Fair Haven agrees to share cost of road repair

Question of whether Grange Walk and other streets are private roads still at issue

BY LIZ SHEEHAN Correspondent

FAIR HAVEN — The Borough Council has agreed to pay half the cost of repairing potholes on Grange Walk, which the borough maintains is a private road.

Mayor Benjamin Lucarelli said last week the cost is estimated to be between $800 to $1,200.

The mayor said the decision to pay half the costs of the repair was made at the council’s June 29 meeting by a 3-2 vote, with council members Jerome Koch, Rowland Williams and Susan Sorenson voting for the cost sharing and Jonathan Peters and Robert Marchese voting against it.

The issue of who would pay for making repairs in what the borough said are private roads was brought up at the council’s May 14 workshop meeting. At that meeting, Lucarelli said that the town now does snow removal and minor repairs on the roads, but some are very old and need complete reconstruction.

At the meeting, Borough Administrator Theresa Casagrande said there is a need for a clear policy on the roads since it is now “a very gray area” not created by the present council or mayor.

The question, Peters said, is who owns the roads.

“That is one of the problems — the expense to figure that out would be prohibitive,” borough attorney Salvatore Alfieri said .

According to information provided in an e-mail by Borough Clerk Allyson Cinquegrana, the roads known at this time to be private include Browns Lane, Holly Lane, Minton Lane, Grange Walk, Crozier Court, Brookside Farm Road and Doughty Lane.

In the e-mail she also said, “We do not make any repairs on these roads.”

No final decision was made on the private roads issue at that meeting, but the subject has been discussed at several council meetings. At one meeting, Mary Haynes, a resident of Grange Walk, said that she has no record either in the deed of her home or the title search that she owns the road. She also said that she has asked her neighbors on the street and they also said they have no record of ownership of the road on their own deeds or titles searches. Haynes said more than one title search company conducted the searches.

Haynes, an attorney, said she would do further research into the matter.

The council then suggested that the costs be split, but Haynes said she would only agree if it is stipulated that the residents of Grange Walk did not state that they owned the road.

Haynes said last week that the agreement continues that condition and also stipulates that when the ownership of the roads is determined, the amount paid by the parties determined not to be the owners would be repaid by the party determined to be the owner of the road.

Haynes and Arthur Kamin, also a resident of Grange Walk, said the road, which is used by the public, has such large potholes that it is in dangerous condition.

Lucarelli has maintained at the council meetings that the borough has proof that GrangeWalk is a private road. Last week he said that there is a memo by a city employee that indicates that in 1948 the street was dedicated as a private one. However, the official records from that time were lost when the basement at Borough Hall was flooded, he said.

In the 1950s, Lucarelli said, council records show that a resolution for the road to be dedicated to the town was considered by the council but was never acted on.

He said that the agreement with Grange Walk residents was not one that would be extended to residents on the other streets deemed private by the borough.

One of the options offered to the residents of private roads would be to repair them, bringing them up to present code condition and then turn them over to the borough, which would then maintain them.

He acknowledged that could be costly, from $10,000 to $100,000.