Late night ideas

You ever have a long day and then get in bed and start working on problems you have absolutely no good reason to work on? Or ideas that just have to be explored at 2:47 a.m.?

It’s a good way to suffer from sleep deprivation, but in a perverse sort of way I sort of enjoy it.

Like I had this idea the other day that I would not cut my beard or my hair for a year and then YouTube about it.

“You’re not that interesting,” my wife remarked. “Plus you’ll get it caught in the lawnmower.”

I can always count on my wife to fully endorse my good ideas.

So the other night after that long city council meeting on Tamarack Meadows subdivision I got this idea that instead of fighting over Meadow Lake Drive, that the good folks that live on the road should take another tack: Petition the county to abandon it.

See, the neighbors would love to put speed bumps on that road, which is in the Meadow Lake Resort, but the county, like most municipalities, is anti-speed bump and for good reason: They’re no fun to plow in the wintertime.

Speed bumps do a very good job of slowing down dump trucks, however, as well as Audis and Mercedes that are late for work.

Turns out it’s very easy to petition the county to abandon a road.

From Montana Code Annotated 7-14-2601. “Any 10, or a majority, of the freeholders of a road district taxable therein for road purposes may petition the board in writing to open, establish, construct, change, abandon, or discontinue any county road in the district.”

I think I came up with this idea about 3:11 a.m.

Now getting the county commissioners to accept the petition is another matter altogether, but it’s not like Meadow Lake Drive is an arterial road or anything. In fact, I suspect it’s a bit of a hassle, because it’s just a side road that doesn’t really go anywhere.

Of course, there would have to be some assurances that once it’s private, it still provides access to the rest of the resort, even the new subdivisions.

In addition, once a road is abandoned it’s up to the neighbors to maintain and take care of it, but they could put in their speed bumps and other traffic control devices as they see fit, on their own dime, of course.

Meadow Lake Resort’s roads are already full of speed bumps.

A few more won’t hurt anything, and they just might save a life or two along the way.

I have no skin in this game, no dog in this fight. But it still seems like an something worth exploring.