Given the floor at Monday night’s Mullinville City Council meeting, councilman M T Liggett addressed three matters, the second of which is his concern that a former member of the council, Betty Clayton, is blocking access to a vacated street.
Though Walnut Street now runs north from US 54 in Mullinville and ends where it intersects with Wall Street two blocks later, it used to run a block farther north until that stretch was vacated by the City around 50 years ago.
As for who bears responsibility for the vacated easement and former street property, State statute provides the land owners on either side of the former street assume that control up to the midpoint of where the street was formerly located, as in KS Statute 12-506, which reads in part, “The streets…so vacated shall revert to the owners of the real estate immediately abutting thereon, according to the frontage of such real estate thereon…”
According to Connie (Sherman) Dargel, formerly of Mullinville and now living in Missouri, Clayton, who lives just to the east of the vacated stretch of Walnut, purchased property situated between the east edge of the former street and her property years ago from a Mary Kincheloe. While that purchase would have given Clayton control of the east half of the former streets as well, Dargel said Clayton has always maintained that acquisition gave her control of the entire width of the vacated street.
“Betty’s always fought me on that,” Dargel said by phone Thursday morning. “She claims she owns and controls the whole easement. We don’t fight about it anymore because it’s just not worth it. I could never convince her that the west half of the street is mine since I own the lots running up to the west side of where the street used to be.
“I finally said, ‘If she wants it that bad and wants to mow it, fine, let her. It’s not worth fussing over.’”
The problem for the City of Mullinville, however, lies in Clayton having placed metal stakes across the width of the former street just off the north edge of Wall, making it difficult to service an electrical transformer that sits a block farther north on the west side of the former street. The stakes also prevent the City from accessing the vacated street where a high point impedes drainage, creating what Liggett referred to as “Lake Mead” at the intersection of Wall and Walnut at every instance of significant rainfall.
A neighbor and former neighbor of Clayton both told The Signal Clayton had the stakes placed at the entrance to the vacated street within the last year.
Dargel said she gave the City “permission three to four years ago to go in there on my side of the street and landscape it or do whatever they need to fix the drainage problem, and they still have that permission. As for those stakes, I know she (Clayton) can’t put those there and block access to the utility pole.”
Carol (Sherman) Gordon, Dargel’s sister, said it was her understanding Clayton had the stakes placed at the entrance to the vacated street to prevent vehicles entering at that point and creating ruts in the area she mows. Councilman Elton Martin commented during the meeting that Clayton had placed the barriers at the end of Walnut “because the electric truck had pulled in there and made some ruts.”
Gordon was five when her family moved to a house, since demolished, on the west side of Walnut, several years before it was vacated.
“That would’ve made it about 1944 when we moved there and I was a young teen when they vacated the street, so it was sometime in the 50’s,” she said. “I usually mow to the center of where the street used to be, but she keeps mowing over that to the west side, so there’s an overlap. But that’s okay if the west half gets mowed twice.”
Liggett, meanwhile, made it clear at Monday night’s meeting he thinks action is called for.
“Mrs. Clayton claims all that street, but when a street is vacated half goes to one side and half to who lives on the other side,” Liggett said. “I think we need to pull out all those posts and get in there and fix that mess. I realize this is going to start one hell of an argument, but we’ve got to fight this some time. Landowners have to get together to decide what we’re going to do. The street is vacated but you can’t buy the other half from the City. You can only get that half by buying the land on the other side of the street.”
Liggett referred to Mullinville’s maintenance employee, Jason Gorache, being limited in his ability to remedy the lack of drainage because of the stakes’ placement.
“Get those posts out and Jason can fix it in half a day,” Liggett said. “This has got to the point we can’t ignore it any longer.”
As for whether he or anyone on the council had approached Clayton about moving the stakes, Liggett replied Thursday morning, “What, and get chewed out? She likes to control things too much, including vacated streets.”
“I realize I picked a real scab off a sore by bringing this up, but somebody has to,” Liggett said at the meeting. “We need to do something.”
Mullinville Mayor Andy Kimble said “I will do some research on this and we’ll bring this up again at the next meeting.”
For her part, Clayton did not return phone messages left on her answering machine Thursday morning.
Greensburg, KS —
