Lesa Geddings and her 5-year-old grandson used to wave at the scraper when it would come to service their street in rural Sumter County. The boy loved watching the large machinery even out the dirt.
But now he's 6 and hasn't seen a scraper since last year. Kangaroo Lane is in rough shape with pot holes and divots, and while he might like to joke that Nanny's car gets stuck in mud, Nanny, or Lesa, doesn't think it's so funny.
Even in good weather, Kangaroo Lane in the Pinewood area is a trek to travel. The red dirt road that starts in Sumter County and ends in Clarendon County is plagued with what looks more like craters on Mars than potholes on a residential road.
And while potholes are nothing out of the ordinary to South Carolinians, particularly ones who live on dirt roads, the Geddingses say the ones on Kangaroo Lane are not only inconvenient, but also dangerous and even life-threatening. They're worried about if they need an ambulance and it won't be able to traverse the craters in time.
So, Lesa started making calls to the county asking why her road was not being serviced anymore. She was told that it's because Kangaroo Lane is a private road and the county does not service private roads.
But Lesa and her husband of 40 years, Wayne, who has lived most of his life on that road, have documents saying it's public; however, when you turn onto Kangaroo Lane from South Hampton Street, you pass a blue street sign.
Blue signs are put on private roads, while green signs are put on public roads.
But that blue sign is relatively new. Wayne said it was some time in the last few years that a green sign reading Kangaroo Lane was replaced with the current blue one, and that's when the scrapers really started coming by less and less.
The couple even has a photo they pulled from Google Earth showing the sign was once green.
In short, Wayne Geddings has spent most of his life being able to drive down his street, which he thought was a public one, with relative ease, but now after the sign replacement, the retired couple has to tack on minutes to their travel times any time they leave their house because it takes minutes to get to the end of their road.
So, is Kangaroo Lane a private road or a public road? Is it the county's responsibility to service it or not?
"Obviously, we feel terrible about the road," Sumter County Administrator Gary Mixon said during a Feb. 13 Public Works and Solid Waste Committee meeting. "But at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to determine whether it's a public road or private, and all we can base that information on is our records, our experiences and our staff's knowledge."
With that, Sumter County Public Works Director Karen Hyatt gave a presentation showing a timeline going back to the '90s.
In 1991, the Sumter Subdivision Ordinance was established, saying all streets and roads accepted by Sumter County must be paved to SCDOT standards, then in 1994, an ordinance was established on street naming. The roads were then named by the auditor's office and the blue or green sign rule was put into place, but that's where it got complicated.
"Any signs that were put up before 1994 were green, which included some private roads, and due to the supply of blue signs back in the '90s, we installed green signs on private roads for approximately five to six years. It just took us that long to be able to find a manufacturer for the blue signs, and today, currently, there are private roads with green signs on them."
Mixon said the county has gone and replaced green signs with blue signs on some private roads.
The Feb. 13 meeting was cut short because of the council meeting that followed it, so the Geddingses have not gotten an answer as to whether Kangaroo Lane is public or private.
"We're not asking for it to be paved. We just want it serviced and our green sign put back," Lesa said. "People say [bad road conditions] are what you get when you live on a dirt road, and we know that, but we always thought this was a public road and that it would be serviced."
The Geddingses live in county councilman James R. Byrd's district.
Councilman Carlton Washington said he hopes to get a solution to this issue on a county council agenda, so the Geddingses are in a waiting period to find out what's next.
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