County Public Works Misinforms Commissioners and Argues Against Taking On Eugene Local Access Roads

The Lane County Board of Commissioners held a work session on local access roads (LARs) on April 29. Lane County Public Works  gave the commissioners a presentation on LARs, and the commissioners discussed some issues surrounding them. While some data was provided on LARs throughout Lane County, it was clear that LARs in the River Road and Santa Clara neighborhoods of Eugene were the main focus of the meeting. (Watch the video.)

As expected, Public Works argued against accepting LARs into the County road system. Key to their argument was their claim that it is developers’ fault that our roads are LARs – that they built substandard roads in order to save money, and that that is why they weren’t accepted into the County road system. Of course if it is developers’ fault, rather than the County’s, and the roads are substandard, then Public Works’ staff can feel sorry for LAR homeowners but not take any responsibility for the problem – which is exactly what they propose doing.

 

I don’t know what the situation is with LARs outside of Eugene, but those who actually know LARs in River Road and Santa Clara understand that our LARs (with a few exceptions) look exactly like County-maintained roads in our neighborhoods, and are not sub-standard when judged against these County roads built around the same time as our LARs and accepted into the County road system. Even Orin Schumacher, the road maintenance manager for LCPW in the work session agreed that one can’t tell LARs from County roads (other than an 8,000 number somewhere on the street signs, he reported).

Dan Hurley, the head of Public Works, in a conversation with me last year, explained that the reason these LARs were left out, is not that they weren’t built to County standards, but instead that back in the mid-twentieth century there were no County standards and no set process for accepting roads into the road system, so some were arbitrarily left out. This explanation is consistent with the facts on the ground.

How one could claim that Rosewood Avenue (LAR) was built to a lesser standard than Kourt Drive (County-maintained) is beyond me. These are through streets off of River Road three blocks apart. (More examples on the home page of this site – and I could go on and on with more.)

Public Works confused the standards issue by telling the commissioners that LARs are not up to County road standards. Of course they’re not up to these current standards for new roads, but (1) this is to be expected since they were built in the 20th century, and (2) neither are most County-maintained roads in the area.

They then went on to suggest that maintenance has been deferred since the roads were built. In fact, the County resurfaced them in the 1990s when sewers were installed and coffers overflowed with timber taxes. (If not, Rosewood above would be dirt/gravel with huge potholes by now.)

The rest of Public Works’ argument was that the County can’t afford to maintain our LARs. They reported that Lane County roads are the best-maintained roads in the entire state, but that everything would come crashing down if 12 more miles of roads (Eugene LARs) were added to the 1400 mile County road system. They presented a chart showing that if they don’t maintain County roads while they are in good condition, that they reach a tipping point where it becomes exorbitantly more expensive to repair them, with reconstruction costing well over $1 million dollars per mile. No one pointed out that this is exactly what will happen to our LARs if they continue to be neglected. No one asked Public Works how much maintenance would be deferred on existing County-maintained roads and how much their condition would suffer if 12 more miles were added to their 1400, and Public Works presented no data on this. Despite having three months to prepare for the work session, Public Works made no attempt to estimate the cost of adding our LARs, they just proclaimed that the budget sky is falling.

Proposed Solutions

The County Counsel suggested that residents could vote to form local improvement districts and use these to impose another tax on  themselves to raise money to maintain and improve their roads. He explained that it would take a supermajority to approve it, and that it would therefore require “community spirit”. He apparently didn’t realize how outrageous this sounds to LAR homeowners who see no justification whatsoever for their roads being LARs, and who are already paying the same transportation taxes (that fund road maintenance) as everyone else is.

Public Works pointed to the Metro Plan from 1982, which apparently states that the City is the logical provider of services within the urban growth boundary. and they went all in on City annexation of the roads being the solution to this LAR problem. (Note that road annexation is independent of private property annexation and doesn’t raise property taxes.)   They stated that now, unlike in the past, they have a great relationship with the City, and will present to the City roads that can be prioritized for annexation. Discussion centered around roads that have high percentages of annexed private properties, and trying to negotiate with the City some sort of trigger – for example, once 75% of private properties on a road are annexed, the City would have to annex the road. (No LARs in River Road meet this condition – on average, 16% of homes have annexed into the city.)  In any case, annexation of all the roads will take many years.

The commissioners liked the idea of the City taking on the roads, but there was also some skepticism by a couple as to whether they could rely on it as “the” solution. Commissioner Ceniga asked how many miles of LARs the City has annexed in the past 5-10 years. Public Works couldn’t answer, but agreed that it was minimal. (Few roads in the area have been annexed since the Metro Plan was promulgated 45 years ago.) Commissioner Farr pointed out that City annexation doesn’t guarantee the roads will be well cared for.

Public Works failed to note that with this City annexation solution, most LARs would go many more years without maintenance, and according to their chart it will be exorbitantly expensive at that point to repair them – in which case, why would the City EVER annex them? There was no mention of the harm that homeowners would suffer in the meantime.

There was a subtle push from Commissioners Ceniga and Loveall to accept these roads. Commissioner Farr wanted us to know that they had heard us, that something should be done and that the work session is just the beginning, but he also was inclined to believe that developers built substandard roads to save money and wondered if homeowners had benefited from this.

Commissioner Buch was concerned that if they take on LARs within the Eugene UGB, that constituents on LARs in her more rural district will be upset that theirs aren’t addressed. Commissioner Ceniga argued that urban ones bear much more traffic and serve entire neighborhoods, unlike rural ones that tend to be one-off roads off of County roads. Commissioner Buch disagreed with this. (My review of her LARs supports Commissioner Ceniga’s point.)

Commissioner Trieger expressed concern that 2020 code changes hadn’t resulted in homeowners being notified when they purchased homes on LARs, as was intended. Public Works agreed with this but said that they finally had added LAR information to the database that feeds real estate websites. (That said, there’s no evidence that those website are grabbing and publishing the information.) No one expressed concern that the 99% of homeowners not selling or buying right now have not been informed that they live on LARs.

We continue to urge that the County accept our LARs into the County road system now, without requiring that they first be improved to meet current standards for new roads. No question the County budget is tight, so we are not expecting this to result in immediate maintenance for most LARs, but they would have a fair opportunity to receive maintenance as funds are available, as they should, as public roads. County Public Works can then work with the City, with whom they reportedly now have a great relationship (unlike in the past), to move towards annexation. (In case you’re not in favor of road annexation, keep in mind that the process includes public comment.)