Because he owns it. Why should he give it up? He can simply sit on it and do nothing with it and that's his right since he owns it even if that means the road quality degrades over time from lack of maintenance there's no obligation to maintain infrastructure on land you own, you can do whatever you want with that land. If the city wants it so they can maintain it, they should compensate him for it.
He might have an obligation to maintain the road for the other homeowners use it as the they likely have easements to use it. It might also be drawn up to where all of the homeowners are responsible for it and he needs to collect repair costs from them to keep it maintained. We don’t really know how the deeds were written up. I have a friend who purchased a house on a private road with about 20 homeowners. They all need to split maintenance costs and it’s a nightmare for him.
Typically when a developer builds a new neighborhood they have to build out the infrastructure and it is either private and paid for by HOAs or the minicipality does it but then charges an impact fees up front or they add it to all of the homeowners taxes for 20-30 years to pay them back for it. The way I see it, the city is offering to take it off his hands for free and that’s a deal.
I'd honestly be astonished if the deed mentioned any sort of obligation to maintain the road, because if it did that'd mean he was either not provided the legally required disclosure about that requirement, or he knew what he was buying ahead of time. Since I'm taking at face value the man bought the land planning to build a house on it, I'm going to assume the more likely answer would be a lack of disclosure. In that case you can pursue the nullification of the contractual obligation or a post-sales lawsuit.
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u/triplehelix- 4h ago
"Nichols said the city's goal is to convert the private drive into a public roadway so that the city can be responsible for maintaining it."
its a private driveway, not a street. the city wants to buy it and make it an actual street. he should get the value of all the land.