County, Chelsea caught in middle of pothole problems

When Shelby County resident Rob Thornton went in front of the Shelby County Commission in April, he was hoping for a solution that he and several other residents face: unfinished neighborhood roads.

Thornton, who lives in the Mountain Crest Subdivision off of Alabama 119, has seen his neighborhood’s roads remain incomplete, which has led them to deteriorate and cause safety and drainage issues.

This is not a new issue in Shelby County, and it is not a new issue in the state, said County Engineer Randy Cole.

“There are a variety of reasons developments are not completed,” Cole said. “It’s a statewide problem, and perhaps there could be some legislative relief that would address problems of this nature, but it has never been studied, to my knowledge, on a statewide basis.”

In Chelsea, Mayor Tony Picklesimer said there are four developments where a top coat was never put on the roads. Two of those four subdivisions were built by the same developer.

“We have developers in Chelsea where there’s never an issue with them. As soon as they build out, they go in and put the top coat on,” he said. “I guess, actually, that’s the rule. The ones who aren’t fulfilling their responsibilities are really the exception.” 

Abandoned roads

When a developer receives approval from the Shelby County Planning Commission for the final plat of a subdivision, they agree to regulations and minimum requirements, and those requirements include constructing, paving and applying a final seal coat to the roads in their subdivision. That final seal coat, however, won’t be applied until a majority of the home construction is complete, as construction requires heavy equipment to travel the roads and some roads to be cut into for the placement of utilities.

There is not a set timeline on how long a development will take to build out, Cole said.

“Sometimes these things take a long time to finish,” Cole said. “So you don’t really know if the developer is still trying to build houses and sell lots.”

However, the process is consistent once a developer says they are finished. As soon as that occurs, the county or city will do a final inspection and alert the developer to deficiencies, if there are any. Subdivisions within municipalities are not regulated by the county, but rather by the municipality. 

If there are no deficiencies, and the road has been completed with its top coat, the county will accept the road.

“The county will not accept roads into maintenance until they have been completely built to county specifications,” Cole said. Roads without a top coat are not built to county specifications because they are missing that final step, and the county will not do maintenance work on those roads.

“The county didn’t build that road. The county didn’t cause that road to come into existence,” Cole said. “… The county does not accept roads into the county inventory of roads until all improvements have been successfully completed. Period.”

The city of Chelsea follows the same rules. It will not accept roads that are incomplete and cannot spend tax dollars to pave roads that don’t belong to the city.

“We can’t pave a road that’s not ours,” Picklesimer said. “That would be the equivalent of me paving my own driveway. That would be the equivalent of me paving a road on a friend’s farm. We can’t pave roads that don’t belong to us. That’s illegal.”

Stepping in

If the problem of unfinished roads arises, residents often go to their county or city officials, expecting them to fix the problem, Cole said. 

“Simply expecting cities and counties to go in and clean up the deficiencies or correct the deficiencies, it’s just financially infeasible to do so,” Cole said.

But the county does contact developers. Shelby County sued two developers in 2014, according to documents obtained through Alacourt. The complaints were against Applegate Realty Inc., developer of Mountain Crest Estates, and Hidden Ridge Estates, developer of Hidden Ridge Estates First Sector. Court records show multiple certified letters were sent to the developers but received no response. 

In October 2015, a circuit court judge ordered Applegate Realty Inc. to pay $31,668.76 and $5,254.41 in interest to the county. In February 2016, the circuit court called for Hidden Ridge Estates to pay $131,900 in interest and costs to the county.

Even with these court rulings, Cole said, it is difficult to get in touch with the developers or to get developers to respond.

“The developer knows we are trying to contact them, and many times we have extreme difficulty getting the developer to return phone calls and even accept certified letters,” he said. “They are dodging us intentionally. This goes on for months at a time.”

In regard to developments in Chelsea, Picklesimer said he has reached out to the two developers and encouraged them to “keep their promise.” 

The third developer, he said, is dead.

“I’m in active conversations now with three of the four [developments], the three that the developers are still alive,” Picklesimer said. “I’m working with those homeowners currently.”

The city of Chelsea has also stepped in to complete road repairs on what Picklesimer said were unsafe streets.

“There are things that we can do as a city, and I offered that already to the neighborhoods I’m working in,” Picklesimer said. “I’ve actually done road repairs in two of these subdivisions because the roads were so bad, I thought they were unsafe, and I was backed by my fire chief and city engineer that the situations were unsafe.” 

One of those was Greenbriar Place. During its March 7 meeting, the Chelsea City Council approved a resolution to repair “several deficiencies in the roads … which need to be corrected immediately for the safety and well-being of the residents in this subdivision,” according to the resolution.

The work included patch work and paving for five areas in the neighborhood and cost $14,480.

Greenbriar Place resident Susan Updegraff, who moved into the neighborhood in November 2016, said the holes were so large they made it difficult for children to ride their bicycles around, and they also collected water in heavy rain.

“You would have to almost stop your car and barely go through the holes, so you certainly couldn’t go normally through it,” she said.

She added she was happy that Picklesimer was willing to work with residents on the road issues.

“I decided to go to the horse’s mouth and get what the real story was and what could be done about it,” Updegraff said. 

Picklesimer met with Updegraff and told her that the original developer had filed for bankruptcy and died by suicide, and while there is an $18,500 bond that can go toward finishing the roads, 80 percent of the lots must be complete before the road can be coated.

“It looks like we’re approaching having that done, but we have some construction underway,” she said, adding that once lots are purchased or built on, she plans to present that information to Picklesimer and the council.

“We’re just kind of waiting now,” she said, “but in the meantime, the mayor sent a crew to patch all the really bad places in the road, and I’m going to tell you, his people did an incredible job.”

While residents ‘have no illusions” that the $18,500 will cover the cost of a topcoat on the road, Updegraff said she hopes to rally neighborhood support to chip in the money needed to complete roads.

Future fixes

Preventing future developments from encountering the same issues is going to take work, Cole and Picklesimer said.

According to Cole, a statewide step might be necessary. 

“I would like to see some sort of legislative effort to correct these deficiencies,” he said. “Counties and cities simply do not have the resources to make these corrections.”

At this time, Cole said he is not aware of a legislative effort to fix the problem. If there was one, he said, he is not sure what the outcome would be.

Picklesimer said he believes making developers obtain a larger surety bond — which is intended to help cover the cost of the road completion in the case of a developer leaving a project or being unable to complete it — is the necessary solution.

“The way to fix this going forward is when subdivisions are initiated is to get a bigger source or type of surety that will be good even if the developer fails,” he said. Surety bonds are usually for 125 percent of the estimated cost for the final seal coat “in order to protect the city in the event that the developer does fail.”

While he cannot change what happened before he took office in November 2016, Picklesimer said he plans to take action to make sure this issue doesn’t arise in the future. In the meantime, he said, he will attend homeowners association meetings or meet with residents to hear about the problems they are facing.

“They [residents] have to be patient and let us work through the process,” he said.