BARNSTABLE – Some private roads in the town of Barnstable will get repaired using public money
The Barnstable Town Council have the initiative on the agenda at their meeting on May 7.
The town needed approval from the state legislature in order to start the program, which has specific criteria that private roads need to meet in order to be considered. The roads need to be connector routes that handle a certain amount of traffic.
The first four private roads to get repairs in the program are Mary Dunn Road, Old Strawberry Hill Road, Wakeby Road and High Street in West Barnstable.
This year’s capital budget includes funding to evaluate all of the town’s private roads.
Barnstable Town Manager Thomas Lynch said, “We are going to do an inventory of all the private roads so part of the capital plan is, we’ll go out and do an indexing system and see which of the private roads are in the greatest need of repair.”
Lynch cautioned that the program’s specific criteria means that most of the town’s 1,100 private roads will not be eligible for the program. Those property owners will need to use the town’s betterment process.
“If you live on a private road that is a cup de sac or just part of an older neighborhood and your road is deteriorating, that’s still going to be a process where you would get 50 percent of your neighbors together and decide whether you want to get a betterment,” Lynch said.
There is also money set aside in the budget for a revolving loan program for the private road betterment program, Lynch said.
