Franklin County Adopts Colston Dr After Residents Complain Road is Impassable

After years of complaints and confusion, Franklin County Commissioners have voted to adopt a stretch of road that goes over a deteriorating dam.

Monday night, the Board voted to not only adopt but to fix Colston Road that has become virtually impassable.

At their work session last month, residents of the road off Highway 106 told the Board the road over the dam is so bad, they can’t get basic services they’re paying taxes for, such as ambulance, fire, and police service because their vehicles can’t get up and over the dam.

The issue over the years has been who owns the deteriorating dam under the road.

Residents claim their research indicates the County owns it, but Commissioners said they could not find any record of that.

Monday night Commission Chair Thomas Bridges said County Attorney Bubba Samuels was asked to do a title search.

Samuels read off a list of six people who allegedly own the parcel where the dam is located.

Bridges noted the research also suggests the County was granted an easement over the dam when the road was put in.

He said the Board considered several options including cutting in a new access road from Highway 320 or adopting the road and making repairs to it and to the dam.

Commissioner Robert Franklin motioned to adopt the road after citing a similar situation in Forsyth County where the residents sued the County and won.

“That dam is going to wind up being Franklin County’s one way or another,” Franklin said. “So folks, there’s nobody in this room that wants to live on that road as rough as it is.  The ambulance can’t get there. There’s a lady at the end of that road with cancer. The ambulance came out and would not come back. There’s nobody in this room that wants to live in those conditions. So, I make a motion that we adopt this road from start to the end of it.  We’ve been playing with this thing, I hate to admit it, for 15 years. It’s time to do something about it.”

Bridges abstained from voting stating he didn’t see the reason to adopt the road if the County already had an easement over the dam, but the motion passed 4-0 to adopt the road.

County Manager Beth Thomas noted after the vote that fixing the road and the earthen dam is likely to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and she asked for a budget adjustment.

“This is going to be an expensive endeavor. So, I will need a budget adjustment to account for the maintenance of the road and mostly for the repair of the dam. It’s unknown as to the cost of that. We’re briefly estimating somewhere between $100,000 – $200,000 to repair this dam. We can research on that and get a better estimate and then bring that back for a budget adjustment or determine what funds we are going to use.”

At the work session, a resident of Colston Road said they had found numerous grants available for road and dam repair projects.

Commissioners asked if there was any emergency funding available, and Thomas said she would continue to research grant opportunities.

“We have reached out to GEMA multiple times, but maybe there might be something different and I’ll be happy to get with her on her research to see. We will go after any grant funding that we can possibly go for so the rest of the citizenry is not paying $200,000 to repair this dam,” Thomas said.

Commissioner Franklin also suggested using County Road department equipment to do immediate road repairs.