance would presumably rarely be agreed upon and impossible to compel.
LAR owners receive no rebate for taxes paid that are would otherwise be used to maintain their roads and that are presumably being used to maintain other people’s roads.
LCPW has a project in the works to feed LAR status into the Easy Property Lookup system, which feeds into realtors’ MLS. This has the potential to make potential home buyers aware of LAR status. While this is positive in protecting their interests, it will also hurt existing homeowners’ property values, particularly of those properties on roads with obvious signs of deterioration.
The Need for a Solution
It is a basic responsibility of government to maintain roads used by the public.
There is no justification for the disparate treatment of these roads and their homeowners compared to non-LAR roads and homeowners in the area. It makes no sense that these are still classified as LARs, and for this to continue is to penalize homeowners today for a County mistake made several decades ago.
The County has not protected homeowners’ interests: They did not inform homeowners of LAR status and did not keep them informed as home ownership turned over; back when the streets were developed they did not compel homeowners to set up HOAs that would have legally been able to collect dues and reserve for road repairs; and they certainly didn’t educate residents on how to maintain paved residential roads. As a result, roads have suffered neglect that they otherwise might not have.
Homeowners cannot afford to bear the financial and legal responsibility for these roads.
The Solution
I ask that the Lane County Board of Commissioners pass an ordinance incorporating these residential LARs within the UGB into the County Road System, as should have been done back around the 1950s.
Providing one-time maintenance but preserving the roads as LARs amounts to kicking the can down the road, and is not an acceptable solution.
River Road also has 14 county roads classified as “private”, many of which are also used by the public, some heavily. These roads have older homes and also look just like County roads and LARs, and the limited number of residents I have communicated with are unaware that their roads are private. Depending on legal complexities, these roads should also be rolled into the County Road System.
In recognition that budgets are very tight, I understand that this may come with no immediate increase in budget. Nevertheless, it removes the liability from homeowners’ shoulders as well as the property-value-lowering stigma, and it gives them an equal opportunity to receive future maintenance dollars. That this might ultimately delay work on other roads is unfortunate, but necessary – LAR residents have paid to subsidize everyone else’s roads for decades while being denied needed maintenance.
The Board may prefer that the City annex and take over maintenance jurisdiction for the streets. Given the reticence of the City to take on unimproved streets, the City’s own limited funds, and that annexation is done one street at a time and only after public comment, this process will at best take years. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that the City wouldn’t continue to classify these roads as LARs. I welcome the County to continue to press for annexation, but our roads cannot and should not wait for it. Please pass the County ordinance, proceed to get our roads onto the maintenance calendar, and then continue to pursue annexation if desired.
I would like to extend an invitation to you and your staff (and anyone else who would benefit) to go on a driving tour of the neighborhood with me, as Commissioner Ceniga has done, during which I can acquaint you with our LARs and how they compare to County roads in the area. I will do as many of these as would be helpful.
Thank you,
Laura Shoe