WEATHERFORD — Following listening to some a few-hour testimony and arguments from a variety of lawyers and residence owners, Parker County commissioners Monday voted to deny an application for a neighborhood highway.
Parker County resident Jonathan Hobson, who owns house off North U.S. Freeway 281 in Perrin, has been trying to find possibilities to access the land right after neighboring parts ended up obtained, properly leaving him landlocked given that close to 2015.
Hobson claimed his household owned the property since the 1970s and at 1 time, the spouse and children used an easement they created them selves, but it unsuccessful to be recorded in a divorce decree in between Hobson’s parents.
“In essence, the mother was awarded just one property and the father was awarded the other and the decree tried using to permit for an easement among them,” Paul Vitanza, the lawyer symbolizing Hobson, explained. “But the two tracts, for deficiency of a improved phrase, are catty-cornered and share a fence-article. So it is physically and legally impossible for a road to be located throughout the head of a fence-put up.
Jonathan Hobson’s household is comprised of 40 acres of land (demonstrated in yellow) located in the northwest corner of Parker County.
Right after commissioners granted a continuance in July about Hobson’s newest software requesting the county make a neighborhood road, the court docket reconvened for Monday’s listening to.
In accordance to offered deposition of an interview with former Precinct 2 Commissioner and street crewman Mack Dobbs, the county managed the roadway alongside the fenceline of Hobson’s neighbors in the 1970s until finally about 1989.
A debate ensued on regardless of whether the street was at any time a county highway, with County Lawyer John Forrest noting it was never ever recognized as a county street to be abandoned.
According to current Precinct 2 Commissioner Craig Peacock, the majority of that highway is situated in Palo Pinto County.
“Finally, if we have been to proceed ahead and approve this, we would not have entry to it until Palo Pinto has their listening to and decides irrespective of whether it is really a county highway,” Forrest said, adding that for a neighboring street, the county isn’t going to have an obligation to keep it, just place it in operating purchase.
Tract maps furnished to commissioners report the highway as a 60-40 split concerning Palo Pinto and Parker counties.
Precinct 3 Commissioner Larry Walden asked for clarification on the software and regardless of whether it was to make the highway a county highway or establish a new street.
Forrest verified it was to create a new community street.
“The time period ’eminent domain’ has appear up and we’re not expressing commit an act of eminent domain towards one particular human being for a single individual,” Vitanza said. “There is certainly 5 or six landowners that would be in a position to use that road.”
Precinct 4 Commissioner Steve Dugan said he sympathizes with Hobson and his scenario, incorporating that he believes the highway in problem was at a single time taken care of by the county, but he has doubts on regardless of whether it really is the appropriate factor to go forward just before Palo Pinto policies on anything.
“All we had right before was that we were being being requested to condemn the Francis’ house by imminent domain and develop a highway throughout that. Now the exact software is back again right before us,” Walden claimed, referencing the commissioners’ decision in 2019 to unanimously deny Hobson’s application for a neighborhood highway. “But as considerably as [this] software and the language it works by using, it won’t satisfy the standards for you to consider someone else’s land and create a street on it and give it to a single person.
“I am with Commissioner Dugan, I really feel terribly that this particular person would not have clear entry to his residence … I am not saying there could not be an avenue to establish that this highway is a public road of some sort. What I’m saying is this software will not say that and that’s not what we are getting questioned to do.”
Walden’s movement to deny was seconded by Peacock and unanimously authorised.
