[LIforrelaxin]

onthebay,

You are in a tough spot. I would go directly to the town, and get an understanding of what is going on with your specific road. As others have said, once it is classified as a public road, they can't just tell you, nope sorry it is private. Now what they can tell you, is that they will not pay for grading, or snow plowing. especially if there are no year around residents on the road. It may still be a public road, it just may have just change classifications, to a class of roads, that are not supported in the town budget for maintenance.
But you really need to talk to the town to understand what is going on.

now as for forming an HOA... well there are legalities in that... and everyone on the road would have to agree to it. And then everyone would have to further agree to have their respective deeds updated to include the HOA. Although it is not mind blowing, there is a lot of legal work to creating an HOA, especially one that will be able to enforce its rules, and make people pay.