Resident requests improvements for Brown Terrace subdivision

Ruth Harrison of the Brown Terrace community outside of Louisville stood before the Jefferson County Commission at its July meeting, presented a petition and asked for several services for her neighborhood.

“Recently our taxes have been raised so high, I was wondering if our services were going to come up in our area,” Harrison asked and then read from a petition signed by 39 individuals who live in the neighborhood located two miles down Grange Road (Highway 171) from the building where the commissioners currently hold their meetings.

The community has 55 homes located on Brown Terrace Road, West Boundary Street, Darisaw Circle, Johnson Street and West Boundary Court.

The petition specifically asks for a county-run garbage dumpster to be located somewhere along Highway 171 near Brown Terrace, but not in it; playground equipment for children who live in that community; and lastly fire hydrants to be located on Brown Terrace and West Boundary.

Commission Chairman Mitchell McGraw told Harrison that the only reason any taxes have gone up is because the value of homes throughout the county have gone up.

"Unless we got some kind of grant, all we would have to take the tax dollars to do (these types of projects) and the only place we have to get that money is the millage rate,” McGraw said. “We have not gone up on the millage rate. The value of your property has gone up and that’s where you’ve seen increases. We have not set the millage rate yet (this year) and it’s this board’s hope and wish that we can keep your taxes at about what you paid last year.”

McGraw said that the county did have a green box dump site in the Brown Terrace subdivision at one point, but that residents there had asked for them to be removed.

Harrison said that the garbage was too close to residences and that it attracted rodents and other vermin. The current closest dumpsters are about six miles away, she added.

McGraw said that the county would look into finding locations along Hwy 171 that could accommodate a new county dumpster site.

The county does not normally place playground equipment in neighborhoods, County Administrator Jerry Coalson said. It would have to seek special grants or other funding to pay for that sort of thing.

As for fire hydrants, McGraw explained that the county is not in the water supply business.

“We’d like to have fire hydrants all over the county, in your subdivision and in other subdivisions too," McGraw said.

Coalson said that if the county were to put in its own water system with a well and collection tank and run lines throughout the subdivision it would likely cost between $6 million and $8 million.

“Your only other option would be to, if at some point Louisville was to connect its water system that’s out by the chicken plant to the system inside the city limits, it would run right by Brown Terrace,” Coalson said. “The thing you have to understand is that (homeowners) would have to agree to tie on to the water system with (their) homes, not just the hydrants. You don’t get hydrants without having homes on the lines. That’s just the way that works. There has to be a way to pay for that cost. Otherwise you’d also have terrible water quality in that area because water would just sit stagnant in the line.”

McGraw added that there are other remote communities throughout the county, dozens of them, that would also like to have fire hydrants, but that the county is just not financially in a place to provide that service to all of those areas.

“We have homes going up on the other side of Wrens left and right and they would like water and sewer too, but to do that we can’t find the money right now.”

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Resident requests improvements for Brown Terrace subdivision