Residents on local access roads explain their plight

Presenter: Oregon law provides for a type of public road known as a local access road (LAR), which adjacent property owners are expected to maintain. Residents who unknowingly bought property on LARs in Northwest Eugene spoke to commissioners on June 23: 

Mary Leoni: Mary Leoni here. Thank you to the Board for listening carefully to our arguments for the inclusion of LARs into the county Public Works maintenance system. I appreciate that several members have expressed a desire to resolve the existing divide between those residents whose roads are preserved and those whose roads are not. 

One proposal by county counsel is for LAR homeowners to unite in community spirit and agree to a special tax district for themselves to pay for these roads. While I value civic altruism, most major public engineering projects are funded by the entire community. I have yet to see a subset of taxpayers agree to an additional tax solely on themselves in order to benefit everyone.

Perhaps it must be restated that these are public roads and should be paid for as such. So many people think that their property taxes are used to pay for roads. That is not the case. 

LAR residents and homeowners already pay for road maintenance just as their county-maintained-road neighbors do through gas taxes and vehicle registration fees. It cannot be lawful to assess some residents twice for the same level of services.

We are not asking for special treatment. We know budgets are constrained. Adding our 13 miles to the county’s 1,400+ system might delay some planned projects, but it is a 1% increase in total workload and this adoption could be spread over a few years if necessary, as long as all roads are included and treated equitably.

Public Works presented a report to the board on the cost to bring LARs up to 2026 urban standards. Minimal figures for immediate acceptance and basic maintenance were not included. Their position is that the county cannot feasibly adjust for the additional inflated costs in the report.

Yet Lane County’s current road condition is better than all others in the state, according to Orin Schumacher on April 29, 2025: ‘Lane County’s pavement condition has been maintained phenomenally well. Across the state, we were #1 in those condition assessments based on our preservation model…’

The success of those preservation strategies demonstrates the value of maintaining roads before they fail. And this is another reason why LARs should be fitted into the schedule as soon as possible.

There could be a 1% accommodation in the budget in order to treat all residents and roads the same. There should be no second-class citizens in Lane County and no second-class roads.

Past mistakes excluding some roads while accepting others of equal condition and usage need not and should not be continued. Please fix this problem now by directing Public Works to accept these LARs as is into the county system. Set this foundation so that future building will proceed equitably and reliably as Lane County grows. Thank you. 

Sydney Swing: My name is Sydney. I purchased my home 10 years ago, and it wasn’t until last fall I discovered that I live on a (local) access road. I never would have known about it if I didn’t just happen to have a neighbor tell me, or until the bill came if the Public Works proposal to charge homeowners for road maintenance is accepted.

This isn’t just a problem of inequity. The homeowners impacted aren’t just homeowners. We are households. We are families. We are not just a few. We are many.

My property value isn’t about the worth of my asset. It’s about the security of my home and my child’s future. The extreme liability affecting 1,000 or more households wasn’t disclosed for the most part. Our roads look like any other and are used like any other.

Paying to update them in full now isn’t a solution. Creating a new district isn’t a solution. Dividing $90 million between 1,000 households isn’t a solution. We already pay the appropriate transportation taxes and merely want to get in line for road maintenance like everyone else.

ORS 368 gives the county full authority to correct this outdated classification. All current proposals are antithetical to the goals and values espoused by the county. When faced with a problem of inequity, it is only ethical to resolve it, not deepen it. I urge you to reclassify LARs for the good of the whole and as the most practical solution. 

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: Next up, we have Joel Korin. 

Joel Korin: I’m here to talk on behalf of the people here who want the county to adopt the LARs within the urban growth boundary.

There is something known as the Equity and Community Consortium. The Equity and Community Consortium consists of the city of Eugene, city of Springfield, Lane County, University of Oregon, LCC, 4J, Bethel School District and Springfield School District; EWEB, Springfield Utility Board, and Willamalane Park, and Lane Council of Governments.

On their website, they define equity. Equity refers to fair and just practices and policies that ensure all community members can thrive. 

Equity is not equality. Equality implies treating everyone as if they were exactly the same. Equity means acknowledging and addressing structural inequalities that create advantages and disadvantages. 

They define community or inclusiveness, as inclusion refers to a community where all members are and feel respected, have a sense of belonging and are able to participate and achieve their potential value.

Those of us that live on LARs do not believe that there is equal advantages for everybody. We are the disadvantaged ones.

I live on Park Terrace. It runs for one block between a county road, Sunnyside and a county road, Park Avenue. Why this one block with four houses is not part of the county system connecting those two other county roads, I don’t know.

All that we ask is that you live up to these. This language about equity and addressing the structural inequalities. You have the power to do it. We ask that you do. 

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: Next up we have Brad Beebe.

Brad Beebe: I’ve lived in the River Road area since 1933, and I’m one of the hundreds of houses and households that has found out that my road is on an LAR, and I’m responsible for it. And I’ve watched this closely because once it’s resolved, I believe we can incorporate this into the county.

And this conversation of equity is, I believe, something that needs to be really pursued. But also, I believe we need to pursue the budget and it seems like Lane County has a budget shortfall. And there was many conversations about we don’t have enough money to maintain the sink wells and maintain. It’s going to cost thousands of dollars to maintain per mile. What is, proposed to be, rebuilt.

And I think we need to step back from the financial side of it, and see where we can save money. So in addition to equity, we can find a way to lower the cost. There’s been a talk of putting curbs on some of these roads. 

On the road I live on if you put curbs on it, with the increase of ADUs, it’s going to potentially limit the number of parking for people who need their vehicle in order to get to work and back every day.

And I just happened to talk to a person who is disabled, rides around in a wheelchair and he absolutely hates sidewalks because his disability, one arm is stronger the other. And when you have a tip into the driveway, it could cause them to tip. You know, there’s a problem there.

Plus, a lot of the people along the street that I live on do not want to have a sidewalk. We’re happy with what we’ve had. We’ve had it for many, many years.  

Also they’re talking about putting in sink wells. There was a comment on the sixth of this month that said, we don’t have enough equipment to be able to maintain those sink wells. 

And also the trees and shrubs you don’t have enough equipment, apparently to take care of that because we have trees that are within five feet of the ground now that are down the road that I live on.

So we don’t have enough money for what we want, but we want to have the Taj Mahal of roadways when we go through these and we don’t have a problem of water runoff or anything like that, we don’t need those. 

So I hope that we look at the budget and come together and find a way to find a middle-of-the-road solution so that we don’t have to have all these unnecessary additions. We are responsible for the roadway and nothing more. 

Polly Habliston: My name is Polly Habliston and I’m here today to share my thoughts on local access roads from the standpoint of someone who’s lived on one for forty seven years.

I live on Dalton Drive and found the historical perspective presented by Public Works early on in this process interesting. In the early 1930s no new subdivisions were being filed in all of Eugene. Residential development was brought to a standstill following the depression. 

As the economy began to improve, most construction projects were established in parts of town.

The exception was the Sunny Lea Addition platted on Frank Horn’s property in River Road in 1937. My street, Dalton Drive, was one of five long dead-end streets stretching from Horn Lane two-thirds of the way to Howard Avenue. If these streets were the first LARs in River Road, then we’re talking about a problem that started 89 years ago.

I’d like to start by thanking the commissioners for your time and effort addressing this issue. You didn’t create the problem, but you have it in your capacity to fix it… 

LARs are public neighborhood roads whose residents pay the same transportation taxes via gas and vehicle registration fees, as do people on county and city roads. LAR residents dollars go toward fixing others roads while our roads get nothing.

More concerning is the liability faced by residents of LARs. The spectre has been raised of the possibility of residents being sued after a tragic accident, perhaps a bicyclist hitting a pothole and being paralyzed from the neck down.

We’ve been advised that we are in a Catch-22. By definition, LARs are public roads, so we cannot purchase liability insurance to protect ourselves from such a suit because we do not own the road. Yet we are responsible for keeping the roads safe.

An equitable solution would be for LARs within the urban growth boundary to be added to the rolls of county roads and included in the county maintenance rotation. These roads look like roads adjacent to them. The LAR moniker should be dropped.

Failing to properly label these roads as county roads never should have happened. It’s been almost 90 years of kicking the can down the road—people selling houses, people buying houses—and only now are we finding out why some streets undergo regular maintenance while our particular streets are languishing.

Please do the right thing and vote to take these roads into the county system.

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: Next up, we have Eleanor Lipinski.

Eleanor Lipinski: So about the LARs. First of all, I’ve never heard any evidence that LARs are any different historically from any other roads in the River Road area. We hear this. I don’t have any evidence to that. I don’t believe it.

If you look at them currently, my understanding is you cannot tell the difference between LARs and other roads. So I think the idea that even the concept of having the LARs doesn’t make sense just on that basis.

And as you know, people who live on LARs pay road maintenance taxes, just the same as people who pay on county maintained roads. Where has our money gone? How has it been spent? Why should we pay for a service we don’t receive?

My house is 60 years old. For 60 years we’ve been paying taxes and the people who owned it before we did have been paying taxes. Where is all that money?

One thing that’s missing in the Public Works report is an assessment of how much money that has cost, and how that’s money going to be returned to us.

So I think that if the view is going to be that LARs are going to continue to exist, and we’re going to continue to be responsible for them, I want to see a plan for how we’re going to get paid back for everything we paid that has not been used for our help.

Next, people who are on LARs are not allowed to block access. They are public roads. There are a lot of people that use our LAR as a cut-through road. They are very heavy garbage trucks. Lots of use that’s not by us. But we’re not allowed to block access to that road.

So we’re being told we have to maintain roads which are in practice public roads. So how in the world can we consider that a fair situation? 

Now supposedly including LARs in the county road system would cost more. Clearly not so because there’s a limited amount of money for road maintenance. And I think we could all agree we’re not going to see much increase in that. There’s been a lot of fuss about that this last year across the state. So it’s not like it’s going to cost more because there’s going to be a certain amount of money.

The real question is how is that money going to be distributed? Is it going to be distributed fairly across everyone who lives on a public road, or some people going to be sorted out and not supported for reasons that, as far as I know, can’t be justified?

And then really offended by the Public Works report suggesting that the LARs had to be put in much, much, much better condition than almost any other roads in the area.

Linda Lovick: My name is Linda Lovick. I learned a year and a half ago that our intended aging-in-place home is located on a so-called LAR local access road. I believe my shock and befuddlement over that discovery are already in the public record.

Checking my files, I see that citizen interaction with your board regarding these urban LARs commenced in January of 2025. Since then, there has been much public testimony continuing today and several letters to you hoping to leave no aspect unrevealed for your consideration.

There have also been your various interactions with the Public Works Department, including receiving their report on June 9, our comprehensive written In response to that report, and most recently, some media attention.

Standing out in my mind are two things: our need-driven steadfastness of purpose and your thoughtful responses to the Department of Public Works report on the LARs situation.

The record by now must be overflowing with the issues, the consequences, the risks to homeowners, the ridiculous, unnecessary unfairness of the urban situation.

I’m here today to thank you rather than to rehash the narrative, to express my appreciation for your collective digging in on June 9, for the questions you posed back to the report prep team, for your seeing with us the broader possibility that the report’s price tag for the needed action is not the only way forward. In fact, it is the least productive way forward. 

Thank you for observing the situation through the fairness lens. You’ve given me hope, me anyway, that reason and justice just might prevail—that you might use your authority to create an ordinance to accept these urban layers into the county road system as they are, to fairly receive maintenance when possible like all the other county-maintained public roads in River Road and the Santa Clara neighborhoods.

That acceptance was originally a basic task, but obviously has been complicated by the passage of time. We all here in the room and the hundreds of our affected neighbors, we all are not asking for special treatment. We’re only asking for equal treatment.

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: Next up we have Laura Shoe.

Laura Shoe: Thank you so much for looking into this local access roads issue. You asked great questions last week. You expressed eloquently what homeowners are facing and how this situation arose from county decisions. And you understood that this is an equity issue.

On the LARs report, staff worked diligently for over six months and followed the policies and processes they had been given. But your meeting last week revealed the deeper issue—that the policy framework underlying the report was the wrong tool for the problem.

Public Works acknowledged that the Lane Manual road acceptance process, which undergirds the report, was likely written for newly-constructed roads and developers, not for long-standing existing roads and homeowners.

There is no Lane Manual chapter for staff to follow to address a decades-old equity problem. That’s why this requires strong leadership. Solving this means stepping outside the existing process, not just modifying it. Start with the goal of bringing these legacy roads into the system. Then build the simplest process to get us there.

For every proposed requirement, asking: Is it legally required? Is it necessary for safety? Is there a simpler, less expensive way? How are these issues handled on existing county roads? Does this place burdens on the very homeowners this inequity has harmed? 

Today you are going to recognize county employees for outstanding work. I would love to come back to a future meeting where Public Works staff are being recognized for solving this, for showing that the government can knock down barriers rather than raise them, for taking something that seemed impossible under the old assumptions and finding a creative, practical solution that works.

That’s the opportunity here, but it will require leadership from the board, the county administrator and the Public Works director—leadership that challenges assumptions, rewards creativity, and keeps focus on the ultimate goal. A practical solution that achieves equity. Please give staff that challenge and the support to meet it.

Jolene Siemsen: My name is Jolene Siemsen, and I am here to speak on the issue of local access roads. I would endorse everything that has been said previously. I am a county resident. I pay transportation taxes. I live on a local access road, but I do expect equal treatment and consideration.

As has been said, our roads are used by everyone. There is no restriction on Hawthorne Avenue. We have police, fire, EMS, garbage haulers, home service providers and deliveries which all travel up and down my section of Hawthorne Avenue to access the other half of my street, which is not a local access road. 

In fact, all of Hawthorne Avenue serves as a public right-of-way, and my road is a shared public asset. 

I urge the leaders of Lane County to take this time to address this dilemma and rectify the problem. As homeowners, we expect to be treated fairly and equally with appropriate measures taken to maintain our public right-of-way. Adopt measures that redefine LARs as county roads and budget for cost-effective maintenance and repair. 

Joshua Kielas: Hello, Joshua Kielas, River Road neighborhood. I’m not going to say anything else because I know we’ve already covered the local access roads issues. 

I just want to say that I watched the session from last week, and it was obvious to me that you have all sincerely engaged with this problem, and I want to appreciate you for that, because I know it’s a really difficult issue. So thank you, sincerely.

Presenter: Residents of local access roads thank the Lane County commissioners for considering their plight. They currently face maintenance costs and liability, which for many was not disclosed when they bought their homes.