Board finds itself in a muddle over streets

Last year, acting on a request from Ken Christie, a resident living in Heritage Spring, the Wake Forest commissioners and staff worked out a process by which private streets in town can be approved and added to the town’s street system.

Tuesday night, however, the commissioners found themselves in a muddle because at some point in June or July the town decided to begin assessing inspection fees and requiring a surety bond to be returned after a one-year warranty period. This came as a shock to several groups living on private streets who had begun the process to change to public streets.

Christie and the other Heritage Spring residents have met all the requirements and are ready to put up the green street signs signifying their streets are owned by the town.

Thomas Taylor, Douglas Woods, Ken Harrison and Mary Whittemore all spoke about their surprise to learn – well after July and sometimes just yesterday – about the inspection fees and the surety bond. All agreed with Taylor, who said, it is “totally unfair to assess the fee” when their neighborhoods have been working under the original ordinance to have their streets accepted into the town.

Two of those neighborhoods are Heritage Crest with 80 townhomes and Heritage Fairview with 103 townhomes.

Scott Miles, an assistant town engineer, said he thought he had communicated clearly to the people in the seven or eight communities that the process had stopped. The town determined it needed to assess the inspection fees because of the time town inspectors have spent determining if the streets meet town standards. “It takes staff hours to get those things turned over to us.”

After one of the speakers for a community finished, Commissioner Brian Pate said, “You chose to live on a private street” and said they must have known because that would be one of the disclosures during the closing for the purchase.

There has obviously been miscommunication about the fees, Town Manager Kip Padgett said, adding if the commissioners waive the fees for one – Heritage Spring – they should waive the fees for all those in the process. He said they should keep the surety bond because it “gives the town assurance if something goes wrong with the street and we have to go back in and fix it.” He also said later, “There’s a lot of work to get those roads accepted.”

Commissioner Liz Simpers said she would like to table the problem.

“We had an ordinance and now we’re changing the ordinance,” Mayor Vivian Jones said.

After some more questions and discussion, the board agreed on a motion waiving the inspection fees for all those neighborhoods who have contacted the town before July 19, 2018 and waiving the surety bond for Heritage Spring. Pate voted no.

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One item in the consent agenda was an extension of the Ligon Mill Road Operational Improvements, or a reason to hope the short section of Ligon Mill Road from South Main Street west to the Walmart driveway will finally be rebuilt.

The town and the North Carolina Department of Transportation agreed in July of 2010 to design the improvements for that section of Ligon Mill. The completion date was extended in July of 2012, and in July of 2014 “the parties agreed to add a construction phase and funding” and in August of 2016 the completion date of the project was extended again. Part of the problem has been obtaining the right-of-way from a number of owners.

Now in 2018, the town and DOT have agreed on a completion date by December 31, 2019 with an adjusted funding agreement. The estimated total cost is $2,535,000 with DOT paying $2,028,000 and the town paying 20 percent or $507,000.

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The meeting room Tuesday night was full for most of the two-hour meeting, with a large number interested in the Glen Oaks rezoning and master plan in Franklin County next to the large-lot Rolling Acres subdivision and an almost equal number there to protest and hear about the fee assessments and surety bond for neighborhoods seeking to have their streets approved as town streets.

The board approved all the requested annexations – Datetek on Wake Union Church Road, Holden Mason (Glen Oaks) on U.S. 1, and the Flynn properties slated to be part of the Tryon subdivision.

The commissioners also approved all the planning requests, including Glen Oaks with a condition a planned stub to Rolling Acres will be left unpaved with the 25-foot undisturbed buffer. With Glen Oaks and the Flynn property the commissioners got tangled up with the consistency statement – required and saying the request and conditions are consistent with the town’s ordinances – because each had a small difference from the ordinances: a cul-de-sac instead of the required stub and no paving for a stub in the 24-foot undisturbed buffer.

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Brandon White and Jason Pace with Kimley-Horn presented the 90 percent plans for the South White Street and East Owen Avenue project, focusing on two different approaches to East Owen, which the town has designated a festival street.

Option A, more expensive, has a gateway feature at each end of the street (lighted columns on both sides), wider sidewalks on both sides, parking on both sides with two way traffic, and street trees on both sides. Both include hidden bollards that can be flipped up for festivals and parking identified by stamped colored asphalt, and Option A has granite curbing to protect the trees.

The plan is for construction to begin in February and be completed by the end of October. The total cost is $2.4 million with Owen Avenue at $950,000.

The commissioners approved Option A unanimously.

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The board also approved all the necessary steps for funding the purchase of the property at 5031 Unicon Drive where Wake Forest Power will be relocated. The town intends to use a 10-year installment financing agreement for $3.5 million. There were four bids and the low bidder was Regions Capital Advantage at a rate of 2.94 percent.

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Chelsie Fitzwater with the League of Women Voters of Wake County presented certificates of appreciation to three commissioners, Anne Reeve, Bridget Wall-Lennon and Liz Simpers for their public service. The other woman on the board, Jones, had already received hers because she attended a meeting in August honoring women in public service.