Anyone wanting to turn a privately owned road into a county road has until Aug. 1 to apply with the Jessamine County Fiscal Court.
According to Judge-Executive Neal Cassity, the county has not brought a road into its system in the past few years but that should not deter people from applying.
“If people live on a road they feel is qualified to be a county road, then they should make a request to have it brought into the road system,” Cassity said. “We have have a road review board made up of a Democrat, a Republican and the road engineer, and they come back to the (fiscal) court and say whether they think it is a wise thing for the taxpayers or not.”
On the board are Seldon Little, Coleman Tudor and John Horne, with an alternate being developer Clay Corman.
Cassity said the court usually abides by the review board’s recommendation but that it is not always the case.
“It’s a pretty good process that works pretty well,” he said. “But it just depends.”
The last road to be brought into the county was Adena Lane.
Cassity also said they are many benefits to applying for a private road to be brought into the county system, the main one being maintainance.
The county will assume responsibility for blacktop, signage, structural integrity and clearing during inclement weather when there is snow or heavy winds push branches on to the roadway.
Cassity said that the general “rule of thumb” as far as taking a road into the county is there have to be at least three homes on the road as to be fair in the cost to the taxpayers.
It’s not the law, but he said there needs to be a “reasonable amount of residents in a reasonable distance to eachother” to consider a road.
“We had applications for roads back in the county with two houses and maybe a mile long, and you can’t justify the cost,” Cassity said.
Applications can be picked up and filed at the courthouse on Main Street.
