WSMV Channel 4 City may help finish subdivisions

City may help finish subdivisions

If you drive through the Edison Park subdivision in Antioch, be prepared to run an obstacle course of raised manhole covers.

Mehat Mouness, who lives in the subdivision, flattened a tire on one. He's also anxious to see streetlights installed, saying his wife is afraid to stay in the house alone when he's at work.

"There's not a single light. Not one," Mouness says.

Marlin Zaki has sailed head-over-heels on her bicycle because of the raised manhole covers.

"The front of the tire hit it, and the bike was going to flip," the 12-year-old says.

In Edison Park and in more than 200 other metro subdivisions, developers left work unfinished and residents frustrated.

Monday, Channel 4 showed you how a boy in Carothers Crossing got hurt after falling into an uncovered storm drain in an unfinished subdivision. That builder got into financial trouble and Green Bank took over the subdivision. The bank has yet to finish paving the street or to finish the storm drains, Metro officials say.

The city is supposed to hold builders accountable when the work isn't completed. Metro is supposed to collect the bond the developer posted, but it turns out for years, that wasn't happening.

A 2009 metro report shows because of  "mismanagement and/or inability to properly manage the bonding process," metro failed to collect 248 performance bonds worth about $6 million.

A staffer was fired for it, but now Metro is figuring out how the city can help get these distressed subdivisions finished.

Councilman Robert Duvall supports a plan to invest metro tax dollars to help get people living in the subdivisions the services they were promised. His district contains many of the subdivisions that were abandoned.

"We need a tool. And we need not to penalize the people who live here," Duvall says. "We're not going to let this community slip away."

Under a bill before council, Metro could become a financial partner in helping get the work finished. The details haven't been worked out completely.

Metro has to amend its code so that the city is allowed to accept an incomplete infrastructure, which it is now prohibited from doing.  

The Metro planning department has identified 10 subdivisions that could be eligible - Edison Park, the subdivision full of potholes, is on that list.

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