Ron Jellison says record-level rains in the spring of 2016 overwhelmed a drainage ditch along Bridge Road near Del Paso Regional Park — and he says water headed for his place.
“[It] flooded around the house, in the backyard,” he said, adding that the garage was completely flooded and he incurred several-thousand dollars worth of damage.
The question: Who was in charge of maintaining the drainage ditch?
Jellison has a deed, a parcel map, a county statement of right of way and a county tax bill that indicates he’s paid a monthly $5.84 stormwater drainage charge. But he says the ditch failed to drain because the county stopped maintaining it.
A current map of Sacramento County shows that Bridge Road, which is west of the park between Business 80 freeway and Auburn Boulevard, is a private road. But Jellison says the people who live there still pay for county services, and have never gone through a process to give them up.
County spokesperson Matt Robinson says he looked at the current and previous versions of the county maps and does not dispute Jellison’s claim.
Is the road the county’s responsibility? “We really don’t have an answer for that right now, but we’re looking into it,” Robinson said.
Jellison says he thinks the county’s map was first changed in the 1980s, when the city of Sacramento took over management of the stretch of Bridge Road that goes through Del Paso Regional Park.
He claims that the county was supposed to maintain control of the part of the road across the street from the park, but that it hasn’t consistently done so over the years, possibly because county agencies use maps that don’t include the road.
Jellison says safety has been compromised, such as delayed response times to 911 or 311 calls.
He also says Bridge Road has appeared on public maps as either a city or county road and is now mapped as private. But he’s attempting to get every map to show the road is a county road — and he hopes they are updated before the next major storm.
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