Letter: County needs to let feds maintain Forest Service roads

The Herald’s Sept. 15 article, “$1B needed to bring sidewalks, curb cuts into compliance” points out a critical need to bring our sidewalk infrastructure up to current ADA standards for people with disabilities. This problem points out the need for Snohomish County’s Public Works Department to focus its limited public roads budget where it is most needed to expedite ADA improvements.

Currently, the county Public Works department expends millions of local tax dollars and thousands of staff hours each year maintaining U.S. Forest Service’s roads outside the county’s jurisdiction in areas without a clearly defined public right-of-way authority, including:

Major portions of the Mountain Loop Highway between Verlot and Darrington;

Large sections of the Index-Galena Road; and

The Reece’s Hideout Bridge No. 540 and its unmarked county road to a gated, anti-government community east of Barlow Pass.

These roads are maintained under Eisenhower-era agreements with the Forest Service, which can be terminated at any time by the county with 60-days’ notice. Roads, culverts, and bridges in these areas frequently wash or slide out costing millions; the actual cost is unknown because public works does not track these maintenance expenditures. With increased flooding effects from climate change, these costs will surely rise.

Maintenance responsibility for these roads on federal land should be returned to the federal government and not funded by county taxpayers that diverts Public Work’s engineering and crew time from more needed ADA projects.

We have paid for these roads twice — once with our gas taxes and again with our federal income taxes. Please let our Snohomish County Council know that they should terminate these 1950s-era agreements and turn maintenance responsibilities for these roads back to the Forest Service so that our limited road tax money can be better spent repairing defective ADA ramps for the greater good of Snohomish County’s residents.

William Lider

Lynnwood

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