A Look at Road Improvement

Repeated snowstorms this winter almost certainly have exacerbated the problem, but residents of East Hampton in the so-called urban renewal areas, many of which are in Springs, have been complaining for years about the state of their streets and the lack of town highway services for them, such as snow removal.

The roads in the urban renewal subdivisions are not part of the town’s public road system, and so tax money cannot be spent to repair, pave, or plow them, except in an emergency.

Although developers of the lots in those neighborhoods have been required to pay fees toward road construction and repair, many of the 40-some miles of streets have never gotten up to snuff and don’t meet the minimum standards for public roads.

The system of assigning “road improvement unit” fees has failed to achieve its goal of getting the subdivision streets into the town highway system, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at a town board meeting on March 10.

While a lengthy effort to establish one road improvement district, through which property owners of a particular area would be taxed over 15 years for costs borne by the town to improve their roads to public standards, is under way in one East Hampton neighborhood, the town needs to address the situation in many other areas, Mr. Cantwell said, and it should not be done piecemeal.

“It involves a large portion of our population,” he said. He suggested hiring engineers who could assess the state of the roads, estimate the cost to improve them, and delineate how those costs would be apportioned among owners of developed and vacant properties.

Board members agreed. “Under the current system the roads are falling into disrepair before the next improvements can be made,” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said. He said he gets numerous calls from residents who ask, “I pay taxes to the highway, why aren’t my roads plowed?” But, he said, “We can’t contribute public funds to private roads. I think this is a way forward.”

“This is something that I think people will be excited about,” said Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who lives on one of the roads in question. “There are drainage issues, there are potholes, there are branches” that obstruct the roads, she said. Mail deliveries are sometimes suspended after snow, she said, and children must go to bus stops on busier streets as the school buses won’t drive down the roads.

When instituted, officials believed that the road improvement unit system would result in subdivision roads being steadily improved as people developed their properties and paid in, so that they could, one by one, be taken into the public road system. Instead, with some lots remaining vacant, and work being done piecemeal, it has become somewhat of a never-ending process.

“Some of these roads are deteriorating faster than we can pave them,” Tom Talmage, the town engineer, said last week. “We’re losing ground; if we keep going like this, in 5 or 10 years, it’s going to be much more expensive.”

The system was enacted four decades ago as part of a townwide urban renewal plan designed to address subdivisions created prior to town zoning. Property had been divided into small, 20-by-100-foot plats. Under the urban renewal plan, the combination of certain lots was required in order to create minimum-size building lots that comply with zoning, and procedures put in place as to how that could occur. Those processes are still going on today.

The idea, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, was to preserve the rural character of the town — “because this was basically carved up into lots like you would expect brownstones in Brooklyn. It was a huge and important step,” he said, and successful in that regard.

The lore is, said Mr. Talmage, that in Albany, where lawmakers were asked to approve the town’s urban renewal plan — possibly the only such of its kind in the state — officials found it hard to believe that a town in the Hamptons was in need of an urban renewal plan.

Mr. Cantwell was a member of the town board that created it. “It was fairly cutting-edge stuff,” he said. But, he said, at this point “there’s probably little hope that those roads are ever going to be brought up to modern road standards and brought into the town road system.”

Town boards have struggled with the issue for years, he said. The establishment of any tax district for road improvement has to be approved by a majority of residents in the district, he pointed out. “We’re not going to force them — majority rules, and we’re going to work through the process.”

However, once a consultant does an assessment of all of the urban-renewal roads in town, “at least they’ll have the information,” Mr. Cantwell said. “As it is now we get the calls, and there is no long-term solution.”

Property owners in a road improvement district would be assessed for the cost of the roadwork over 15 years and could expect, in addition to town crews plowing, filling potholes, and repaving, to see their property values increase.

“Although they may be paying an additional increase in taxes, they’re more than getting their money back,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.