At the June 9 Lane County Board of Commissioners meeting, County Public Works presented its long-awaited report on the potential timeline and cost of bringing Local Access Roads (LARs) in the Eugene Urban Growth Boundary and Blue River into the county road system.
The report estimated that reconstructing all 12 miles of Eugene-area LARs to current standards could cost approximately $88 million. However, the discussion that followed made clear that commissioners do not see the choices as simply spending tens of millions of dollars rebuilding every road or leaving the current system unchanged.
Instead, commissioners repeatedly returned to a central question:
How do we create a fair and realistic solution for public roads that have existed for decades but were never incorporated into a public maintenance system?
Commissioners Recognized the Equity Issue
Several commissioners acknowledged that LAR residents are facing a problem they did not create.
Commissioner Pat Farr questioned how these roads ended up in this situation:
“Who originally allowed for that to be built and not maintained until it got to the condition it’s in today? And who should have been in charge of that? Who should have been maintaining that?
[… In the report you just presented to us] we’re trying to catch up to today’s standards — today’s, some might call extreme, certainly protective standards — that we have today. We’re trying to bring everything up to those standards that occurred over the last 100 years maybe.And to me, that’s a daunting task, and it’s one that should be very troublesome to everyone in the room, not just the people whose properties are on there.
Because if I’m telling this gentleman right here [Joel Korin] that in order to sell his property he has to disclose to whoever he’s selling to that sometime in the future — maybe not too far from now — they may not be able to get to their property because we don’t care what it looks like. I’m going to use that term because “we don’t care what it looks like” or the condition of it, because it’s not ours.
To me, that’s troubling.
I’m hoping that we, as a county, can come up with a pathway that allows the property owners, current and future, to be assured that their property is not diminished in value because of some mistake that somebody, in an official capacity someplace, did at some point in time.
Commissioners also recognized that LAR status does not mean a road is unsafe or poorly built. It is a legal classification.
Commissioner Ryan Ceniga noted that when driving through River Road and Santa Clara neighborhoods, other than that some have been sealed, one cannot tell which roads are LARs and which are county or city maintained. Commissioner Laurie Trieger also clarified with Public Works that LAR does not convey any information about road condition – this varies in all systems — county roads, city roads, and LARs.
Many Homeowners Were Never Informed They Lived on an LAR
Commissioners also discussed concerns raised by residents who purchased homes without knowing their roads were LARs.
Public Works explained that around 2021, Lane County added LAR information to property records so future buyers could discover when a property takes access from a Local Access Road. (In fact it was not added until February 2025.) Commissioner Laurie Trieger noted that while improved disclosure during property sales may help future buyers, relying on home sales means it will take time as properties turn over and does not address residents who have owned their homes for years or decades.
Since some residents remain in their homes for many decades, relying on disclosure only when properties are sold means it could take generations before all affected homeowners are informed.
Public Works also stated that existing homeowners can check the county RLID database to determine whether they live on an LAR. However, technical access to information is not the same as meaningful notification.
Using the database requires knowing that Local Access Roads exist and that there is a possibility you may be affected, and knowing about the database (meant for property professionals) and how to use it. Online access also requires a paid subscription, while free access requires visiting a county facility or library.
For decades, many homeowners had no reason to question whether the public road in front of their home was treated differently from the public road a block away.
Commissioner Farr asked whether the county had a legal obligation to notify homeowners of LAR status, and County Counsel stated that there is no such requirement.
But the question facing commissioners now is not just what was legally required in the past. The county was the agency with the records, the authority to accept roads, and the knowledge of which roads were outside the maintenance system. The county also maintained LARs when money was available, so they left residents with an impression that they were maintained by government.
The decisions that created today’s patchwork of maintained and unmaintained public roads were government decisions made over many decades, not decisions made by current homeowners.
The question now is how to create a fair path forward.
The Current Acceptance Process Was Not Designed for This Situation
One of the most important parts of the discussion involved the county’s existing process for accepting roads.
Public Works explained that the current Lane Manual process – that is the foundation for their entire report – appears to have been written primarily for newly constructed roads — such as roads built by developers — rather than existing neighborhood roads that have served the public for decades.
That distinction matters.
New subdivision roads should meet current standards before they are turned over to taxpayers. But LAR residents are not developers asking the public to take over newly built infrastructure.
These are existing public roads, many created generations ago under different standards and policies. They have been used by the public for decades and, in many cases, function no differently than nearby county-maintained roads.
The same concern applies to requiring homeowners to go through an application and petition process street by street. Residents should absolutely be informed and have input, but requiring each street to organize 60% homeowner support, pay for surveys and studies, and apply individually puts the burden of solving a decades-old policy problem onto the homeowners affected by it.
Homeowners on similar county-maintained roads were never required to petition for maintenance. The county has the authority to create a broader acceptance process based on reasonable criteria for existing public roads — not whether each neighborhood can successfully petition its way out of an inequitable situation.
The $88 Million Estimate Does Not Represent the Only Solution
The largest number in the report — approximately $88 million — was based on reconstructing Eugene-area LARs to current standards, which Public Works told commissioners is necessary so the City of Eugene will be willing to annex them into the city at some point.
Commissioners questioned whether that is the appropriate standard.
Many existing county and city roads do not meet today’s requirements for new construction. They may lack sidewalks, curbs, gutters, or other modern improvements, yet they remain accepted public roads receiving maintenance.
The question is not:
“Would this road be built exactly this way today?”
A more appropriate question may be:
“Is this existing public road safe and maintainable, similar to other roads already in the system?”
Commissioner David Loveall questioned whether roads must be brought to a “first class, A1” standard before being accepted and discussed the possibility of more practical standards.
After Public Works acknowledged that the city is considering relaxing its standards for annexing roads, Loveall noted:
“So those numbers are kind of a moving target, as you said. So let’s acknowledge that. Thank you for doing that, because that was a boatload of numbers, and I appreciate you at least getting us some idea.”
Maintenance Versus Reconstruction
A major theme of the discussion was that preservation and reconstruction are very different things.
Residents are not asking Lane County to immediately rebuild every LAR.
Road systems work by maintaining existing infrastructure before it fails. Routine preservation, such as sealing and minor repairs, can extend the life of roads and prevent much larger future costs.
Commissioner Loveall also raised the concern that waiting until LARs fail badly enough to become an emergency (at which point the county would have to intervene and repair the roads) may only delay costs until the problem is worse.
Possible Solutions Discussed
Commissioners discussed several possible paths forward, including:
- revising Lane Manual to create a process designed for existing LARs;
- working with the City of Eugene on a joint solution;
- exploring ways to preserve roads before they fail;
- considering changes to county policies.
Commissioner Ceniga raised the possibility of changing county code to allow some maintenance, such as slurry sealing, without formally accepting LARs into the county road system.
We appreciate this effort to find a practical and affordable approach. It recognizes that the choice does not have to be between complete reconstruction and doing nothing.
However, maintenance without acceptance would not solve the underlying equity issue. These roads would remain in a separate second-class category, leaving questions about long-term responsibility, future maintenance, homeowner liability, and impacts on property values.
It also risks repeating what happened in the past — LARs received some maintenance from the county when resources were available, but because they were never formally accepted into the road system, they were left behind when money became tighter.
Preservation could be an important step toward a solution, but it should be a bridge to acceptance, not a substitute for it.
Special Roads District Discussed
Commissioners also discussed whether creating a Special Roads District could provide a mechanism for residents to fund maintenance, with some suggesting this might help reduce the equity issue.
While this might address the practical question of how money could be collected, it does not address the fundamental question of fairness.
Creating a separate tax district would mean LAR homeowners would pay an additional tax to fund maintenance on their public roads ,while neighbors on comparable public roads continue receiving maintenance through the normal system.
Rather than fixing the two-tier system, it would make that system permanent.
Next Steps: County and City Discussions
Commissioners expressed interest in a future discussion with City of Eugene officials about possible solutions.
That conversation will be important. Any transfer of roads from the county to the city must actually solve the problem by ensuring roads become part of a sustainable maintenance system. (Current city policy is to not maintain most unimproved roads without curbs, gutters, storm drains and modern surfaces, other than filling hazardous potholes. Once the roads deteriorate, the city would then assess homeowners to pay for rebuilding them.)
Simply changing which agency is responsible on paper would not address the concerns residents have raised.
A Step Forward
While there are no guarantees progress will be made, the meeting represented an important shift.
The conversation is no longer simply about whether LAR residents should maintain these roads themselves.
Commissioners recognized that this is a complicated legacy issue involving decades of changing policies, development patterns, and government decisions.
The challenge now is finding a practical solution that treats existing public roads fairly without requiring unrealistic reconstruction costs.
LAR residents will continue advocating for a pathway that brings these roads into a public maintenance system and ends the two-tier treatment of public roads in our neighborhoods.