Last year, it felt like an easy fix. Twelve months later, the matter of legally and safely continuing to plow private roads has become a major project for town officials.

Among the many issues: Figuring out which roads in town are private and which are public.

After looking deeper at the records, Selectman Judith Whiteside said at Monday's meeting of the Selectmen that there are eight different sets of road records between the police department, fire districts, town clerk and planning department in town.

"There's a few people working on this project. What we're coming up with first is the town-accepted ways that we know are town-accepted ways through a town meeting vote, then properly guided through the registry and recording process," she said.

Whiteside said she will come back in in a month's time with a report on the roads for Director of Municipal Maintenance David Menard, Town Administrator Derek Sullivan, and Selectmen, in part due to the fact that the Onset Fire District is in the process of updating their records.

Last August, Selectmen discovered that the town had violated Massachusetts law by using public funds to plow private roads. That prompted an April ballot question to allow the town to continue to plow private roads open to public use, which was overwhelmingly passed by voters. But what was originally seen as a continuation and clarification of the town policy has become much less clear in recent months.

Menard said at a recent meeting many private roads in town had "rapidly deteriorated" in the past year and caused damage to Municipal Maintenance vehicles when they plowed.

Sullivan said in June that a policy could be put in place where the responsibility would be in the hands of the private road owners to petition Municipal Maintenance workers to inspect their roads for defects and make sure they meet the necessary standards to have them plowed.

Having the residents petition the town protects the town from paying for the cost of possible damage to plows on unfit roads, according to Sullivan. Last year the town spent $20,000 on repairs to plows that were damaged plowing private ways.

But Selectman Patrick Tropeano said that the $20,000 in damages to plows can happen every year, "even on regular roads."

"I don't see any reason to stop maintaining the [private] roads," Tropeano said last month. "People went to the ballot and decided they wanted their roads plowed."

Last August, Sullivan said the improper documentation of public and private roads in Wareham, which he said goes back about a hundred years, has led to a major roadblock: The town does not have a reliable and comprehensive list of which roads are public and which are private.

On Monday, Selectman Peter Teitelbaum said he was invited by the Municipal Maintenance Department to ride in a dump truck on the "more challenging roads" in town.

"It was eye-opening to some extent to see how deteriorated some of these, dirt roads especially, have become," he said.

"My concern always wasn't that we need to do this but we need to do this in sufficient time to get people out there and repair the roads," he said. "We're not going to be able to do that this year . . . but by next year we will be situated to at least think about informing people.  'Your roads are not quite up to snuff. You need to do some work and give them an opportunity in the spring, summer and fall of next year ahead of the winter to go out there and remedy the defects that make it difficult to plow.'"

Teitelbaum said the town previously had been spending between $150,000 and $200,000 to grade and maintain these roads.

"With the budget we face, we just don't have the money to do that anymore," he said. "What we can do is assist the citizens and buy these supplies in bulk and apply that bulk rate to them if they want to come have us do that maintenance. The way out of this unfortunately is not going to be through town funds anymore."

"This is part of the contraction of government service when you don't have the money to pay for it," he added.