Plans to vacate alleys in Cloverdale put on hold

CLOVERDALE -- After a long discussion at the August meeting, the Town Council voted to table vacating nine alleys in Cloverdale until it is determined which have utlities and which do not.

"Cheryl and I have been up at the (Putnam County) courthouse quite a bit," Town Manager Wayne Galloway said to a packed house, "at the plat office. And Robbie (Cudnik)'s always honest about these alleys. A lot of these alleys are just grass and haven't been used in years. She said, 'You need to get them cleaned up.' So Cheryl and I went through and looked at certain alleys that we thought the town hadn't used or it's not being used as an alley but a driveway."

With that, Town Manager Galloway used a newly installed television to show the room pictures of each alley in question.

The first was an alley located behind Cloverdale Community Housing, which is located on Grant Street. Residents and the manager of the assisted living facility were present to say that they frequently used the alley and did not want it vacated. It was also discovered that vacating the alley would "landlock" other property owners in the area, which Attorney Allan Yackey said could not be done. The alley was left unvacated.

The next alley discussed was one that runs between two homes at 51 and 53 Robert Weist Ave., then forms a T to connect with 299 N. Grant St. and 306 N. Main St./U.S. 231. The alley also crosses Robert Weist Avenue to connect with West Fulton Street, but that section was not discussed.

"Now, when you vacate that," an unidentified resident said, "that guy (Ryan Niehaus) is going to lose half his driveway, right?"

The issue of what happens to an alley after it is vacated had already come up during discussion for the first alley, and Yackey had said that it is evenly split between the adjoining property owners.

"Actually, right now they don't have a driveway," Yackey clarified. "They're just driving on the right-of-way. So if this is vacated, they will own it."

Resident Wendy Niehaus brought up a concern she and her husband have about drainage on their road and how they fear that might relate to vacating the alley next to them.

"There's been several things done, like for water leaks, and then they had to replace it because it -- I guess because one of the pipes busted -- well, it started to sink in. They came back and they patched it; they didn't pull it back up and find out -- (the stormwater) starts up at the top of (U.S.) 231 almost, and it goes out into the road and then down at the corner at Grant Street. The storm drain does not work at all."

In response to a question from Town Manager Galloway, Niehaus said that she wasn't sure if there was a culvert on her street, just that "it got three times worse" after the aforementioned work was done.

Town Manager Galloway assured her he would inspect the situation and install a culvert, with Clerk-Treasurer Galloway saying that Niehaus's entire road would receive improvement if the town receives the Community Crossings Grant mentioned at last month's meeting.

"See, that's what we were concerned about," Niehaus responded, "when we seen that sign that said, 'We're vacating this alley,' was that maybe there was something underlying that is going on there that the town's not wanting to take responsibility of."

Clerk-Treasurer Galloway responded, "The other (alleys) are just grass. Everybody said, 'These are driveways; they're not alleys.' We're just trying to clarify them. We're not getting any MVH (tax funds used for streets, street lights and sidewalks) on them."

In response to a question from another unidentified resident, Clerk-Treasurer Galloway said that any increases in property tax would be "maybe $5 or $6...very minimal."

Town Manager Galloway indicated the part of the alley that, although now overgrown with trees, technically runs north from the still-visible T to connect with Mill Street. He said that one option could be to vacate the overgrown part and leave the rest as alley, or to vacate all of it.

"I think as long as it's repaired," Ryan Niehaus answered, "I'd be OK with maintaining it after that point."

But Lois Shafer, the resident on Grant Street who shares the alley with the Niehauses said that she would not want the alley vacated.

"That's a very, very busy alley," Shafer said. "(Stopping people from going down the alley) would be pretty bad because I couldn't get in my drive."

Clerk-Treasurer Galloway said that, if the alley were vacated, Shafer would not be landlocked and could still access her driveway from Grant Street.

In answer to a question from Don Gedert, Yackey said that utility easements (access to the property to maintain utilities) would still stand even if an alley is vacated. But Gedert was not sure "that there was any special utility easement given for utilities going down an alley."

Yackey responded, "Mr. Gedert has raised a valid point. Because if there are utilties running in these alleys, then you're going to have to give some more thought to this. You're getting into a prescriptive easement, which you have to litigate each one of them as they come up."

Clerk-Treasurer Galloway said that only one of the concerned alleys had utilities, but multiple residents said they had sewer lines, electric wires and other utilities in their alleys.

"It sounds like you're going to need to back off of this at the moment," Yackey said. "I didn't think many of these things really had utilites in them because most of them appear to be just grassed over. Because the right-of-way is on the map, any utility -- including municipal utilities or Endeavor Communications -- they would have the right to use the right-of-way."

Gary Bennington moved to table the issue until further investigation is complete. He was seconded by Vice President Don Sublett, and the vote was unanimous.

In answer to a question from Clerk-Treasurer Galloway, Yackey said that, although they are rights-of-way, the town does not necessarily have to maintain the alleys if they are not often used.

"Now, when they start to be used heavily," Yackey said, "then there can be a liability issue if you allow a hazardous condition to develop, but there's no specific obligation to maintain a right-of-way just because it's a right-of-way. A lot of towns, especially those that were platted as this was in 1800s, they wrote rights-of-way in them, and they're just there. Maybe someone's using them and maybe they're not.

"I would suggest starting, first of all, with figuring out which of these have no utilities in them. And then those you can probably address easily. The ones with utilities in them, you're going to have to decide whether it even makes sense to address them."

Other information that came up during the discussion was that closing an alley is not the same as vacating it, and that an alley can only be vacated with an ordinance, all of which are available online at cloverdalein.com.

During the public comments portion of the meeting, Shafer said, "I'd like to know why vacating the alleys even come up. Are you trying to get out of maintaining the alleys?"

Clerk-Treasurer Galloway responded, "No, Robbie at the plat office up in Greencastle...she wants us to square it up, and she wants us to take care of the alleys that are not being labelled. We had no idea where these alleys were. We're just trying to clean it up a little bit. I wondered why all the other clerk-treasurers hadn't done that in all these years, but now I kind of see why. I'm glad I did because I got to see everybody come in. This is really nice that you've come into the town council."

In other developments:

President Coweta Patton addressed a situation in which a citizen had been given the entry code to the Town Hall, which Clerk-Treasurer Galloway said violates the town's internal control ordinance.

"The code numbers that we were given to get into the town hall were given out to bonded people only," President Patton said. "The BZA/Plan Commission and the Park Board are not bonded unless there's a council member on the board; they can open the doors for you. If you give these numbers out to anyone, yours will be removed and may not be returned."

The next Town Council meeting will be Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. in the Town Hall. A public hearing to review the Proposed 2017 Budget is set for that meeting.