County To Stop Providing Maintenance Near Greens Creek

Crawford County District 2 Commissioner Jared Boast said on Tuesday that maintenance will no longer be provided on a short section of Sappington Bridge Road, ending the service after seven years.

The decision prompted a property owner who initially filed a complaint to ask if he could sue the county over its decision. 

“You could try,” said County Clerk John Martin.

A few weeks earlier, Johnny Keane addressed the commission over the maintenance. He said the county had stopped grating the road past Greens Creek. 

Later that week, Boast later clarified to the Independent News that his district had not stopped grating the road and it was initially a misunderstanding. 

Work was being done on the road late on a Thursday afternoon. Both road districts have Fridays off, so the maintenance was shut down for the week. Over the next couple of weeks they were rained out. 

Keane interpreted it as the county cutting off maintenance. 

He provided a 2011 letter from former District 2 Commissioner John Hewkin stating that the county would provide maintenance on that portion of the road. Keane was adamant that the county owned the road.

Boast promised to look into the matter.

On Tuesday, he said a search of the records did not reveal that the county owned the portion. “We don’t have anything that shows we have a legal obligation to do the road,” Boast said, explaining they go by what is turned into the Missouri Department of Transportation. Records show that stretch is a private road, Boast said.

Research conducted found the county owns 2.961 miles from Highway D to the beginning of Greens Creek. Keane wanted the county to continue maintaining a sixth-tenths of a mile stretch.

“We can’t maintain a private road,” Boast told Keane. “If it was a county road, the documentation was not followed up on.”

Keane was dissatisfied. He said it has always been a county road and it was abandoned in the 1960s. Keane said it was proven once.

“You told us seven years ago it was,” he said, though Boast has only been in office since January 2017. “To just stop arbitrarily, which is what I think it is, I don’t care what you have there.”

Boast said he could show Keane three different documents indicating it is not a county road. “There’s no documents that show we had to maintain it,” he said.

Sullivan Independent News

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