Spring Glen resident Diane Ajanovic was hoping to give a portion of her property to her son and daughter-in-law so they could build a new house right down the street from them on Klien Road — only the street, according to the Town of Wawarsing, doesn't exist.

Ajanovic appeared with her daughter-in-law at the Wawarsing Town Board Meeting on Thursday, May 1, to ask why part of Klien Road has been labeled as abandoned by the town highway department. A little more than half of the road, about 360 feet, is paved and taken care of by the town's highway department. The remaining 320 feet have existed on paper only, but have always been a part of her property since she bought it in the early 1990s.

Diane and Abdulah Ajanovic began the process to subdivide their property and pass part of it to their son, Mahir, and his wife, Michelle, in 2002. Diane and her family attended various planning board meetings and hired engineers and contractors to try and take the requisite steps to allow her to give her son the land. Some of these steps involved the submission of site plans and revising potential maps. The Ajonovics were even told by the planning board to demolish three rental structures on the property in order to come into compliance with density regulations, since their parcel of land would become smaller after they gave a portion to Mahir and Michelle — which they did in January of this year. And an important part of that process was to finally have the remaining 320 feet of Klien Road paved, and Ajanovic even received a letter from then-highway superintendant Donald Pomeroy saying that the road would be paved "shortly."

But at the December 7, 2006 Town Board Meeting, the town council voted to declare the road abandoned, which removes any responsibility for the road from the town's highway department. Qualifications for a road to receive such a classification mean that it has not been used for six years, a qualification the unpaved stretch of Klien Road certainly falls under, in that it is not paved, and is, in fact, an empty field of grass.

As to when or why the road was ever included on maps in the first place remains unclear. When asked, a representative from the highway department advised that we ask Mike Sommer in the assessor's office. Sommer, whose job deals mainly with tax assessment, and whose maps still have Klien Road as extending to the county line as of April 2008, said that determining when the road's length was established falls outside of his office's jurisdiction. When asked about the 2008 tax map's inclusion of the unpaved half of Klien Road, Town Attorney, William Collier, said that "tax maps are notoriously inaccurate. Often they're not based on surveys."

Jane Eck, Town Clerk, said that this issue is making "a mountain out of a molehill."

"It was a road by user," said Eck on Tuesday of Klien Road's usage. "It was used only into the road so far. So it became a road. After that, there was no road there. There is no road there. There never was a road there — only up to a certain point, that was it. They [the Ajanovics] want the road to be made longer going in there, and they can't. They should've done that years ago. You have to build, you have to develop it. Nothing was ever developed. Now they want to build homes on the property they have back there, and they don't have a road there."

Now that the road that never was is officially non-existent, if the Ajanovics want to have it paved, it will be up to them to finance the project. The town cannot pave a road which isn't theirs, and the only way a road can become un-abandoned is if it is paved. Such a project would cost a considerable amount of money, and would inhibit Mahir and Michelle's ability to afford the construction of their house.

This situation leaves a number of questions for the Ajanovics: Why would the planning board tell them in 2007 to demolish three rental houses on their property to allow for the proposed subdivision along a road that was officially abandoned by the town in 2006? Since building along a town-maintained and a yet-to-be-paved road was a part of their site plans, why didn't the planning board notify the Ajanovics of the reality that the town had abandoned it? Why was the road abandoned in 2006 for not being in use or not having development on it when the Ajanovics were in the process of getting approval to develop the area since 2002? If six years of inactivity is the amount of time needed for a road to be classified as abandoned, why did the town not take any action for at least sixteen years before then? And, perhaps the most puzzling question of all: just why was the non-existent half of Klien Road listed on maps for decades in the first place?

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