Shared Driveway needs repaving

[drewguy]

What is the name of your state? Washington, DC

I'm one of 8 neighbors who share a driveway/alley per a recorded easement. It hasn't been paved in years and is now basically rocks and gravel to the point where it's unuseable. There's no maintenance agreement, unfortunately. Several of us would like to pave it. 2 neighbors refuse, and the issue doesn't seem to be money (although maybe they're not being straight). They seem to have other objections.

Can we force them to let us pave? I assume we can't force them to pay--obviously I'd prefer it if they did--but can we at least pave it at our expense?

 

[FarmerJ]

Paving would be nice BUT even if some of the others were excused from paying, dont you think there will be hard feelings as soon as one of them or guest of theirs damages the paving ? maybe your better off just having gravel hauled in and spread. BTW beside the cost of paving these others might not be able to handle any increases in property taxes due to the improvement. Ill bet your property taxes indeed could go up from paving it but wont just from adding gravel.

 

[drewguy]

Paving would be nice BUT even if some of the others were excused from paying, dont you think there will be hard feelings as soon as one of them or guest of theirs damages the paving ? maybe your better off just having gravel hauled in and spread. BTW beside the cost of paving these others might not be able to handle any increases in property taxes due to the improvement. Ill bet your property taxes indeed could go up from paving it but wont just from adding gravel.

I don't get the sense anyone is worried about the prop. taxes issue. The property is valuable enough that an "improvement" of this type won't really matter (if it changes anything).

There's no doubt there will be hard feelings if people don't pay. But there's hard feelings also that beyond not paying they're actively resisting having it paved at all, so hard feelings are going to result no matter what.

As for gravel, that's what's there now, and because there's a slope it runs down and gets quite rutted.

 

[FarmerJ]

Drew you wrote >The property is valuable enough that an "improvement" of this type won't really matter (if it changes anything).
< Is this what your local property tax authority has stated ? Drew you might not ever know details of your neighbors financial situations to really know if they can afford it or not. Gravel roads do need to be maintained, yes they become rutted and bumpy with out being graded, even lightly used gravel roads still need to be graded every now and then. Now enough of that , If this private alley is paved I hope you understand that with out consent to do so the group would be damaging property. I suggest the group who wants this go see a real estate atty , foot the bill and see if the real estate atty can come up with a maintenance agreement that breaks it down into a maintainance fee schedule based on each parcels position along the easement. Include in this the cost of having the alley graded and some new gravel added and 2nd option of paving it. If its laid out real well the others who declined to pay might be willing to sign maint agreement that can be recorded to each property.