The Cumberland Town Council is set to withdraw the town’s emergency first-response services to the Lakeside Drive area in East Windham at its Oct. 12 meeting, according to council Chairman Peter Bingham.

For decades, Windham has paid the town of Cumberland a fee to provide first-response emergency services to the Forest Lake neighborhood, since the West Cumberland Fire Station is only about a mile away, while the North Windham Fire Station is about 8 miles away. The annual fee is approximately $3,000.

The area, once composed of several camps on the gravelly Lakeside Drive, has steadily grown in the past decades, as developers have built up the housing stock by constructing three narrow, private roads that branch off Lakeside Drive – James Way, Bruschi Road and Atlantic Drive. But Cumberland officials have grown increasingly frustrated with the neighborhood’s narrow, undulating roads, which they say are causing major problems for first responders as increasing development has led to more traffic and more road deterioration.

According to Bingham, the Cumberland council is very likely to end the agreement after a public hearing at the council’s regular meeting on Oct. 12. If the council votes to cancel the agreement, Cumberland will continue to provide mutual aid services, he said.

“If I was a betting man, right now I would say we’re at 99 percent to terminate it,” Bingham said. “There’s just been no movement and we’ve given ample notification of this, and we’ve kind of pretty much run to the end of the rope.”

In response to earlier threats made by Cumberland officials to discontinue emergency first-response services, the Windham Town Council passed an emergency moratorium on development in the Forest Lake neighborhood on Sept. 8.

According to Windham Town Manager Tony Plante, the intent of the moratorium is to put the brakes on development of new homes and private roads and give the town and neighbors time to fix the substandard roads. The moratorium is needed, Plante said, because state law allows large landowners to circumvent subdivision review standards and build homes and private roads without Planning Board review – a “loophole,” Plante said, that has been regularly used in Windham and in the Forest Lake neighborhood.

Council Chairman David Nadeau said he hoped the emergency moratorium would spur Forest Lake residents to consolidate their two road associations and investigate how to improve the roads. He also said the town is considering contracting with a plow driver who lives closer to the neighborhood, which could improve the often slippery road conditions in the winter.

“We are trying to deal with the issue,” Nadeau said.

Yet Windham’s recent actions have not persuaded Bingham that any meaningful change is on the way.

“At this point, unless something comes forward from either the Town Council or the town manager – some other miraculous thing – I don’t see us changing how we feel right now,” he said.

Five years ago, Cumberland hired two large tow trucks to remove a fire truck from the neighborhood, after the fire truck’s bumper and fender were damaged due to icy conditions. Three years ago, Cumberland asked Windham to fix the roads, three of which do not meet the town’s private road development standards, since they were built before the standards were approved five years ago. For the last two years, Cumberland emergency responders have stopped servicing the area during the winter and mud season, according to Cumberland Town Councilor Mike Edes, and Windham first responders located much farther away have taken up winter service in the Forest Lake neighborhood.

When asked if Cumberland’s threats to discontinue were an effort to spur Windham to action, Plante said, “That’s probably a fair characterization.”

But Bingham disputed the characterization.

“I think we’re just frustrated that no action has been done,” Bingham said. “I don’t think the motive is to get them to do something more. We’ve been on this issue for three or four years and nothing has been done.”

“Enough is enough,” he added.

The intersection of Lakeside Drive and James Way, in the Forest Lake neighborhood of Windham, where a recently imposed moratorium has halted housing development due to road issues.Staff photo by John Balentine

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