Council hears request to adopt road

Published 2:23 pm Tuesday, February 10, 2026

The Meridian City Council is considering a request to adopt a road in the North Hills district as it waits for more information about what the adoption process will entail.

In a work session Tuesday, Jimmy Covington asked council members to adopt the road running between Great River Drive and 27th Place as a public road and repave it for the public’s continued use.

The road was built more than two decades ago as part of a subdivision plan, Covington said, but the council at the time chose not to accept it as a public road. Instead, it has stayed a private drive, and he has been responsible for the upkeep.

“I’ve been taking care of it for 25 years,” he said. “I’ve been doing the maintenance on it.”

Covington said the road needs to be resurfaced with approximately 1.5-2 inches of asphalt.

City Attorney Will Simmons said it’s unusual for a city to adopt a road more than 20 years after it was built. Under normal circumstances, he said, a developer will build a road, storm drainage and other infrastructure as part of a larger development project. The city will inspect the road and make sure it’s up to code before voting to adopt it as a public road and take over maintenance.

“I don’t recall having a case when a road has been used for 20 years and then asked to be dedicated,” he said.

Simmons said further research needs to be done to figure out the process for adopting a road that has been around for so long. It may be the road has to be brought up to code or repaved before the city is able to assume responsibility for its upkeep.

“I don’t know if there would be a prerequisite for it to come up to city standards before the city accepts or after,” he said. “We’d have to look into that.”

Assistant Public Works Director Mike Van Zandt said resurfacing the road, which is about 550 feet long, will not be a big project. It is something the city’ in-house paving crew can tackle, he said, with an estimated cost of around $30,000.

The first step, Simmons said, will be to determine why the previous council opted not to accept the road when Covington first asked. After that, the city can figure out the legal process needed to move forward.

Simmons said he has represented organizations of which Covington has been a part, and he and Covington will need to discuss whether a conflict of interest might be present before moving forward as well.

“I think part of it is we need to go research why the city didn’t take it 20 years ago,” he said.

In other business, the City Council is expected to approve a plan between the city and Compass Data Centers at its next meeting to supply the technology company with a water meter from the city’s supply. The supplier for the industrial-size water meters saw its shipment delayed, and an agreement was worked out to keep the project on track.

“We give them a meter that we have, and when theirs comes in, they’ll give it to us,” Chief Administrative Officer Craig Hitt said.