Article Courtesy of The News-Journal

By Mark Harper

Published March 15, 2012 

DELTONA -- After agreeing last month to come up with $250,000 to pay for road repairs, residents of a westside subdivision now say the city should cover those costs.

City commissioners, meeting in a workshop Monday, heard an argument from an attorney representing the Saxon Ridge Homeowners Association that she acknowledged was a "game-changing discussion."

Who will pay for the repairs is at issue because of confusion over whether the roads were ever formally dedicated to the public. City officials have contended the roads were never made public.

Assistant City Manager Dave Denny reiterated that position Monday, saying he and City Commissioner Heidi Herzberg had met with homeowners association officials on Feb. 2.

"I don't want to speak with them, but it was my understanding they would raise their monthly fees to come up with $40,000, the immediate need," Denny said. "They were interested in the city creating a special taxing district to get the remaining $210,000."

Once the roads were improved, the city would then accept them as public and take on their maintenance, Denny said.

All that changed last week, according to Asima Azam, an Orlando attorney representing the homeowners.

In researching the matter, she found that the roads had indeed been dedicated to the public -- not in the late 1990s when the subdivision was going through the city's approval process, but in 1955, some seven years before Deltona's existence.

Here's what happened, according to a letter written by Azam to Denny.

In 1997, Leeds Holdings, a Winter Park developer, purchased what would become Saxon Ridge, a subdivision with more than 200 lots near the Interstate 4-Saxon Boulevard interchange. At the time, the property had already been platted and approved as Orange City Estates Unit No. 3. That was done in 1955.

The plat was never developed, that is, until it was sold and renamed as Saxon Ridge. Many of the roads appear on a Saxon Ridge map exactly as they did on the Orange City Estates map, but the names have been changed.

For instance, the main gateway for Saxon Ridge, Haversham Road, was called Florida Avenue on the 1955 plat,

"It now our position that the plat was never vacated. The streets were public in 1955 and they remain public today."

City officials didn't react to Azam's argument, other than to suggest the city's staff will need to digest it.

Deltona officials have signaled they don't expect budget constraints to ease anytime soon. This year the city was limited to repaving only sections Elkcam Boulevard and no other city roads.