BROWNSTOWN TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Fed up, frustrated and helpless. That’s how residents at a Brownstown Township subdivision feel. It’s because their roads are ruining their outdoor equipment and making it hard for their school buses to get down the road.
They reached out to our Local 4 for help.
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Cambridge Meadows in Brownstown Township tell Local 4 they’ve been trying to get the roads fixed for years. But, they say when they reach out to the township, the township tells them to reach out to the Homeowners Association, but, the homeowners at the subdivision tell Local 4 they don’t have an HOA.
“It’s so loud, it literally could wake you up in the middle of the night. Just like that,” one homeowner said as a vehicle drove over the road.
“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” another homeowner said.
Although they all live in different areas across the neighborhood, they’ve got at least one thing in common.
“Once every week or two, I try to clean up the rubble in front of my house,” a homeowner said. “You just do the best you can.”
They bring out the buckets and fill them up. Time and time again, they fill up with rubble.
“Everyday,” one homeowner said. “Day in and day out. You swerve to avoid the potholes. You try to clean up the rubble as best you can, so you don’t hit it with your car.”
“I’m like, woah, it’s a little bumpy out here,” Miela Berent, who lives in the subdivision, said about riding the school bus on the roads.
It’s a pain for equipment too.
Many homeowners worry about retaliation. That’s why they are not sharing their names.
Local 4 asked them what happens when they reach out to the township for help
“They think we are an HOA. We are not,” a homeowner said.
Local 4 reached out to the township to try and get some clarity.
“Residents have every right to be frustrated,” Sherry Berecz, the township supervisor, said. “Cambridge Meadows is dealing with a concrete issue tied to roads built in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it is a problem communities across Michigan have been working through for years. Even though these are county roads, Brownstown has continued investing local dollars and working in partnership with Wayne County to secure funding for replacement. Brownstown has been addressing similar deterioration in subdivisions across the Township for more than a decade. The need exceeds the funding available in any single year, so this work has to happen in phases. We have already completed several road replacements in Cambridge Meadows, with more work already under contract to begin this year, and that work will continue into the future. Our residents enjoy a great quality of life in Brownstown and the roads need to match that standard. Cambridge Meadows remains a priority and we will keep working until the job is done.”
“Between the township and Wayne County, really, nobody has been of help and they just send a crew to patch maybe once or twice a year and that’s the best they do,” one homeowner said.
“Everybody is mad. They want to get it done. It’s been like this for years,” another said.