Residents to decide on road fee | The Bryan-College Station Eagle
Private road goes bad. HOA asks city to take it over. City say, residents of HOA must contribute bucks to upgrade road to public standards first, at cost of $500 each. Watch for many more such stories over the coming years, as cheap private infrastructure crumbles prematurely, and HOA residents seek public bailout, having no bread in reserves with which to fix the problems.

First, Hunter's Creek resident David Acker started noticing cracks forming along the edges of the private roadways lining his 2-year-old subdivision. Then there were weeds growing out of the pavement. Eventually, he said, he even saw a few mesquite saplings starting to sprout. Acker joined about 20 neighbors at the Brazos County Courthouse Tuesday morning during a public hearing to gauge support for a county plan to fix the roadway problems. The solution county officials have proposed is for each of the east Brazos County neighborhood's approximately 40 residents to pay a one-time $500 fee to get the roads up to county standards. After that, officials said, the county can take over permanent responsibility for maintenance as it does for other subdivisions. According to Acker, who is president of the Hunter's Creek Neighborhood Association, the proposed solution has about 99 percent support from homeowners there.