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Jefferson County adopts private-road ordinance setting construction and maintenance standards
Summary
The county replaced a three-house private-road limit with a new ordinance tied to Appendix D of the 2018 fire code: minimum easement, travel-width and structural requirements, turnaround specifications and mandatory road-owner maintenance agreements; county will not routinely plow private roads except in emergencies.
County staff described a new private-road ordinance that replaces the prior three-house limit with technical construction and maintenance standards derived from Appendix D of the 2018 fire code. Unidentified Speaker 2 said the new rule standardizes private-road specifications and requires property owners to form a road-owner maintenance agreement.
Key technical details cited in the meeting: roads must lie in a 60-foot easement; normal travel width must be 20 feet (26-foot travel width required when a private road exceeds 500 feet); the road must have a solid base with a 6-inch top (3/4-inch minus material noted); a 2% slope was described; and the road must be able to support a 75,000-pound vehicle. Turnarounds must be provided as a cul-de-sac or hammerhead for emergency access.
Unidentified Speaker 4 asked who would maintain such roads; county staff responded that property owners must execute a road maintenance agreement and the county will not assume routine plowing or maintenance. “The county doesn’t have to plow it,” Unidentified Speaker 2 said; the county will only plow private roads if an emergency is declared or if property owners reimburse the county for the work.
Why it matters: the ordinance removes an ambiguous limit on how many dwellings can access private roads and establishes technical standards that subdivisions and developers must meet for new private roads. County officials said the change is intended to reduce confusion caused by conflicts with older road-access permit language and to limit impacts on county services (for example, excessive snow-plow labor on cul-de-sacs).
What’s next: the ordinance is in place for new private-road construction; property owners who want to create private-road subdivisions must provide the maintenance agreements and build to the specified standards. The transcript does not record a roll-call vote or ordinance number in this excerpt; county staff indicated the ordinance text derives technical requirements from the 2018 fire code.
Quotes in this article are attributed to the speaker numbers used in the public transcript because no full names were provided in the record.
