Should Homeowners Have To Pay $20,000 To Pave Dirt Road?
SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) -- A ballot question aimed at one neighborhood near Breckenridge has neighbors at odds and it is all about paving roads. The dirt roads that lead you into the Peak 7 community - complete with its potholes - are what's dividing hundreds of people ahead of next month's election.
For one resident, this is an economic hardship.
"If we have to pick between paying to have roads paved, and our retirement, or a new roof, we don't want roads paved," Melissa Snell says.
If passed next month, Ballot Measure 1C would force everyone here to pay about $20,000 to get roads paved.
"The financial challenge that this is going to cost the people in our community is heart wrenching," Snell says.
Snell and some of her neighbors are filing suit against the Summit County Board of County Commissioners.
They want a judge to take the ballot measure off the table -- altering the process of creating a local improvement district to pay for the road paving.
But people in favor of paying to have roads paved are also out knocking on doors and putting up their own signs.
"It's time," Snell's neighbor Mark Goodspeed told CBS4. "I've lived up here long enough. [I'm] tired of the dust and mud and it costs a lot, but needs to happen."
Most homes in the area have a sign -- either for or against the measure. And until the courts weigh in, the battle on over the roads playing out on the front lawns lining them -- wages on.
It's not clear what will happen with this new lawsuit now that ballots are already going out.
