WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WXYZ) — Financial relief could soon be on the way for Waterford Township residents looking to rid their streets of potholes.
It's an issue 7 News Detroit explored last March and continues to follow.
Watch Darren Cunningham's video report below:
Next week, the township board will consider a proposal to allocate more of its federal funding to repaving. As a result, residents will pay less out of pocket.
On Thursday, 7 News Detroit visited Voorheis Road near Elizabeth Lake Road.
"Fighting with this road, if you drive a Jeep, you know it's a rough ride. And then you come down a road like this, it's even rougher," resident Cindi Church chuckled.
Next door, Rick Morales said, "I've never gone that way because the road is so bad... It's rough. Up around that corner, you have to really (drive) 2, 3 miles an hour," he said.
Morales said he's lived on Voorheis Road for 29 years and said it's been in poor condition for as long as he can remember.
"They do come every year and they patch 'em up, but it doesn't do any good," he said.
Morales is referring to the Road Commission for Oakland County. The county owns and maintains much of the roads in the township.
As 7 News Detroit reported in March 2025 from a different subdivision in Waterford, it's up to residents to pay for the road commission to repave it. It's takes a majority, or 51%, of homeowners to make that decision.
Watch our coverage from March 2025 below:
"You have to vote to see if you get the road fixed or not, and a lot of people say no because they don't wanna pay that extra price," Church explained.
It's a cost or "special assessment" to be paid over 10 years. Currently, the township uses some federal money to subsidize about 10% of the cost.
As Township Supervisor Anthony Bartolotta explains, he'll be presenting a resolution to the township board on Monday to increase that subsidy to 20%.
"I feels really good that the board's gonna pass it. We've been talking about it. They wanna help the residents out, but there's only so much money you can spend," he said.
Bartolotta, who's also lived on Voorheis for about 30 years, said the township currently has $1.4 million in federal money to improve all residential streets in Waterford.
"The way I understand it, it costs about a million dollars a mile to do subdivision streets," he said.
There's also some potential good news from the Oakland County road commission along the same lines, thanks to the new state road funding package.
"Since we've got that announcement, we've committed that we will use some of that new funding to help subdivision roads in Oakland County, in the townships in Oakland County," road commission spokesman Craig Bryson said.
He said the road commission is waiting to see how much funding is coming from the state, how it's coming and when.
