- Letter to our elected officials, the note was sent to Town of Surf City, State elected officials, and NC DOT on May 22, 2018. After the letter was published there was a question as to ” Was such a toll legal? The Pender County Sheriff’s department has confirmed that “YES, the toll on a private road is legal“!
- Letter to Property Owners – click to view and download the letter that was sent to all property owners.
Letter to our elected officials
Due to the ever increasing amount of general public vehicle traffic on two private roads, an emergency meeting of the Cedar Landing/Creek Estates Road Maintenance Organization, Inc. ( CL CE RMO) was called for Saturday May 19. The number of cars and other vehicles using Cedar Ave/Landing Dr. has increased drastically causing much damage to the road. Being a private road owned by the RMO, there is no city, county, or state support, 100% of our funds come from property owners and are short to properly maintain it. Contact and repeated request for help over 2+ years have been made to elected officials at city, county, and state levels, as well as law enforcement. Meetings have also been held with NC DOT at multiple levels, and there has been contact with multiple attorneys in search of assistance and options. Responses have been, in most cases, generally “WOW, that is a major problem BUT unfortunately we cannot help“, to the one case of “Sorry, I am too busy to meet or communicate with you.”
It was concluded and agreed at the emergency meeting that there is no forthcoming financial or legislative help, at least in the near term. If any action is taken to reduce the problem it will have to originate within the property owner’s RMO. It was agreed by unanimous vote of attendees that the “short cut” will be blocked on holidays and a $5.00 toll charged to all through traffic. Property owners and their guest will have access via a windshield sticker. Those without a sticker will need to know the name and/or address of the property they are to be visiting for access. All others will have a choice of paying a $5.00 toll for road usage or turn around and use the public route. Money collected will go into the road maintenance fund for ongoing repairs. The attached letter along with new window stickers have been mailed to all property owners.
There are three checkpoints planned for Memorial Day Weekend (starting Friday) to test the effectiveness. Carl has stickers for property owners vehicle windshield. If you have visitors coming, they will need to give name and address of property owner being visited. The person at these checkpoints will have a directory of all property owners. As a general point of reference, the vehicle count for the Memorial Day weekend in 2017 was 4,122 vehicles!! Considering there are less than 70 full time residents, virtually all of that was general public, non property owners. Traffic year to date in 2018 as compared to 2017 may be viewed HERE.
It was also agreed by vote that 3 way stop signs may be installed at several “intersections” to help control the speed of vehicles which has also become a problem. Since law enforcement is not responsible for speed control on a private road, Stop signs and speed limit signs have minimal effect.
Sincerely,
Cedar Landing/Creek Estates Road Maintenance Organization, Inc.
