It may be a long way from winter, but the effort to get private roads plowed in Wareham is just heating up.

On Tuesday, town officials discussed a potential policy that would require private road owners to petition the town inspect those roads for defects and proper dimensions before plowing them next winter.

"The responsibility is with the private road owners to come forth and request it to have their road in sufficient maintenance so that we can plow them," Sullivan said, explaining this must be done to indemnify the town and protect it against paying for the cost of possible future damage. He said the town spent $20,000 last year on repairs just for lights and mirrors and other minor things that were torn off plowing private ways.

"This is bull crap in my opinion," said Selectman Patrick Tropeano. "We don't need any extra paperwork. We don't need to make all these people jump through hoops. Let's just plow the darn roads like we always have."

This policy discussion is the result of a February ballot question where voters overwhelmingly supported the decision to plow private roads open to public use in town, something that was billed as a continuation of the town's current policy.

"I don't think this is what people expected when they voted for this," said Selectman Peter Teitelbaum. "I don't think we envisioned we would have to get signatures from residents to have the roads plowed."

Town Attorney Richard Bowen said he and Sullivan looked at policies from other communities and in the potential policy for Wareham, a form would be filled out by private road owners and go to the Municipal Maintenance Department. Maintenance workers would then inspect the roads and make sure they meet all the necessary criteria.

"It does put the burden of going forward more on the people who live on the private roads perhaps more than we would otherwise like but the reason for that is frankly our records are lousy," Bowen said, noting that fact is not a reflection of the current town clerk but of decades of inaction.

"If it wasn't for the state not wanting to pay anymore, this law wouldn't even exist," said Tropeano. "We would be plowing the roads just like we always did and they would be reimbursing us with money they don't want to reimburse us with anymore."

Sullivan said they looked at the polices of other towns such as Sandwich, Barnstable Yarmouth, Harwich. "This is what they're all doing, we didn't just make this up out of the blue," he said.

"If a road isn't accepted it doesn't come into our Chapter 90 funding and we lose money," said Selectman Alan Slavin.

Slavin said the board would take time to review the options for a private road plowing policy and take up the matter again on July 15.

Tropeano maintained that it was insane to put more bureaucracy in the plowing of private roads.

"I've been plowing roads for years," he said. "It's a relatively simple process."