Here is a letter presenting to commisioners our No LARs group response to the June 9, 2026 Public Works presentation to Lane County Commissioners of estimated costs and timeline for potential acceptance of LARs into the county road system, and to commissioners’ discussion afterwards.
To: Lane County Board of Commissioners
From: Laura Shoe, Linda Lovick, Mary Leoni, Joel, Korin, Eleanor Lepinski, Joshua Kielas,
Sheryl Sabo, Elena Bohannan
Date: June 22, 2026
Re: Community Response to Local Access Roads Meeting June 2026
Dear Commissioners,
Thank you so much for the thoughtful discussion following the Public Works presentation on Local Access Roads. We left the meeting encouraged that you have heard us and understand the core issue: this is not simply a road maintenance problem — it is a longstanding equity problem that requires a practical solution.
We especially appreciated the recognition that LAR status does not mean a road is unsafe, poorly constructed, or fundamentally different from other public roads. Many LARs in River Road and Santa Clara are indistinguishable from nearby county and city roads. The difference is often not the road itself, but decisions made decades ago about which public roads were accepted into a maintenance system and which were not.
Commissioner Farr asked the question at the heart of the issue:
“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?”
He later spoke about wanting to find a pathway so homeowners are not harmed because of “some mistake that somebody, in an official capacity someplace, [made] at some point in time.”
That is exactly the issue. Current homeowners did not create this system, but they are living with the consequences.
In this response, we will focus on the 12 miles of Eugene UGB LARs — not because Blue River’s LARs are less important, but because our knowledge and experience are with the Eugene-area roads.
Urban LARs Present a Different Challenge
Residents on rural LARs face real challenges, and the county should continue looking for solutions that help those communities.
But LARs within Eugene’s Urban Growth Boundary present a different situation. Many rural LARs are gravel roads serving a smaller number of homes, where maintenance may involve periodic grading or adding rock. Eugene-area LARs are usually paved neighborhood streets surrounded by similar county-maintained roads built during the same era.
Maintenance on these streets bearing urban loads is far beyond what individual homeowners can reasonably manage, particularly when repairs or reconstruction are needed. That is exactly why the question of which roads were accepted into the maintenance system decades ago matters so much.
The issue is not whether one road is more deserving than another. It is whether similar public roads in the same neighborhoods should continue to be treated differently because of decisions made generations ago.
Disclosure Improvements Do Not Solve the Problem for Current Homeowners
You and your predecessors took important steps in 2021 to improve disclosure for future buyers (that included RLID database inclusion, implemented in 2025). Those changes were an important improvement.
However, as Commissioner Trieger noted, disclosure through property sales only reaches homeowners as properties change hands. Since many residents remain in their homes for decades, it will be decades before all affected homeowners learn about LAR status through that process.
Public Works stated that existing homeowners can look up whether they live on an LAR through RLID. But the fact that information exists somewhere is not the same as meaningful access or notice. Homeowners would need to know that Local Access Roads exist, suspect their property may be affected, know where and how to find that information in RLID, and pay to access it or find a public facility with free access.
Public Works also expressed concern that GIS data cannot perfectly identify every property that takes access from an LAR, but that should not prevent meaningful outreach. These are a limited number of roads, and field verification could resolve uncertainties about which properties actually use them for access.
County Counsel explained that the county may not have had a legal obligation to notify homeowners. But the question now is broader than what was legally required. The county maintained the records, controlled the process for accepting roads into the county system, and made the decisions over many decades that created today’s patchwork of maintained and unmaintained public roads.
Many residents also reasonably believed their roads were already part of the maintenance system because, as confirmed by LCPW Director Hurley, Lane County maintained many LARs when more funding was available. Residents saw government crews maintaining their public roads and had little reason to suspect those roads had a separate classification that could leave them without future maintenance.
The Public Works Report Evaluated the Wrong Question
We appreciate the enormous amount of work Public Works put into researching this issue. However, the report largely answered the wrong question:
“What would it take to bring these roads up to current standards for new roads?”
That is not the question we are asking.
The question should be:
“What reasonable process should exist for accepting decades-old public roads that function like other roads already maintained by the county?”
Public Works acknowledged during the meeting that the Lane Manual process for accepting roads, that provides the framework for the report, appears to have been written for newly constructed roads, such as roads built by developers. Those standards make sense in that context. Developers should not be allowed to build inadequate roads and shift costs to taxpayers.
But LAR residents are not developers asking the public to take over new infrastructure. These are existing public roads that have served neighborhoods for decades.
Public Works also referenced a 2017 example in response to a question by Commissioner Buch about new LARs. The example was not a new LAR being built and left outside the maintenance system. It involved an existing LAR where widening of the right of way, development and annexation occurred north of the centerline while south of the centerline remained an LAR. To our knowledge no new LARs have been built inside the UGB since the city began annexing new development decades ago. This example illustrates the complicated jurisdictional history surrounding LARs, but it should not distract from the issue before us today: finding a fair solution for existing public roads and homeowners who did not create this system.
The $88 Million Reconstruction Estimate Should Not Define the Solution
We understand and agree with commissioners’ concern that spending $88 million reconstructing every LAR is not possible and this assumption should be questioned.
Public Works explained that the estimate was based on bringing Eugene-area LARs up to current urban standards because the long-term goal would be eventual transfer of roads within the Urban Growth Boundary to the City of Eugene.
However, during questioning, Public Works acknowledged that the city is already evaluating whether some roads could be accepted without meeting full current standards. Commissioners also pointed out that many existing city roads — including roads in our neighborhoods — do not have sidewalks, curbs, gutters, storm drains, or other features required of new construction. We could name a half dozen examples in River Road alone.
The Howard Avenue transfer from county to city is an important example. Although presented as an unusual exception, it demonstrates that the City of Eugene can and does evaluate existing roads based on real-world needs rather than requiring every element of current new-road standards.
Howard Avenue is an important east-west street where children walk and bike to nearby schools. Yet the city did not require complete reconstruction with sidewalks, curbs, gutters, and storm drains. Instead, it accepted a simpler solution with a Safe Routes to School grant — widening the shoulder a few feet and dropping in concrete curbs to separate people walking and biking from traffic.
If that approach can be appropriate for a school route where pedestrian safety is a priority, then surely a practical standard can be developed for existing neighborhood streets.
The question should not be:
“Would this road be built exactly this way today?”
The question should be:
“Is this existing public road safe, maintainable, and comparable to roads already accepted into the public system?”
A Homeowner Petition Process Does Not Fix the Problem
We understand why requiring homeowner support sounds reasonable. Residents should be informed and have the opportunity to provide input.
But requiring each street to organize a petition, obtain 60% approval, pay for surveys or studies, and apply as individual streets places the burden of fixing a historical government problem onto the homeowners affected by it.
County-maintained roads built during the same era did not have to organize, apply, or prove they deserved maintenance.
A petition process makes sense when residents are requesting something new — a new improvement, an upgrade, or a service beyond what others receive.
That is not what LAR residents are requesting. They are asking for existing public roads to be evaluated under fair criteria and included in the same system as similar county roads.
These are public roads, and we believe the Board has the authority to accept these roads — all together or in groups — as a broader policy solution rather than requiring each street to petition individually.
Transportation Taxes and Sharing Limited Resources Fairly
While some homeowners may misunderstand which taxes fund what, our group understands that road maintenance is primarily funded through transportation revenues, including gas taxes and vehicle registration fees.
Residents on Local Access Roads — homeowners and renters alike — pay the same transportation taxes as residents on nearby county-maintained roads. Yet for decades, those shared resources have supported a road system that excludes the public roads in front of LAR homes.
Public Works stated that the county does not have the staff, equipment, or funding to add 12 more miles of roads. We recognize that transportation funding challenges are real, and that maintaining the entire road system will require difficult decisions.
However, those decisions should be made within an equitable system. The question is not simply whether Lane County can afford to “add” these roads. The question is whether comparable public roads should continue to be divided into two categories — those eligible for public maintenance and those permanently excluded.
Acceptance does not mean every LAR is immediately reconstructed or moved ahead of other roads. It means these roads become part of the same process of evaluation, prioritization, preservation, and funding decisions as other public roads.
In April 2025, the Public Works roads manager told commissioners that Lane County’s preservation approach had been highly successful: “Lane County’s PCI [Pavement Condition Index] has been maintained phenomenally well; we have been holding at about an 81, which is really good. Across the state we were number 1 in those condition assessments based on our preservation model.”
That success demonstrates the value of maintaining roads before they fail. As Lane County faces future funding challenges, limited resources should be prioritized and distributed fairly across all comparable public roads in Eugene — the way the system should have worked from the beginning.
Maintenance Without Acceptance Is Not a Complete Solution
We appreciate Commissioner Ceniga’s effort to identify a practical and affordable option, such as allowing sealing without requiring full acceptance.
That idea recognizes an important point: the choice does not have to be between $88 million reconstruction and doing nothing.
However, maintenance without acceptance cannot be the final solution.
It may temporarily improve road conditions for roads still in good enough condition for sealing, but it leaves behind the roads that have already suffered the most from years without maintenance and that may need repairs before sealing.
It also leaves the two-tier system in place — with continued uncertainty about homeowner liability, impacts on property values, and whether maintenance will continue when budgets and priorities change, as happened previously when timber taxes dried up and maintenance of LARs stopped.
Preservation can be an important bridge to acceptance. It should not replace acceptance.
Special Road Districts Make Permanent the Inequity
We understand why Special Road Districts came up as a possible funding mechanism, but they do not solve the underlying fairness issue.
A Special Road District would require LAR homeowners to pay an additional tax to maintain public roads, while nearby homeowners on similar public roads receive maintenance through the regular system.
LAR residents are not asking for a higher level of service or special improvements — those are situations where a Special Road District may make sense. They are asking for ordinary maintenance of existing public roads, prioritized fairly with comparable roads in the county system.
Creating a separate tax structure for LAR residents would permanently preserve the very inequity we are trying to solve.
Any City Transfer Must Include Actual Maintenance
We support the county and City of Eugene working together on solutions.
However, transferring roads from one jurisdiction to another only solves the equity problem if those roads actually receive maintenance to preserve them.
The City of Eugene’s policy is to not provide maintenance to most unimproved streets (pp 11-12; confirmed with the City’s Surface Operations Manager), other than filling hazardous potholes. Simply transferring LARs — or existing county-maintained roads — without an agreement for ongoing maintenance could leave residents facing the same problem under a different jurisdiction.
Allowing these public neighborhood streets to deteriorate would have significant consequences for the River Road community and portions of Santa Clara. Any city-county solution must protect the interests of affected residents, not simply move responsibility from one government agency to another.
A Practical Path Forward
We believe there is a reasonable middle ground between the extremes discussed.
The solution does not have to be choosing between $88 million in full reconstruction and leaving residents with no path forward.
The county can create a process specifically designed for existing LARs that:
- recognizes these as existing public roads, not new construction;
- evaluates safety and maintainability rather than requiring full modern reconstruction;
- starts by accepting roads that are comparable to roads already in the system;
- prioritizes preservation to prevent unnecessary future costs.
A partnership with the City of Eugene may also be part of the solution, especially given the unique circumstances of roads within the Urban Growth Boundary. But any transfer should achieve the same goal: ensuring these public neighborhood roads become part of a stable, long-term maintenance system.
Commissioners repeatedly asked whether there is a bridge between an unfair situation and unrealistic costs.
We believe there is.
Thank you for recognizing the complexity of this issue and for working toward a solution that is fair to residents while being responsible with public resources.
Sincerely,
Laura Shoe
Linda Lovick
Mary Leoni
Joel Korin
Eleanor Lepinski
Joshua Kielas
Sheryl Sabo
Elena Bohannan