Kendall County Commissioners Court conditionally approved a final plat for a subdivision, minus a requirement to take over maintenance of the roadway serving the development’s future residents.
Commissioners December 27 voted 5-0 to approve the Windmill Ranch subdivision final plat but removed a request for the county to assume maintenance of the subdivision’s road and drainage.
The proposed plat consisted of 16 residential lots on 98.4 acres, with 3,069 linear feet of roadway servicing the homes.
The tracts will be served by individual wells and on-site sewage facility, the agenda item stated.
But commissioners balked when asked to assume control of road maintenance after a one-year period expired.
County Engineer Mary Ellen Schulle told commissioners they could vote to take over the road maintenance of the road, or express that it had no interest in assuming road maintenance.
“Then it would need to be a conditional approval of the plat so the plat notes … on the regarding maintenance, and covenants and restrictions, could be updated,” Schulle said.
Court Judge Shane Stolarczyk said he was “a definite no” on taking over the roadway.
“We’re going to have so many new subdivisions built.
I just don’t think it’s a wise investment for commissioners court and the road and bridge department, to be getting into,” Stolarczyk said.
“I’m a definite ‘no’ on this, but I’ll conditionally grant it based on the homeowners taking over the road,’ he said.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Christina Bergmann added her denial, saying the road basically serves no purpose except for the 16 homeowners living along it, as it dead-ends into a cul-de-sac.
The road, she said, “is a dead end. It's not a benefit to the county …. because it doesn’t connect to anything. It’s not a roadway that can help get traffic from one place to another.”
Bergmann pointed out that tax dollars coming from the sale of the properties and the homes, all of which will be at least $750,000, may be enough cover the road maintenance, “but tax dollars don’t just go to the roadway, they go to the workings of the county and the daily business of the county,” she said.
“That’s where it’s a numbers game. How much is it going to cost to maintain the road; how much extra tax comes in to help, so we don’t have to raise our taxes throughout the whole county,” she added.
Precinct 4 Commissioner Chad Carpenter said the court needed to set precedent because more subdivisions and roads are on the horizon.
“The county’s stance on accepting road has been (one of) hesitance, going forward,” Carpenter said, “because they don’t want to continue bringing on more roads to maintain.”
Initially, the preliminary plat proposed the developer would maintain roadway and drainage for one year before turning that responsibility over to the county.
“This is being presented as a county-maintained facility,” Schulle said.
Carpenter offered an amended motion for “the 3,069 linear feet of public roadway to be maintained by a private homeowners’ association.”
That motion received unanimous support from the five commissioners.
Comment
Comments