Billy GougerJASPER, Tenn. — Remembering what happened last time they declared a section of road on Aetna Mountain to be public, Marion County leaders are shying away from making the same declaration for another road.
In March 2013, the Marion County Commission voted unanimously that a six-mile stretch of Aetna Mountain Road is for public use. The move sparked both praise and criticism from mountain property owners.
“[The road] was the subject of at least two lawsuits in which the court had declared it to be a public road,” County Attorney Billy Gouger said about that vote. “It was an action taken by this body to say, historically, that section of the road had been considered a public road.”
At last month’s commission meeting, Robert Brown, representing an Aetna Mountain property owner, asked that a similar declaration be made for a dirt road known as State Line Road.
About 100 yards of that road crosses Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency property, Brown said. He added that TWRA has been writing tickets and arresting trespassers to stop access to State Line Road, just like it did on the stretch of Aetna Mountain Road before the board vote in 2013.
Gouger said parts of State Line Road are in Hamilton County and maybe even in Georgia before the road enters Marion County on the western side of the mountain.
State legislators have asked TWRA to stop writing tickets for using the road, and Brown said the lawmakers told him the next step was to come to the Marion board and have that entity declare it a public road.
“I’m just here to carry the ball from the state Senate to you all — to have you deem this a public road,” he said.
The board took no action on Brown’s request after Gouger raised questions.
Many landowners don’t believe any of the roads on the mountain should be open to the public, Gouger said.
“I think the county would be setting a dangerous precedent by wading off into taking sides on whether these roads are public or private roads,” he said.
Declaring a road public without any other entity, like a court, doing so first would run the risk of condemning someone’s property, Gouger said, and that could make the county liable for damages.
“[The board would be] implying, by having any say at all, that it has the right to do that,” he said. “Under Tennessee law, you sometimes don’t have a right to do that as a county commission.”
Brown said he has not spoken to all of the owners whose property the dirt road crosses, but he knows “several” are for it being opened.
“The state said they saw it as a public road, and that I had to bring it to [this board],” he said.
Gouger urged board members to be cautious.
“You’re getting into a public versus private rights issue here that may be beyond the scope of this body’s ability to determine,” he said.
Commission Chairman Gene Hargis said he would be willing to “delve more deeply” into the matter if all the property owners were “on board with it.”
“Without that, I would not even consider it,” he said.
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.