Troubling decision
A decision rendered by county commissioners last week is both perplexing and troubling.
In a split decision, commissioners meeting in Libby rejected a petition by Eureka residents asking the county to formally abandon an old wagon trail now considered a public road.
Commissioners rejected the citizen petition last year, but a court found their reason for doing so invalid and ordered them to reconsider the petition on its merits.
The old wagon trail in question stems from the early 1900s, when people living in the Sinclair Creek area sent their kids to school at the old one-room Glen Lake School. Lincoln County didn't even exist at the time.
After the school house was moved 10 years later, the unnecessary road was all but forgotten and fell into disuse.
After purchasing property in 2004, a Libby investment company learned of the old school house road and has been laying claim to it ever since as a convenient way to get to its private 40 acres over public right of way.
In short, rather than using its own easement, the developer wants to transform a wagon trail from another century and carve out 60 feet for a subdivision road.
Property owners adjacent to the proposed subdivision have opposed the developer all along, twice petitioning the commission to abandon the old road, which didn't even appear on land titles. In December the petitioners presented a sound argument for abandoning a road that in all practicality isn’t even there. Failing to do so damages adjacent landowners and burdens the public with an unnecessary expense that benefits only one owner — the developer.
What's so perplexing now is the commission's repetition of its earlier error. The court ordered commissioners to consider the merits of the petition and made clear that, despite a contrary opinion by the county attorney, commissioners have the discretion to abandon the road.
Yet only Troy Commissioner John Konzen considered any of the petition's merits. The two commissioners in the majority again referred to the discredited legal advice that, since the road is there, commissioners must allow its use and therefore cannot abandon it over Tungsten's objection.
Eureka's commissioner moved to reject the petition because "it is still a county road."
That doesn't make sense.
Of course the road still exists. So did the stretch the county abandoned back in the 1930s. No one in his right mind would petition to abandon a road that doesn't exist.
The majority reminded those attending that commissioners must "govern by law."
Yet the county attorney reiterated over and over that commissioners, according to the court, have discretion under the law to "manage the road as you see fit."
Given that wide legal discretion, it's perplexing to understand how the majority's flawed reasoning can possibly justify its decision.
Beyond that, what's troubling is what this precedent may mean for other landowners. Commissioners themselves acknowledged before their vote that scores of similar roads — if not more — exist out there somewhere — but who knows where? In your yard?
Once a developer finds one, commissioners have now unleashed the likelihood of repeated turmoil of the kind Sinclair Creek homeowners are going through.
Put all this together, and it's very difficult to see how commissioners benefitted the public welfare — though their support of private development is abundantly clear.
- Steve Newman