For many years, going back to the days of Fishers as a town, there has been an effort to bring commercial roads, such as many on or near strip malls & grocery stores, up to city standards. After all, the public depends on those roadways to handle their everyday business.
City officials are setting up a system that will force commercial interests to at least bring their streets up to a minimum engineering standard before the city agrees to bring those roads into the city inventory. The legal method the city plans to use is the Barrett Law.
The Barrett Law has its complexities, but put as simply as possible, invoking this law allows commercial interests to make the needed road upgrades through a loan, often repaid over 20-30 years, with a lower interest rate than the market rate.
The city plans to utilize this law, allowing business entities financing to bring their private roads to a minimum condition before the city agrees to bring those roads into its own inventory.
At a Tuesday meeting of the Board of Public Works and Safety, Director of Engineering Jason Taylor recommended some private roads, both commercial and residential, be potentially entered into the city’s inventory. A Barrett Law, or similar arrangement, could be used for some residential roads in disrepair, but Mayor Scott Fadness wants certain conditions to be applied, admitting there are gray areas.
“We may say that a gated community can’t bring their roads into (the city’s) inventory unless they do away with the gate,” according to Mayor Fadness.
Fadness expects to bring this issue before the City Council for a work session to get councilors ideas on where to go from here.
“If we do it for one apartment complex or town (homes), then we really are setting a precedent for every other town home or private development that’s out there,” Fadness said. ”Some council members, I can tell you, definitely do not want to subsidize, using other people’s tax dollars, to bring those into alignment.”
The mayor appears to want a system where residential neighborhoods would have guidance on which areas may apply to have their roads taken into the city inventory, as long as it is clear that meeting that standard does not automatically mean that those roads will be accepted by the city. Fadness appeared to favor a case-by-case evaluation of such requests.
“A lot of these folks may look at the financial implications and say, we’re not going to mess with this,” the mayor added.
The board approved some potential candidates for roadways to be brought up to standard. The map is difficult to read, but is available below.
