Guest Commentary: Don’t let developers sidestep full cost of roadways
Bryan Shupe, a Milford Republican, represents the 36th District.
In addition to residents in our district, homeowners and renters across the state of Delaware have been left with unfinished roads after they purchase or rent a home in a development.
The cause is that the Delaware Department of Transportation’s inside-roads bond codes only require developers to commit 10%-15% of the paving cost, instead of 125% like several municipalities require.
This means that, if road paving is estimated to cost $200,000, developers are only required by the state to commit $20,000-$30,000 to begin building and selling houses, apartments and town houses in that neighborhood.
In many cases, the developers decide to leave the roads unpaved, taking the loss on bond commitment, so they do not have to pay the 85%-90% for the finished work. The reality is, the roads do not get paved, and taxpayers end up paying for paving the roads that are the responsibility of the developer.
The blame resides just as much on the state of Delaware for allowing these laws to continue, draining taxpayer money in favor of developers. I have asked the Transportation Department for years to change these codes, and to the credit of the workers, they agree and have brought it to the attention of the directors. The directors need to move on this and protect taxpayer money from these expenses, while requiring that homeowners who purchase property in Delaware receive quality roads by the developers of their communities.
I will be introducing legislation this session that does two things: 1. Requires 125% commitment of bond for inside-road paving; 2. Does not allow developers that fail to pave roads the ability to develop more communities in Delaware in the future.
To make the second point possible, the code needs to change to state that the ban on future developments due to failure of paving roads follows the developer’s name and interest, not the limited liability company’s. As it stands now, developers are exempt from any ban because of the common practice of using separate LLCs for separate projects.
I see no wrong with protecting separate projects under different names but do believe, if the developer fails to perform its responsibilities to the state, it should not be able to develop a new neighborhood without correction of the roads, since this burden falls on taxpayers.
Let’s stop taxpayer money going to fund neighborhoods that are the responsibility of the developers.
