Frequently Asked Questions

  • The Oakland County Road Commission (RCOC) owns our roads and prioritizes major roads like Quarton, Lone Pine and Lahser, over neighborhood roads like ours. Even with that prioritization they can’t maintain most of the major roads in the county with the funds they have.

    The Oakland County Road Commission has been extremely forthcoming, and they readily admit they do not have the funds to fix neighborhood roads, nor do they see any funding coming for neighborhood roads in the foreseeable future.

    Click HERE to read the 2021 Transportation Asset Management Plan (describes the Road Commission for Oakland County’s transportation assets and conditions).

  • No one is suggesting this possibility for two reasons:

    1. There is a cost involved in converting to gravel, and the residents of the Village would have to pay for it. We will still need a Special Assessment District (SAD) because the residents would still need to pay to have this road work done.

    2. We have not heard any resident of Bloomfield Village interested in taking a step backwards and converting our roads to gravel. Many residents believe that converting the roads to gravel will harm property values and cause new problems like “washboard” roads, mud, and dust.

  • It might be possible to do an asphalt overlay but it is not a realistic long-term solution since the overlay would be on top of a crumbling roadbed. An overlay may last 1 or 2 years before it crumbles.

    Unfortunately, after 60+ years since the roads were built there simply isn’t enough good roadbed left on which to place an overlay.

  • Filling potholes and periodic overlays has been the Village road maintenance strategy since the mid-1980s. Certainly it is possible to continue, but the Road Commission will not fund overlays. We would have to fund the overlays ourselves, and these simply aren’t a good fix.

    A filling-potholes strategy will not slow the deterioration of the roads.

    Unfortunately, after 40+ years of ongoing pothole patches there are sections of our roads comprised only of patch and crumbling asphalt.

  • If we chose not to pursue rebuilding our roads, they will continue to deteriorate at an accelerating pace. The Road Commission advises that adding more asphalt layers might get us a few years of smoother roads. But because the base of the road has deteriorated, the new surface will soon have potholes and be crumbling once again.

    So, if we put off doing the true major repair now, we will still have bad roads. Sooner or later, the roads have to be fixed. If we wait, it will likely cost us more to do so in the future.

ALTERNATIVES

  • We’ve searched to identify federal, state, or local funds to pay for the necessary Village road rebuilding effort. We even explored if there was road funding available in the federal stimulus and/or infrastructure money. Unfortunately, there is not.

  • Actually, our roads situation in Bloomfield Village is not unique.

    Many neighborhoods in Bloomfield Township have authorized special assessment districts within the last 10 years, as a last resort to fixing their own dire roads issues.

    Some examples of neighborhoods that have successfully repaired their roads using the same process we will employ: Still Meadow, Pinewood Court, Lauren Court, Kirkwood, Chestnut Run South, Chestnut Run North, Hickory Heights, Overbrook, Wabeek 5&6, Concord Green, Dell Rose, Thorncrest, Kentmoor, Hickory Grove, Echo Park, Sandalwood, Carillon Hills, Knob Hill.

  • No, the Special Assessment for roads is linked to the property.

    If you move from the Village, the unbilled special assessment will stay with the property – just like school or park millages.

    This is different from the last Roads effort in 2013 — the governing statute has been amended to provide that the unbilled liability stays with the property upon sale.

  • Within the last ten years, Cranbrook and Covington roads were rebuilt by the Oakland County Road Commission, at no cost to the homeowners, because Oakland County needed to tear up those roads to do water and sewer work. These roads do not need to be repaired at this time.

    State law does not allow SADs (Special Assessment Districts) to allocate road repair or improvement costs to homes that are not located on the street being repaired. The Cranbrook and Covington homeowners may have “gotten a deal” – but it is simply not allowable to include them in the proposed SADs if they don’t have frontage on a street begin improved by the SAD.

    Corner lots on Cranbrook or Covington and a side street that is being rebuilt in the Roads project will be included in the SAD for side street. This applies regardless of the address of the home or where the driveway in located, because the home has frontage on a street being improved. For example, the homes on the 4 corners of Oak and Cranbrook will be included in the Pink section SAD because they have frontage on Oak.

  • Click HERE to read all the information about why it was decided to finance the project through Bloomfield Twp.

  • On average, road construction costs increase by about 5% annually.

FUNDING

  • If a volunteer comes to your door, you can sign the petition, or you can sign at the Village offices during “office hours” posted on the website homepage; just drop in during announced hours to sign a petition.

    You can also make an appointment – send an email to Roads@bloomfieldvillage.net to request an appointment to have the petition brought to your home.

    Because the petitions are legal documents governed by Public Act 188 and other legal requirements, there are some technicalities to be aware of:

    • If a homeowner is married, both spouses must sign the petition regardless of whether both are listed on the title. It would help us greatly if both spouses can sign at the same time.

    • If the home is held by a trust, the petition must be signed by person(s) authorized by the trust documents to do so. We will be required to submit paperwork to Bloomfield Township to document the authority of the person(s) signing.

    • If the home is held by a corporate entity or LLC, the petition must be signed by person(s) with the authority to do so, usually an officer of the corporate entity. We will be required to submit copies of the relevant paperwork that document the authority of the person(s) signing.

  • Any parcel in a section that doesn’t sign the petition is essentially a “NO” vote. The minimum level of support needed for a sucessful petition to form a SAD is 51% of the frontage in a section, and 51% of the parcels in a section.

    Volunteers will be going door to door to gather signatures on the petitions for a section. Please be respectful of the volunteers’ time and effort - if you do not support the petition, please let the volunteer know instead of avoiding the discussion. Save them the effort involved in continuing to contact you.

  • The township may issue a guideline for when the petition forms are to be returned, but there is not a hard deadline. However we do set target dates for completion so we can set projections for construction to start.

  • Click HERE to read an outline of the steps of the Special Assessment District Process.

  • You can talk to the neighbors on your block (and refer them to this website with any questions), attend a roundtable/informational event if you have questions, or reach out and let us know that you’d be willing to volunteer on the roads committee or get gather signatures.

    It is important for all residents to have the information they need to make an informed decision about whether to sign a petition to support the SAD for their sections. Please fill out the form on the homepage (villageroads.org) to submit questions that you have. We will do our best to get accurate information posted as quickly as possible.

    Don’t forget to submit your own roads photos to roads@bloomfieldvillage.net. Thank you in advance!

PETITION PROCESS

  • This won’t be a simple road repair, and it will take several years to complete.

    The contractor will remove the existing roads, curbs and gutters down to the original roadbed and rebuild from the bottom up. The newly laid, modern roadbed will provide a proper base and underground structure for our new roads. Without fixing the base, the roads would degrade quickly. Click HERE to see a visual aid of the steps.

    Due to the size and scope of repairs the Road Commission plans to divide the project into 5 sections, each approximately 2-3 miles that can be completed in one construction season (*see map on ‘Fix Our Roads’ tab).

    NOTE: Each section will independently determine whether they want to repair their roads. If one section decides to keep their roads as is, this would not affect the opportunity of any other section of the Village to repair their roads.

  • The Road Commission determined the sections based on what makes engineering/construction sense. We then worked with them to determine the sequence. We want to be able to do two sections (with separate SADs and different contractors) in each summer construction period, to get the whole Village done in 3 years instead of 5. In order to do that, the Road Commission stated the sections cannot touch each other, so that the contractors cannot access each other’s sections.

    We also need to avoid construction machinery traveling over new roads. Since the green section (Bradway) touches all the other sections, it has to be done separately.

  • Construction is never easy on trees. The Road Commission contractor responsible for the project will do its best to protect the trees. The trees in the right of way are owned by the Road Commission.

  • After a construction bid is awarded, the contractor can use specialty subcontractors to complete the job as needed (paving, milling etc).

  • You can check the website tab www.villageroads.org/construction-updates for the latest construction news, plus email updates from the Village Manager. Additionally, the Road Commission of Oakland County is going above & beyond to post door hangers at homes 48 hours before any events that would prevent you from accessing your home.

CONSTRUCTION PROCESS