WESTFIELD – The City Council conducted a public hearing last week on the acceptance of Birch Lane as a city street. The issue was sent to the council’s Legislative & Ordinance Committee for further review.
Birch Lane is an unpaved road located off Holyoke Road. The proposed gravel street is only 10-feet wide and currently serves two houses, although acceptance as a city street would create frontage to allow further construction.
Acceptance of Birch Lane has been pending for five years. The Engineering, Law Departments, as well as the Planning Board, have all recommended against accepting the street, citing a number of issues and problems acceptance would create.
City Engineer, in a Sept, 8, 2008 communication to the Board of Public Works, said the road lacks both adequate drainage and width. The Law Department, in a Sept. 5, 2008 communication to the Legislative & Ordinance Committee, which was chaired by Mayor Daniel M. Knapik, said that the 10 feet for the road were carved out of a Holyoke Road lot through an easement. Accepting the road as a city street may be an issue because cutting the frontage of the Holyoke Road lot would make it a non-conforming lot.
The Law Department communication, writted by Peter H. Martin, who has since retired, also states that the City Council would have to determine that issue as part of the Birch Lane acceptance process.
The Planning Board communication, written on Oct. 1, 2008, states that Birch Lane is a common dirveway providing access to two “landlocked” parcels over “abutting property with frontage on Holyoke Road.”
The board said that Birch Lane does not have a required right-of way and that acceptance would create frontage for an additional building lot and would obligate the city to maintain “this common driveway as a ‘public way’ and eventually bear the cost of bringing it up to city standards.”
The expectation that the city will be eventually required to bring a substandard road into compliance with city standards is the issue that may divide the City Council members, not just on Birch Lane, but on a number of unimproved streets.
One school of thought among council members is to accept all streets, since the city is already maintaining them to some level, plowing, providing trash collection and emergency response protection. Accepting all streets will increase the mileage, a factor used to determine the level of the city’s Chapter 90 funding from the state for street maintenance.
Another group of councilors are relectant to embrace that approach because of concern that accepting substandard streets will expose the city to liability for property damage and injury which might occur on those unimproved streets.
That group is also concerned that there will be an expectation by residents of those streets that the city will expend funds to upgrade those roads. They are also concerned about the cost of accepting a road, which includes surveying the proposed street, at a cost of several thousand dollars, and then the legal process of taking that property.
Ward 2 Councilor James E. Brown, chairman of the L&O, has pushed for the broad acceptance, arguing that the city is already spending money to maintain access for emergency responders.
Ward 5 Councilor Richard E. Onofrey Jr., chairman of the finance committee and Ward 3 Councilor Peter J. Miller Jr., have both raised objections to that broad approach.
What approach the other members of the 13-member City Council will embrace may not be known until the L&O brings the Birch Lane issue before the council for a vote.
