Morristown may stop plowing certain dead-end roads

According to council chair Etienne Hancock, the council agreed that certain dead-end roads that were being plowed and maintained during the winter do not meet the town’s minimum standards to be accepted as town roads. Some of those standards include having at least five lots with structures on them, exceeding 1,000 feet in length, and having an adequate turnaround area for town trucks and a designated area to dump snow.

The letter states that there’s even one dead-end road, Cloverdale Drive, that the town plows even though the property owner who lives there doesn’t even use the road in the winter.

“The once thriving dairy farms that required daily winter plowing are gone (ex. Lanphear Rd), the requisite number of homes required in the Town Road Policy no longer remain (Samoset Rd), and for some roads (ex. Stub Towne Rd.), the Town Road Crew services are no longer desired by the property owners,” the letter states. “For most other roads on this list, the Town Road Crew is in effect providing private plowing services for only 1 or 2 homes on short dead-end roads.”

The list of town roads up for consideration for discontinuance are:

• Call Road
• Chaffee Road
• Cloverdale Road
• Cram Road
• Lague Road
• Lanphear Road
• Ledge Road
• Neil Road
• Rooney Road
• Ross Hill Road
• Samoset Road
• Stearns Road
• Sand Ridge
• Stub Towne Road
• Tine McKee Road
• Watanjay Farm Road
• Wyman Road

“These substandard roads ended up on the Town’s ‘plow-list over the years for various reasons, though in the Council’s estimation, most are no longer valid,” the letter states.

The council asserts that the road crews spend more time on those short dead-end roads than on much longer town roads that meet the minimum requirements. Barrows estimates the town could save $20,000 a year if the roads were discontinued.

“Beginning the process now gives the residents on these roads the time needed to find private plow services for the winter,” the letter states.