Dell Road disrepair sparks concern among residents

He asked for the county board to help come up with a feasible solution to the problem.

The maintenance issue was brought to Smith’s attention by resident Allyson Smith (no relation) in mid-October. Allyson and her husband live on Rowena Creek Road, a private street only accessible from Dell Road.

“That road has just gotten worse and worse over the years,” she said, describing potholes that must be dodged and the necessity to slow vehicles to 10 or 15 mph “or your teeth get jarred.”

She also expressed concern that emergency vehicles would have a significantly slowed response time, which could put lives at risk.

The county last did repairs on Dell Road in 2001, said Smith.

The rough, gravel road is riddled with so many potholes that, at times, it’s easier for vehicles to drive through the grass on either side.

Allyson’s husband, along with a few of the other 14 or so residents who rely on Dell Road for access to their homes, have since taken responsibility for maintaining the road out of sheer necessity.

With the minimal equipment they have, the most the residents can do is clear snow and attempt to fill potholes with gravel and dirt.

“It’s just those guys who will get out in their tractors,” Allyson said, “it’s hard to do without the right equipment.”

She initially asked public works to fix the problems, but quickly found that her request was not feasible due to a statute in Oregon law that relieves the county of liability for failure to improve or maintain local access roads.

Oregon law defines a public road as being outside a city and not under jurisdiction of county, state and federal agencies.

The amount of public use Dell Road receives arguably warrants county action, Smith and Allyson agreed.

“[There are] a lot of other people degrading this road and we’re the ones who have to deal with the consequences of that,” Allyson said, referencing the road’s position as the sole access to several acres of public land, as well as a shortcut for those going between Highway 30 and State Road.

The statute does allow the county to step in if it determines that the work is an emergency, a county road official recommends maintenance or public use of the road justifies expenditure on it. However, the county is not obligated to provide assistance.

“The hard line, say ‘no and go away,’ is the easiest thing to do budget-wise, but I don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” Smith told the county board.

The county’s public works department is funded by gas taxes and motor taxes, as well as a percentage of timber harvest receipts, which are in decline, Smith said.

The department’s expected revenue for fiscal year 2017-18 is $2.5 million, “a decent number…for the math to work out” on maintaining the 675 miles of county road public works is currently responsible for, he said.

The problem with taking on even a mile of local access roads is that the county can’t simply start maintaining them like they do with county roads, as they are often in a similar state of disrepair to Dell Road.

“You can’t just magically come in and make it work,” Smith said, addressing the extra money and energy that would have to go into a local access road before regular maintenance could even be considered.

Smith and the county board share the worry that, if the county makes an exception to the state statute and repairs two miles of Dell Road, that public works will then be expected to do the same for the county’s entire 105 miles of local access roads. And that is a responsibility the road department’s budget would not be able to cover, they say. “I think we need to step very carefully before we step in and make a decision on this,” said Tyler Stone, county administrative officer. “I think there’s other options.”

One of those options, Smith said, is bringing back the county’s old system of a county petition process, where non-county roads would file petitions for services which would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

However, this still doesn’t address the possibility that all local access roads could begin requesting help, the county board agreed. “This issue is probably not going to go away and I don’t have a good answer because the statute is clear,” Smith said.

Commissioner Rod Runyon proposed that the issue be taken up as a work-session topic, to which the rest of the board and Smith agreed.

Currently, the most realistic solution for the board to consider is to recategorize Dell Road as a county road, which could be possible, Smith said, since a portion of the road was historically under county jurisdiction until 1976, when residents petitioned to have its status revoked.

Recategorizing Dell Road as a county road would be a reasonable solution for its residents, Allyson said.

She did not feel that it had been appropriately designated given the amount of pubic use it gets on a regular basis.

The county’s current plan is to form a work session to deal with the issue, although a date has not yet been set.

“I just hope the neighbors will all be notified when there’s a working group assigned to this,” Allyson said.