Clyde Moberly travels long route to become official public road

Clyde Moberly Road was named Nov. 27, 1978, by Wayne County Commissioners Elmer Toschlog and Jerry Dils.

What once was a private lane accessing a single farm from Webster Road served multiple homes by then. Wayne County has maintained Clyde Moberly and cleared snow from the roadway, the U.S. Postal Service has delivered mail to Clyde Moberly addresses, and school buses have traversed Clyde Moberly to pick up and drop off students — all treating Clyde Moberly as a public road. The state has listed Clyde Moberly on its road inventory and provided the county funding for Clyde Moberly’s 0.31 miles.

But an oversight decades ago kept Clyde Moberly from officially becoming a public road. Commissioners Jeff Plasterer, Mary Anne Butters and Brad Dwenger rectified that Oct. 30 by passing an ordinance officially — and immediately — turning Clyde Moberly into a public road.

“It’s been treated as a public road for the last 30 years,” Plasterer said. “The highway department has maintained it, has plowed the snow. There’ll be no change other than we are confirming that it is in fact a public road. It was only a lapse in paperwork 30-plus years ago that opened this as a question.”

During a March 13 meeting with commissioners and a July 24 public hearing, many residents from the 14 parcels along Clyde Moberly supported that action. Because of the road’s decades-long use, commissioners followed a state statute citing prior use to continue with a 30-foot right of way rather than the 40 feet required for newly constructed roads. That means no property lines are impacted.

“At the public hearing, the vast majority of residents of Clyde Moberly Road expressed the desire to have the county continue to maintain it, to snowplow it,” Butters said. “It would be a real, I think, inconvenience for many of the residents to have to plow that as a private driveway. I think the vast majority would like for the county to continue to maintain the road and to snow plow as necessary.”

Linda Frye, who owns a 2.836-acre property along Clyde Moberly, opposed the action Oct. 30, saying she was unable to attend the public hearing. The road crosses the eastern edge of Frye’s property. She thought that making Clyde Moberly a public road would devalue her property, despite neither the road nor its use changing.

The commissioners’ vote received applause from some of the about 10 Clyde Moberly residents attending the meeting.

“It’s been maintained for over 40 years as a public road,” Dwenger said. “It’s in the best interest of the county and the owners on that road to make it a public road.”