City council votes to remove platted street

Forest Street only existed on city property legal descriptions

A street that never was, now no longer exists.

It took less than 10 minutes on Tuesday night for members of the Medford City Council to hold a public hearing and vote to formally vacate Forest Street.

Forest Street had been planned as part of the Morningside Addition to the city more than a century ago. The road was put on the property maps as a dedicated street right of way but it was never built, instead Ogden St. was built about 100 feet to the north.

According to city planner Bob Christensen, many of the houses in the area are built in the platted right of way. The oversight was caught by the city assessor and the county’s real property lister noting the appearance of the dedicated road on the property descriptions.

“This is a good thing we are doing,” Christensen said, noting the legal description will be changed to reflect the road no longer exists.

Alderman Dave Roiger questioned if there were other places in the city where situations like this occurred. Christensen said that to his knowledge there weren’t any others.

Noonefromthepubliccametospeakon the street vacation request. Christensen said he had gotten one call from a resident and assured him it would have not impact on his property.

Alderman unanimously approved the request to vacate the road.

During the communications portion of the meeting, alderman Mike Bub asked about how a resident went about requesting an additional streetlight in an area.

City coordinator John Fales replied that in the past there was a formal request procedure that went through council, but that with the changes to the high-effi ciency LED lights it is handled by staff. He said the resident should contact either himself or electric utility manager Spence Titera to get the process started.

Clerk Virginia Brost also reported on the primary election held on Feb. 18. She said the voter turnout was 645 voters in the city, which comes to about 19%, a number she said was “quite high” for a February primary. She had projected there would only be about 400 voters and so used paper ballots rather than paying for the programing of the M100 voting machine.

She said new voting equipment has been ordered with it awaiting state certification. She said they hoped to have them in service by the May 12 special election of the 7th Congressional District. She noted that if they were not here before the May election they would continue to use the old equipment through the general election in fall because they would not want to have the first time using the equipment on a large-turnout presidential election.