Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2015 22:34:00 GMT
I recently wrote the GLA board with a list of suggestions including this one: "With the governing documents clearly specifying that roads are to be the priority of the GLA, the necessary amounts of funds need to be appropriated and expended on them. Instead of managing our roads as has been done in the past, develop a comprehensive plan with an appropriately qualified road-expert adviser for short, medium and long term time frames. Consider all available options from doing it ourselves to RSIDs. Manage funding appropriately whereby NG funds its own roads and SG funds its own roads. Investigate the practicality of having two sub boards, one for NG and one for SG, to administer the roads and neighborhood issues."
The GLA board should make it a priority to reorganize the administration and management of our roads, and incorporate the above suggestions. Establish a North Glastonbury Road Committee making it landowner driven with at least one board representative on the committee, with a maximum of seven members (the ultimate number for efficiency). The committee will be charged with managing the current road budget for NG and doing the required research to find a qualified adviser and to formulate short, medium and long term comprehensive plans after considering all options. This will require an inspection and analysis of the condition of all roads in NG as a starting point.
A poll is being added to this thread to gauge landowners feelings on this matter. Please add your thoughts and suggestions to this thread.
|
|
marks
New Member
Posts: 8 
|
Post by marks on Oct 26, 2015 1:46:44 GMT
As RSIDs are discussed, folks need to be aware that Park County passed a law in 2014 that RSIDs (Rural Special Improvement Districts) can only be created for public roads. Given that most of the roads in both NG and SG are private, they are by law excluded from Park County RSID's unless we members vote to make them public roads.
I'm all for developing and funding a long term (at least a 5 year) plan for road improvements/maintenance. One problem in separating NG and SG will be getting enough people to actively participate. I've been involved in several small organizations over the years, and typically for a few hundred member organization you can only get 3 (or fewer) people willing to work hard at organizational activities. Thus, separating NG and SG could easily leave us with one person essentially running each "subgroup" and I doubt that would work well in the long run.
|
|
|
|
Post by jameskozlik on Oct 29, 2015 22:08:05 GMT
What if we created our own system of a special improvement district.
For instance, if upper south needs more plowing in the winter, we can create an extra winter assessment for upper south landowners. They would have a dwelling assessment, land assessment and a winter plowing assessment. The landowners that live in lower south along Arcturus Road can have a dwelling assessment, land assessment and (when needed) special road application assessment (for instance to pay for the special sealant that was applied recently) north Glastonbury might have a special crack sealing assessment.
It might be a way to supplement the existing road budget.
Creating our own special improvement districts keeps road maintenance cost specific to the districts (that we have as per the master plan). Of course we'd have to do an analysis to see if such an idea is too costly for the landowners of specific districts.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2015 22:18:01 GMT
Your ideas are certainly worth looking into, Jim, and should be incorporated into an overall analysis and plan for the future. I think we landowners should form a group or committee to get this ball rolling. If we have to wait for the board to "get on board" it will be months before anything gets done. Are there some landowners from North and South who are interested in initiating something? If so, please respond to this thread. If enough interest, perhaps we can start our own comments board on this forum.
|
|
marks
New Member
Posts: 8
|
Post by marks on Nov 2, 2015 15:26:21 GMT
I think developing ideas and presenting them to the board (or specific board members) is a good idea. The idea of special assessments is also good, although you'll almost certainly get resistance from part time folks who don't use the roads very much or not at all in particular times of the year (like upper south in winter, I'm guessing). Like Jim says, a key part of developing an idea like this includes getting some idea of how to set it up so that enough owners support it to insure that the board will listen. That probably involves talking to quite a few of the owners more than once and that's a level of effort that the board seems unlikely to make.
|
|
|
|
Post by Regina Wunsch on Nov 11, 2015 6:05:16 GMT
Jim, You may not be aware of the fact that the winter road costs for the last two years have been pretty much equal for NG and SG. One year NG was a bit more, the other year SG by about the same amount. While it snows more in high South, NG has ice problems on the paved road and needs a lot of sanding. The paved road is also plowed at 2" versus 4" for gravel (6" in high South) One year NG had about 40 hrs. of sanding versus 2 or 3 for SG. Sanding requires more overhead than plowing, because there are the rental of the loading equipment, sand loading wages and the sand itself to consider on top of the plow truck time and wages to spread it. As I mentioned earlier, when the plow truck was out for a week, almost $1,000 were spent for two applications of mag chloride for deicing of the paved road in NG. So if you want to consider a special plowing assessment for high SG, then you need to also consider a special sanding assessment for the paved road in NG. If there were a big disparity between snow costs in SG versus NG--in either direction--I agree that a special assessment could be considered. But special assessments must be voted on by those affected by the assessment, not the membership at large. So high South would have to vote to assess itself for plowing on top of the regular assessment and NG the same but for sanding. You cannot create special assessment districts at will. When the chip seal assessment in NG was levied, it could only be done because the majority of landowners in the "improvement district" (NG) voted for it. SG did not have a say in the matter. If the board wanted to form an improvement district in order to pay for the prep work and sealant for Arcturus then that neighborhood would have to vote a special assessments up or down. The only other option would be to convince the other SG landowners to use the year's road funds for Arcturus and forego maintenance on the rest of the roads for that year.
|
|
