Frequently Asked Questions

  • The Oakland County Road Commission (RCOC) owns our roads and prioritizes major roads like Quarton, Lone Pine and Lahser, over neighborhood roads like ours. Even with that prioritization they can’t maintain most of the major roads in the county with the funds they have.

    The Oakland County Road Commission has been extremely forthcoming, and they readily admit they do not have the funds to fix neighborhood roads, nor do they see any funding coming for neighborhood roads in the foreseeable future.

    Click HERE to read the 2021 Transportation Asset Management Plan (describes the Road Commission for Oakland County’s transportation assets and conditions).

  • We’ve searched to identify federal, state, or local funds to pay for the necessary Village road rebuilding effort. We even explored if there was road funding available in the federal stimulus and/or infrastructure money. Unfortunately, there is not.

  • Actually, our roads situation in Bloomfield Village is not unique.

    Many neighborhoods in Bloomfield Township have authorized special assessment districts within the last 10 years, as a last resort to fixing their own dire roads issues.

    Some examples of neighborhoods that have successfully repaired their roads using the same process we will employ: Still Meadow, Pinewood Court, Lauren Court, Kirkwood, Chestnut Run South, Chestnut Run North, Hickory Heights, Overbrook, Wabeek 5&6, Concord Green, Dell Rose, Thorncrest, Kentmoor, Hickory Grove, Echo Park, Sandalwood, Carillon Hills, Knob Hill.

  • No, the Special Assessment for roads is linked to the property.

    If you move from the Village, the unbilled special assessment will stay with the property – just like school or park millages.

    This is different from the last Roads effort in 2013 — the governing statute has been amended to provide that the unbilled liability stays with the property upon sale.

  • This won’t be a simple road repair, and it will take several years to complete.

    The contractor will remove the existing roads, curbs and gutters down to the original roadbed and rebuild from the bottom up. The newly laid, modern roadbed will provide a proper base and underground structure for our new roads. Without fixing the base, the roads would degrade quickly.

    Due to the size and scope of repairs the Road Commission plans to divide the project into 5 sections, each approximately 2-3 miles that can be completed in one construction season (*see map on ‘Fix Our Roads’ tab).

    NOTE: Each section will independently determine whether they want to repair their roads. If one section decides to keep their roads as is, this would not affect the opportunity of any other section of the Village to repair their roads.

  • The Road Commission determined the sections based on what makes engineering/construction sense. We then worked with them to determine the sequence. We want to be able to do two sections (with separate SADs and different contractors) in each summer construction period, to get the whole Village done in 3 years instead of 5. In order to do that, the Road Commission stated the sections cannot touch each other, so that the contractors cannot access each other’s sections.

    We also need to avoid construction machinery traveling over new roads. Since the green section (Bradway) touches all the other sections, it has to be done separately.

  • Within the last ten years, Cranbrook and Covington roads were rebuilt by the Oakland County Road Commission, at no cost to the homeowners, because Oakland County needed to tear up those roads to do water and sewer work. These roads do not need to be repaired at this time.

    State law does not allow SADs (Special Assessment Districts) to allocate road repair or improvement costs to homes that are not located on the street being repaired. The Cranbrook and Covington homeowners may have “gotten a deal” – but it is simply not allowable to include them in the proposed SADs.

  • No one is suggesting this possibility for two reasons:

    1. There is a cost involved in converting to gravel, and the residents of the Village would have to pay for it. We will still need a Special Assessment District (SAD) because the residents would still need to pay to have this road work done.

    2. We have not heard any resident of Bloomfield Village interested in taking a step backwards and converting our roads to gravel. Many residents believe that converting the roads to gravel will harm property values and cause new problems like “washboard” roads, mud, and dust.

  • It might be possible to do an asphalt overlay but it is not a realistic long-term solution since the overlay would be on top of a crumbling roadbed. An overlay may last 1 or 2 years before it crumbles.

    Unfortunately, after 60+ years since the roads were built there simply isn’t enough good roadbed left on which to place an overlay.

  • Filling potholes and periodic overlays has been the Village road maintenance strategy since the mid-1980s. Certainly it is possible to continue, but the Road Commission will not fund overlays. We would have to fund the overlays ourselves, and these simply aren’t a good fix.

    A filling-potholes strategy will not slow the deterioration of the roads.

    Unfortunately, after 40+ years of ongoing pothole patches there are sections of our roads comprised only of patch and crumbling asphalt.

  • Construction is never easy on trees. The Road Commission contractor responsible for the project will do its best to protect the trees. The trees in the right of way are owned by the Road Commission.

  • If we chose not to pursue rebuilding our roads, they will continue to deteriorate at an accelerating pace. The Road Commission advises that adding more asphalt layers might get us a few years of smoother roads. But because the base of the road has deteriorated, the new surface will soon have potholes and be crumbling once again.

    So, if we put off doing the true major repair now, we will still have bad roads. Sooner or later, the roads have to be fixed. If we wait, it will likely cost us more to do so in the future.

  • Any parcel in a section that doesn’t sign the petition is essentially a “NO” vote. The minimum level of support needed for a sucessful petition to form a SAD is 51% of the frontage in a section, and 51% of the parcels in a section.

    Volunteers will be going door to door to gather signatures on the petitions for a section. Please be respectful of the volunteers’ time and effort - if you do not support the petition, please let the volunteer know instead of avoiding the discussion. Save them the effort involved in continuing to contact you.

  • You can talk to the neighbors on your block (and refer them to this website with any questions), attend a roundtable/informational event if you have questions, or reach out and let us know that you’d be willing to volunteer on the roads committee or get gather signatures.

    It is important for all residents to have the information they need to make an informed decision about whether to sign a petition to support the SAD for their sections. Please fill out the form on the homepage (villageroads.org) to submit questions that you have. We will do our best to get accurate information posted as quickly as possible.

    Don’t forget to submit your own roads photos to roads@bloomfieldvillage.net. Thank you in advance!

  • See discussion in section below.

What are the different options that were considered in deciding to form Special Assessment Districts (SAD) and finance the project through Bloomfield Township, and why was the Township selected?

There are two options for forming SADs to fund road construction in the Village – through the Road Commission of Oakland County and through Bloomfield Township.  Each option is governed by a different statute.  The Village Board of Trustees, in consultation with the Road Committee leadership, evaluated the two different options through review of the relevant statutes and discussions with both entities regarding the process and policies that would be involved for each option.  The table below sets forth the key elements of each option:

 

**There is one nuance to how the liability is transferred with the property.  If a property is sold after an annual installment is billed, but before the annual installment is paid, the annual installment would have to be paid upon sale.  In the above example, if the property is sold in January of year 4, the year 4 annual installment of $1,000 would have been billed in December with the winter property taxes.  If the homeowner had not yet paid the winter taxes, the $1,000 annual installment that had been billed but not paid would have to be paid upon sale, and the remaining unbilled assessment of $11,000 would transfer to the new owner. 

Why did we pick the Township?

In deciding whether to form the SADs and finance through either the Road Commission or the Township, the Board and Road Committee leadership weighed the differences between the two options, including reviewing the feedback from residents from the prior SAD effort in 2013.  Key factors in the decision to go with formation of SADs with the Township:

·       Treatment of the special assessment liability when a property is sold:  This was the most important factor in choosing Township SADs and financing. 

A significant factor cited by many residents who did not support the prior effort was the fact that the liability for the special assessment attached to the homeowner and had to be paid when the property sold.  After that effort failed, the governing statute for township SADs – PA 188 – was amended to allow the unbilled assessment to be transferred with the property.  With the amended statute, forming the SADs with the Township has the advantage of the liability staying with the property, and thus eliminating a substantial negative factor. 

·       Repayment period and terms:  Township financing allows a longer repayment period, and most likely a lower interest rate than Road Commission financing. 

·       Required level of support:  Formation of the SADs with the Township allows us to gather support from 51% of the frontage and 51% of the properties in the SAD, whereas the Road Commission would require 51% of each street in the SAD.  With the Road Commission, a single street could cause the entire effort to fail if 51% of the frontage on that street did not support the SAD. 

How the costs would be allocated among the properties in the SAD was also considered.  There are arguments for the allocation methodologies used by both the Township and the Road Commission, and reasonable people could (and likely will) disagree in good faith about which one is better/more fair/more reasonable.  On balance, the Board and Road Committee leadership did not consider the allocation methodology to be significant factor arguing for either option, but rather a neutral factor.