Taking it to the streets

April 25, 2008 07:00 am

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The issue of which streets should be accepted as public roads and which should remain private has been a boil on the skin of the Derry Town Council for several years. It has led to court cases costing the town thousands of dollars and has pitted neighbor against neighbor.

Each time the topic was opened for discussion, emotions ran high, often making productive interaction difficult.

However, the situation changed dramatically last week, when the council voted 4-3 to accept McKinley Avenue (a long-time hot spot in the public road debate) as well as Lake Shore and Cole avenues as public roads.

With that one vote, the council defused a volatile political situation and paved the way for meaningful discussions on the next step in the process — the crafting of a new, clearly defined public roads ordinance.

To be sure, accepting a road as public comes with a price. Regular maintenance (including snow removal), combined with repairs and eventually repaving are costly. However, the ill-will the issue had created within the community over the years also carried a heavy cost.

Rules in place ensure that the question of whether a new road will ultimately be accepted as public is answered before construction takes place. Developers are held accountable to follow through on road work they promised to complete.

However, there was a time when these safeguards did not exist. Many people bought homes under the impression that the road on their subdivision would be completed and accepted as public, only to have the developer drop out of the picture once the final home was purchased.

That situation has left towns like Derry with the difficult decision of whether to take on roads as public that do not meet the criteria under present guidelines. The acceptance of McKinley, Lake Shore and Cole avenues guarantees residents of other such roads will petition the council for acceptance.

Some would like to see such questions answered in an all-or-nothing manner. The truth is, it must be handled case-by-case. If residents of a private road want it accepted as public, they will need to display a willingness to work cooperatively with town officials to make it happen.

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(That's our opinion. What do you have to say? We want to hear from you. To comment on this editorial or any story appearing in this edition of the Derry News, long onto www.derrynews.com.)