A group of residents from Inverness Park’s Paradise Ranch Estates will see a four-year effort to repave their neighborhood roads decided in a special election on April 12. The roads within the division are privately owned, and a two-thirds vote in support of a new annual tax would mean Drakes View Drive would be repaved for the first time since 1993. “It’s 28 years since it was paved, and it’s degraded enough that extending its life requires an overall pave,” said Ken Drexler, a homeowner who spearheaded the petition for the road improvements. The measure would levy $968 per parcel per year for 10 years starting this year, and thereafter $135 per parcel for 15 years. The Marin Department of Finance agreed to a loan for the improvements, which have been assessed at approximately $1,540,000, including county staff costs for oversight and management. The permanent road division for Paradise Ranch Estates is the oldest in Marin County, set up in 1970. With 159 parcels, it is also the largest. It’s one of seven permanent divisions, which are allowed under state street and highways code, operating in Marin as a way for residents to maintain roads where the county does not. Mr. Drexler said the Paradise Ranch Estates road advisory board, made up of “people who drive the roads every day and know if a rut needs to be fixed,” has assisted the Marin County Public Works Department and Board of Supervisors since 1982 in assessing the steep and narrow roads of the division. “We have six miles of road in Paradise Ranch estates, about three miles of which were paved,” he said. Seventy percent of the proposed funding is to repave Drakes View Drive—the sole road in and out of the community and comprised of a series of slivers of private lots. “It’s essential for people to have access on the single road in and out of the subdivision,” Mr. Drexler said. About half of the roads in the division will remain dirt, but some sections of accessory roads will be newly paved, including Dover Road, which leads to an alternate fire exit belonging to the park service. “That section of road is very rugged, with exposed bumps and pipes,” homeowner Gordon Bennett said. “There’s been concern in a fire emergency that a car could bottom out there and block access to the fire exit.” A county evaluation determined two parcels that have direct access to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard would not benefit from the improvements and could be exempt from the road tax. The exclusion of those properties brought the division down from 161 parcels to 159 parcels. The scope and scale of the improvements may be adjusted as the division receives contractor bids and more is understood about the actual costs of the project, but a petition signed by 72 percent of the landowners showed high support for the measure.