City Maintenance of Streets?

-- Some interesting insight about the possibility of the city taking over our neighborhood street repairs. This weekend, Steven Easthope spoke with someone who is on the Kensington Groves HOA board - Skip Carney, who helps care for Terry Bush in home #62.

They discussed the recent letter Terry received about the road repairs. Skip shared some insight about Kensington Grove's experience. The streets in Kensington Groves are owned and maintained by the city. At one time, their HOA board was considering making their neighborhood a gated community, much like their neighboring community, Arboleda. They did extensive research and found out the following:

1. Gating their community would cause their streets to become "private" and they would no longer be able to have city maintenance on the streets.
2. In their discussions with the city, the city cautioned them that once a community opts to make their streets private, the city would, in their words, "never" take them back. This was one reason they chose not to put up the gate.
3. In their discussions with several realtors, they discovered that gating a community did not improve property values significantly.
4. They also discovered that gating a community did not significantly reduce crime in a neighborhood. In fact, they found out that in Arboleda, a gated community, there was more crime related activity than in Kensington.

Skip said there were several reasons he felt the city would not take our streets. One reason is mentioned above. They were told by the city that the city would never take back private streets once a community (in our case the developers) chose to make their streets private. Another reason is that when our streets were made they were not paved up to city standards as far as width and depth. He felt this was probably a cost saving measure by the developer when the streets were put in. The city does not want to take on the maintenance of roads that are below standard.

Fortunately for them, Skip mentioned their roads were recently just repaired by the city with a seal and they "love" them.

Some interesting insight from a neighboring community. It wouldn't hurt to ask the city, but unfortunately it seems unlikely they would take them.

-- Before publishing the post above, Steve sent the post to Skip to see if he had any clarification, facts, or additional information that would be helpful. His response is below:

"Dear Steven--

Your summary of the Kensington Groves experience is exactly right. One additional note for our consideration was that the city would require extensive street improvement work at our subdivision entrances to install a turn around area at each gate---very expensive and all at our expense plus the costs of gates.

A key factor for us--and against the gate idea was the no police patrol in the area. Long term maintenance of both streets and drainage structures was another factor.

OK with me to publish the data. I would be glad to visit with others about my experience and visits with the City of Mesa. As you may know, I retired six years ago as a city manager---worked in serveral midwest cities as manager, including Little Rock, Arkansas and Des Moines, Iowa. So I have some background in the subject...

Skip Carney"