A tiny gated community in Superior will have its streets repaired and maintained at taxpayer expense while being allowed to keep its entrance gate in place, the Board of Trustees decided in a split vote Monday night.
Mayor Andrew Muckle, who voted in favor of the agreement with the Waterford Homeowners Association, said he did so reluctantly because he was concerned that access to a public road is being compromised.
“It pains me to recommend we do this because we wouldn’t ever do this for anything moving forward,” he said at a trustee meeting Monday.
The trustees voted 5-2 to approve the arrangement with the 26-home enclave off of Rock Creek Parkway near McCaslin Boulevard. Waterford is now open to anyone who wants to come in, but they will have to wait through a 10-second delay before the entrance gate opens.
Trustee Lisa Skumatz said the 10-second delay is “way too long” and wondered why the town is allowing a neighborhood to keep any sort of obstruction in place when Superior residents will be footing the bill for street repairs.
Long-term projections by the town to maintain roads in Waterford as part of its street pavement management program run as high as $500,000. The town has received about $122,000 in property taxes from Waterford over the last decade.
“Perhaps we should have a sign that says this is a public road; otherwise it’s got the same old gate and it looks exclusive and we’re maintaining the roads,” Skumatz said. “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
Trustee Joe Cirella, who voted for the resolution, said Waterford’s convoluted history — with control of the community passing among the developer, the HOA, a metropolitan district and back to the HOA over more than 15 years — left residents there befuddled as to who was maintaining the streets in their neighborhood.
He said letting them maintain a gate that opens — after a delay — for any motorist is a “good compromise” and an assurance that property values there won’t take a hit.
Most of Waterford’s residents bought their homes with the understanding that the neighborhood would have an entrance gate, said HOA president Rita Dozal. She said the purpose of the gate is not so much to provide security as to discourage traffic from entering a neighborhood that doesn’t connect to any other part of town.
“We’re trying to make it accessible to all the people who want to be there and need to be there, but not to those who have no business being there,” Dozal said.
Skumatz countered that people using public roads shouldn’t have to provide a reason why they are at a certain place at a certain time.
Wendy Shefte, a three-year resident of Waterford, said she wishes her neighborhood would just get rid of the gate. She finds punching in a code to open it a “hassle,” and she worries about the perception that her neighborhood is receiving public services while providing less-than-unfettered public access.
“If we’re going to take money to have our streets maintained, we need to have the integrity to say this is a public street,” she said.
But Sonia Chritton, who has lived in the neighborhood for eight years, said the gate has provided peace of mind to parents with young children.
“We have a lot of little kids,” she said. “When you have a gated community, you don’t have people racing back and forth down the street.”
And with a 10-second delay on the gate, Chritton said, no one will be barred from the neighborhood, but they will be slowed down before entering.
She also credits the gate with sparing Waterford from the burglaries that swept through Superior over the last couple of years.
“Just having the gate there — it does create an aura of security,” she said.