In my little 36-house subdivision just outside Podunkville aka Charlottesville, Virginia, we are financially responsible for road upkeep even though the roads — each about a half-mile long (actually, two of them, roughly perpendicular, forming one [1] intersection) — are public and thus not able to be regulated or monitored, say with a gatehouse etc.
For as long as I've lived here, our homeowners association has levied annual dues on each household: when I moved here in 1983 they were $100/year, and have since increased to $400/year.
This money is used to pay for road repair and snow removal as well as minor upkeep, such as replacing a stop sign someone ran into and paving over donuts which appear every couple years at the intersection.
The main expenditure has always been for pothole repair, which comes up every couple years.
I went along with the usual majority vote to fix them up to a couple years ago, when it occurred to me that the majority of road damage was the result of heavy machinery contracted by a small minority of homeowners for home and yard improvements.
Why should I pay for fixing the road adjacent to their property?
Especially since its the same few residences who hire contractors for such projects, repeatedly?
Then the penny dropped:
A pothole is an inverted speed bump.
Lagniappe: they're free!
We have a STOP sign at our intersection and signs at the subdivision entrance that say
CAUTION: CHILDREN PLAYING
but over half of the people who live here and most who don't don't stop.
And even though there's a sign at the entrance under the caution sign that says
SPEED LIMIT — 20 MPH
very few drivers observe it — including residents with kids.
So from now on when someone brings up pothole repair at one of our infrequent association meetings, I am going to stand up and register my objections to fixing them by noting the facts above and pleading for complete and total neglect: the worse our roads, the safer we all are.
Driving
never hurt anyone nor their car.
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