On a private road the association is the highway department. Barrington Hills lists 24.5 miles of them, Wynstone runs on them, and South Barrington names four subdivisions its township plow does not enter. What the association contract has to settle.
Commercial and association work arranged through this page is performed by an independent snow and ice contractor under their own name, insurance and contract. This site makes the introduction and does no work itself.
In most places an HOA’s snow contract is about the clubhouse lot and the walks. In the Barrington villages it is frequently about the roads themselves, because a surprising share of them are private. Barrington Hills lists 24.5 miles of private road by name against 39.0 miles of village road. Wynstone, annexed to North Barrington in 1985–86, runs on “a system of private roads” with its own wastewater plant. Lake Barrington Shores is 1,317 condominium homes on 510 gated acres. South Barrington tells residents its township plow does not enter Hidden Lakes, Magnolia Pointe, The Regency or The Woods, whose associations maintain their own streets. Barrington Harbor Estates in Lake Barrington keeps 139 homes and a private harbor.
On those roads the association’s contract is the only plow that will ever come, which makes it a road-maintenance contract with a driveway question attached, not the reverse.
Lane miles, cul-de-sacs and turnarounds by name; a trigger in inches; a start window and a finish time. For scale, Barrington Hills’ own village contract starts within two hours of one inch and finishes within eight hours of the end of the snowfall, by 7 a.m. on a weekday. An association that wants its roads open for the school bus should write a similar clock.
Some association contracts include every driveway; many stop at the road. Either is workable. What is not workable is 200 households each assuming the other answer. Put it in the contract and in the fall newsletter.
By February a private lane through mature trees has five-foot piles on one side and a turnaround the fire district has to fit through. The contract should say where the snow is pushed and when it is hauled — and where it is not pushed: against a wellhead, over a septic field, into a retention basin the association is responsible for.
Every one of these communities is in well country, and North Barrington restricts salt on its own streets for groundwater’s sake. The contract should name the product, the rate, and whether brine pre-treatment is used, and the board should know that the Salt Smart Collaborative certifies contractors on exactly this. Salting near wells.
Timestamped service logs, weather records and photographs are what defend an association in a slip-and-fall claim. The natural-accumulation rule protects a board from snow that fell; it does not protect it from a plowed ridge across a walkway. Ask for logs as a deliverable.
Since August 25, 2016 a snow contract in Illinois cannot make the contractor indemnify the association for the association’s own negligence, or the reverse. What a board can and should require is a certificate of insurance naming the association as additional insured, and workers’ compensation for any crew. The Illinois rules.
The Village of Barrington Hills’ Winter 2022 letter to residents said that “the awarded service provider will extend village pricing to private road homeowners,” and invited them to ask through the village office. The village’s current contractor is a commercial operator that does not sell residential driveways, but for a private-road group that wants its road plowed on the same terms and clock as the village’s 39 miles, it is the first call to make. Whether the offer still stands is a question for the village; it was made by the village, in writing, and has not been withdrawn on its website.
The property, the square footage or road length, the hours it has to be open, and whether salt is restricted. An operator who already runs commercial routes in these villages will quote it.
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