In a unanimous vote Tuesday, the Standish Town Council chose to accept a rangeway abutting both sides of Northeast Road Extension, despite attempts by the Portland Water District to block the vote.
While the town has maintained ownership rights to the eight-rod, or 132-foot, section of road that extends from Route 35 to the boat launch on Sebago Lake as it was laid out by town proprietors in 1767, the district claims the road was reduced to six-rods, or 99-feet, by a County Commissioners decision in 1933.
Because of the dispute, the district last week filed an emergency injunction with the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to block Tuesday’s vote. But the judge denied their request and the council approved the order to dedicate a public easement of a one-rod strip on each side of the road.
Bill Harwood, an attorney representing the district, asked the council not to act on the proposal at Tuesday’s meeting but to wait until the court has ruled on a lawsuit the district has brought against the town.
“I urge you to not complicate this matter further by taking this step tonight,” Harwood said. “You can always take this step some months from now once the court has clarified some rights.”
But Councilor Dolores Lymeburner asked him why the district is requesting Standish to wait for the court case to be decided before voting on the rangeway; yet has not waited itself to begin work in that area.
And Town Manager Gordon Billington reminded everyone that Standish’s appeal to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court is not about a rangeway.
“The only thing the Supreme Court is considering at the present time is whether or not the people can claim by prescriptive easement lands which are controlled by a quasi-municipal corporation,” Billington said. “It’s a point of law. They’re not going to rule on who owns or does not own the Northeastern road or the Northeastern rangeway.”
When asked why it was important to vote on the issue now, both Billington and Councilor Jeff Richardson, who chairs the Standish PWD Steering Committee, referred to the district’s demand made in early December that the town move a portion of the road by Feb. 1 of this year.
Richardson said the steering committee felt having to modify the road twice would be added expense for the town.
“We felt as a committee the rangeway vote was the correct thing to do at this time and do the (road) work just once,” he said.
Billington added that the vote was appropriate to define the town’s rights before the roadwork gets started.
Harwood responded by offering to hold off on their order to move the road until the court case was settled so the work wouldn’t have to be done twice.
But Harwood’s remarks infuriated Councilor Terrence Christy.
“It disturbs me that you come in here at the last minute and say, ‘can’t we work together?’ on this,” he said to Harwood. “In the four years I was on the steering committee, we tried to work together.”
Several other councilors expressed their displeasure with the district at what they said was an unwillingness to communicate.
But in a phone interview on Wednesday, district spokesperson Michelle Clements said she’d heard that the councilors were “pretty hard on the water district.”
“We’ve been trying to negotiate for a long time,” she said. “We are open and have not turned down any requests for negotiations or discussions.”
When Billington was informed of Clements’ comments, he laughed. He said that just last week, the town’s attorney, Kenneth Cole III, in response to the injunction, asked the district’s attorneys if the district would be willing to discuss the issue with the town. The attorneys replied that the district said, “We don’t trust the Standish Town Council.”
And, in a recent phone interview, Richardson said “there are good people on both sides of this issue” but that they’re “polarized.”
“It puts us in a position where I wish they really would talk with us but it looks like we’re talking through our attorneys,” he said. “What’s in the past is in the past, but how do we get to the future?”
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