Mike Dumont wrote:

We are in the planning stages of bringing our road association into compliance with State Statutes. We have been around for 15+ years and things have worked out fairly well with a lump sum summer fee and winter people paying for plowing. Recent years have been tough with the severe storms and severe winters and we realize that we cannot sustain our road without a change in our structure. We have about 100+ landowners and an 80% contribution rate. We have almost 4 miles of gravel road to maintain. We have year rounders, summer people, rental cottages and no shows. We soon will be sending out notices to all our landowners and would like to include options for assessing road fees. We have considered road frontage or a percentage of assessed value. We could possibly use a tier system with year rounders and owners of rental property paying at a higher rate than the others. We would be interested to know how other associations assess their fees and how well it works out. We are aware that this is a very contentuous issue and would like to have several options to present to our membership.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you for creating a very helpful site.

 

Ray Ronan wrote:

Mike Dumont wrote:

We are in the planning stages of bringing our road association into compliance with State Statutes. We have been around for 15+ years and things have worked out fairly well with a lump sum summer fee and winter people paying for plowing. Recent years have been tough with the severe storms and severe winters and we realize that we cannot sustain our road without a change in our structure. We have about 100+ landowners and an 80% contribution rate. We have almost 4 miles of gravel road to maintain. We have year rounders, summer people, rental cottages and no shows. We soon will be sending out notices to all our landowners and would like to include options for assessing road fees. We have considered road frontage or a percentage of assessed value. We could possibly use a tier system with year rounders and owners of rental property paying at a higher rate than the others. We would be interested to know how other associations assess their fees and how well it works out. We are aware that this is a very contentuous issue and would like to have several options to present to our membership.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you for creating a very helpful site.

 

I would be interested to know your current fee structure and amounts.  In my opinion, the 80% return rate is decent.  It sounds like your current fee structure is working, just too low so have you considered raising fees across the board until you can properly maintain the road?  Any fee structure you adopt would have to pass the "fair and equitable" standard stated in the Maine Statutes.  True, it is not specific and will depend on the judge in Small Claims Court if you choose to use that venue for enforcement of the other 20%.

We are a convented road association. Our current fee is $150 per lot. We have almost 4 miles of road to maintain. We have been collecting between 12K and 15K a year (some members contibute more as they realize our funding is not sufficient). Our last 12 months of maintenence costs were almost 41K. The handful of year rounders and occasional winter users cannot continue to pay for all the winter maintenance on their own. Since Hurricane Hannah came through a few years ago, it seems the frequency and intensity of storms has increased dramatically as have our costs. We need to spread these costs across the board but want it to be as equitable as possible. We need a method that will be able to garner a majority of votes.

We also have a group that doesn't pay their fair share and a few 'old timers' who have contributed their blood, sweat and tears over the years but now refuse to pay unless there is a way to collect from all.

Our main goals we hope to realize through restructuring using the Maine Private Ways Statute:

1. Ensuring our organization's compliance with the Erosion and   Sedimentation Control Law.

2. Limited Liability for our board members 

3. A true "shared cost" for road maintenence and the ability to place liens on the non payers.

Ray Ronan wrote:

Mike Dumont wrote:

We are in the planning stages of bringing our road association into compliance with State Statutes. We have been around for 15+ years and things have worked out fairly well with a lump sum summer fee and winter people paying for plowing. Recent years have been tough with the severe storms and severe winters and we realize that we cannot sustain our road without a change in our structure. We have about 100+ landowners and an 80% contribution rate. We have almost 4 miles of gravel road to maintain. We have year rounders, summer people, rental cottages and no shows. We soon will be sending out notices to all our landowners and would like to include options for assessing road fees. We have considered road frontage or a percentage of assessed value. We could possibly use a tier system with year rounders and owners of rental property paying at a higher rate than the others. We would be interested to know how other associations assess their fees and how well it works out. We are aware that this is a very contentuous issue and would like to have several options to present to our membership.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you for creating a very helpful site.

 

I would be interested to know your current fee structure and amounts.  In my opinion, the 80% return rate is decent.  It sounds like your current fee structure is working, just too low so have you considered raising fees across the board until you can properly maintain the road?  Any fee structure you adopt would have to pass the "fair and equitable" standard stated in the Maine Statutes.  True, it is not specific and will depend on the judge in Small Claims Court if you choose to use that venue for enforcement of the other 20%.