Wheatland County acquires new road

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

At the Wheatland County council meeting on Dec. 2, council discussed the topic of developing a road crossing private properties on Section 32-25-21-4, East of Rural Road 215.
The issue that council was concerned about was that an agreement with the owner, who was registered on title, was not completed. Files provided evidence that there were no details why it was never executed, or whether the deal was done.
In February 2014, it was workers from the county public works department that came forward and expressed their concern about maintaining the private road.
Council did not really see a reason to plow the road as there was a lack of documentation.
New information came forward to council’s attention during the meeting that there should be a consideration for the county to re-visit taking ownership of the road and maintaining it.
Council removed the caveat, which allows them to resume maintenance on Rural Road 215.
Once council decided on the plan, staff suggested that council should resume discussions with residents to reach an agreement on the purchase and exchange of areas that are similar to that of Rural Road 215 with the roads under construction.
The whole issue is to see if it is the right thing to revisit the road, and if the owners will agree to see maintenance on this road.
“From council’s perspective, they just want to make sure what they’re doing is the right thing. So that’s got referred back, they didn’t make a decision on that, so I won’t be able to report on anything further than that until it comes back to council, which will likely be in January,” said Alan Parkin, Chief Administration Officer for Wheatland County.
The issue was brought up by Reeve Koester at the meeting, after there was not a recent snow removal done.
“I think it was the snow removal that brought it to their attention, after that one snowfall we had, there was no snow clearing done,” said Parkin. “I think certainly the residents along that road have a concern with snow, but we haven’t maintained that road for quite some time. It’s just when we got the snow, it came to their attention and they said ‘hey we’re not maintaining it anymore’. We’ll work through that at the next meeting.
“I think the residents had the concern with it because of the long-standing agreement that had been put in place, but unfortunately not a lot of it was documented.”
The reasoning for the subject to be further reviewed is so the county does not take the risk of the issue affecting other roads.
“This is why they set for us to come back with some recommendations on how we can make this thing work, without affecting other potential roads that are out there,” said Parkin.
The concerns were raised after three months of no maintenance on that road.