The contentious issue of how the City of Orinda deals with the acceptance of private roads returned to the Orinda City Council on March 3, when the council heard a report from the infrastructure committee that has been charged with addressing the issue. Council Member Janet Riley had an excused absence and was not present for the discussion, and Council Member Cara Hoxie joined the meeting from a remote location and recused herself for a portion of the discussion.

    This left Mayor Brandon Iverson with council members Darlene Gee and Latika Malkani, both of whom are on the infrastructure committee, for much of the discussion.  The infrastructure committee was formed in 2024 to address the issue of private roads and has since been extended. Approximately 20-22% of Orinda residents live on private roads, which are not maintained by the city. The purpose of bringing a proposed framework before the full city council was to get the council’s reactions and to provide guidance for the further work of the committee and Orinda staff.

    Historically, some private roads were offered for acceptance to Contra Costa County prior to the incorporation of Orinda as a city. Others may have been offered to the city, and some were never offered. There is a lack of documentation on why some roads that were offered to the county were not accepted. Orinda has made it a condition of approval of new subdivisions that the roads must primarily be private, although there are some exceptions, including for some arterial roads.

    There is a city resolution, 59-18, that sets forth a procedure for submitting applications for private roads to be accepted by the city as public roads. However, it has never been used. Committee members Gee and Malkani posited that this is because the rule sets an impossibly high standard to meet.  

    The question of private roads has been a contentious one for many years. Over time, the city has taken steps to get a better handle on what exactly the issues are, including conducting a survey of the condition of all the private roads.  

    Much of the discussion at the March 3 meeting focused on the question of whether there should be a change to the provision in resolution 59-18 to remove the prohibition on the acceptance of private roads that are controlled by homeowner associations. Iverson argued that HOAs have the ability to raise assessments in the face of inflation while the city is bound by Proposition 13 and cannot raise property taxes to cover the effects of inflation on road maintenance.  

    Gee, who is by profession a consulting transportation engineer, explained that the city uses many revenue sources for road maintenance, from property taxes to road bonds, state grants, sales tax, Measure R, and return to source from county sales taxes and is not limited to only property tax revenue for roads.

    Gee and Malkani suggested that the committee seeks to make a tonal change, and suggested that removing the prohibition on roads in HOAs from even being considered for acceptance would make residents of private roads feel more included in the city. Iverson wondered if it was a good idea to suggest that acceptance might be possible if financial restraints would never allow for it.  

    City Manager Linda Smith explained that the reason that the committee was presenting to the full council at the time was so that precious staff time would not be wasted following lines of inquiry that would ultimately be fruitless.  

    After hearing the discussion and formulating what task she would bring back to city staff, Smith suggested staff work closely with the infrastructure committee to come up with more specific solutions, additional financial analysis, and broader programmatic options. Smith noted that Orinda’s small staff will probably need to use an outside consultant to accomplish those tasks.

    The council received 21 written public comments on the agenda item, with 19 comments supporting the infrastructure committee's proposed framework. One comment opposed the framework, and another urged the council to carefully consider the benefits and deficits of changing the current regulatory control of private roads.

    Smith said that staff would likely bring the matter back to the council at their next meeting, on March 17. The infrastructure committee next meets on March 16.