Long-running controversy over the treatment of Wareham’s public and private roads flared up again this week. The catalyst was good news.

It took 1,000 hours of research, examination of street lists maintained by the town and fire districts, and poring through old town reports and maps . . . but there is now an accepted list of town-owned streets posted on the town’s website.

Selectman Judith Whiteside made that report as preamble to presentation of a proposed “user friendly” guide to the process of getting a private road accepted as a public road.

But the idea that cash-strapped Wareham might be ready to take on financial responsibility for maintaining even more miles of roads had Selectmen Alan Slavin and Steve Holmes up in arms.

“We have no way of paying for them down the line,” said Slavin. "I will vote 'no' every time."

Holmes said it was “good to have a policy” and agreed that the previous road acceptance policy was “about as clear as mud.” But, he added, “when it comes to accepting, that’s when we have to be careful.”

Distinguishing public from private roads first became an issue in the spring of 2013 when officials discovered that the town had violated Massachusetts law by using public funds to plow private roads.

The legal issue was resolved a year later when voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot question to allow the town to continue to plow private roads open to public use. But, along the way, officials discovered that they really didn’t know which roads were public and which were private – not just for the purpose of plowing but for maintenance and overall responsibility.

With that realization, the just completed road list project was born. Whiteside and others looked at road lists maintained by the Police Department, the Wareham Fire Department, the Onset Fire Department, the Planning Department and Municipal Maintenance as well as old maps and old annual reports that included information about street acceptance.

The result, Whiteside said, is a list that has been accepted by the Town Clerk as “presumptively accurate.”

As for adding any newly accepted roads to that list, Selectmen agreed Tuesday to postpone a decision on the new road acceptance policy.