Many of the Homeowners Associations in Boulder County Colorado have roads that are falling apart. In fact, they’re downright dangerous. A group of homeowners decided to sue the county to force them to repave the rotting public roads.
Well, it seems that some of those public roads aren’t so public after all. The Colorado Court of Appeals has ruled against the homeowners, and told them to pay to maintain their own roads.
What do you think that does to property values? No, your HOA was never intended to protect property values. Never!
(link to lack of road repairs in Longmont Times Call)
What a convoluted policy! “We’ll plow snow and fix potholes, but when it comes time to resurface your roads, you’re on your own!”
How in the world are homeowners supposed to become aware of this financial liability prior to taking title to a home? Any homeowner would assume that if the County does routine maintenance, they County must also be responsible for paving.
Does this mean that the HOAs do not have a reserve fund for roads? Did the HOAs even know they should be saving money for repaving their roads?
And even if they did, a few hundred households cannot bear a multi-million dollar price tag on top of County and School property taxes and HOA assessments. Aren’t economies of scale achieved by budgeting for ALL of Boulder County’s roads — not excluding certain roads “just because” they can?
What if Boulder County fails to maintain these roads properly? Woudn’t that lead to their early failure?
And didn’t the County allow the developers to build substandard roads to being with — a way to cut costs of new construction?
Local governments figure, “hey, we don’t have to pay to maintain it in the future, so why should we care if the roads are not well-constructed?”
It’s a perverse system of disincentives for local governments and developers alike to build quality infrastructure.
With very rare esception, I believe maintaining good Road Infrastructure is a matter of public interest. The repsonsibility for maintaining them should not be parsed out private individuals and groups (HOAs) in piecemeal fashion. Very few roads are truly private — they provide ingress and egress of not only owners, but also their guests, contractors, delivery services, emergency services, etc. Even a small HOA is actually a collective community — a small subset of the public, but still public.