Tecumseh Residents Fed Up With Poor Road Condition

A road so bad and beat up that emergency vehicles can't drive on it has one group of Tecumseh residents fuming.

Residents there say any kind of precipitation makes their commute a nightmare and they fear Friday night's bad weather won't help.

"This is horrible, I mean, it is. It's torn up several cars, I know that," said Laura McMasters, a Tecumseh resident for 27 years. "It's used to not be this bad, and my husband, before he passed, would use a tractor to help maintain it."

McMaster's neighbors say they're fed up that their road off Highway 9 and Hill Top is nearly impassable. The small community says ambulances and delivery trucks can't use the roads.

Willy Rogers, 71, says he's running low on propane, but his delivery guy told him his road, Sky View Drive, is too unsafe and risky to drive.

"I don't ask for help, but we need help, and it's bad when you have to walk up the hill to your house," Rogers said. "You can't even hardly get in and out with 4-wheel drive, I have to park and walk up the hill, that's all I can do, and I'm getting a little old now, and my hips aren't going to last very long."

It's so bad, resident Kristiana Wright says a man was dead inside his home for three days before his body was removed.

"And the medical examiner actually did not want to come in. They could not make it in. They were trying to get people to bring the body out to them," she said.

"County assessors don't want to come out here, and they drive SUVs. The police department will not come out here because their cars will get stuck and ambulances get stuck."

But the office of Pottawatomie County District 2 Commissioner Randy Thomas says the roads across from Brown Cemetery are private, and the county has never maintained it.

"It has to have all the drainage ditches put in, and it will have to have so much gravel put on it, 24 feet wide," said Assistant Road foreman Rob Milburn.

"It has to be brought up to county standards like a county road is before they can present it to the county commissioner's office and see if they will accept it."

All that takes time and money these neighbors say they don't have.

"We need a new road, that's the kind of help we need," said resident Danny Leeder.

"I know the county's got them marked on their map. These are county roads. They'll come out and issue citations for riding ATV's on them and that's about the only way you can get up and down them," Leeder said.

"You probably burn an extra gallon of gas just spinning your wheels trying to get in and out of here."

Wright says she has started a petition and collected signatures from nearly all the couple dozen residents in the area. She hopes it will convince the county to get on board with helping them fix their roads.

Milburn says residents can come to the county commissioner's office to get a copy of county road standards. He said residents met with the previous District 2 commissioner 3 years, but nothing happened.