Paving dispute off agenda but still on minds in Levant

LEVANT – A disagreement about a short stretch of road resurfaced this week even as town officials sought to put the issue to rest.

Last summer Town Manager Scott Pullen, who also is the town’s road commissioner, had the Island Farm Road paved, including a section after the bridge that some in town adamantly said was a private road and therefore not subject to paving at the town’s expense.

Pullen said Friday that he had thought the contention had died down over the road that is only about two-tenths of a mile long. (The disputed section is even smaller.)

“It’s kind of been a healed wound,” Pullen said Friday.

Two days earlier, selectmen voted 3-2 to take the issue off as a regular feature in the manager’s report. The vote curbed the town’s attorney from looking into it any further. Pullen said he had kept the item on the agenda to let the selectmen know that he was still working on it and hadn’t forgotten it.

The motion bothered Selectman John Thibodeau, who, along with Chairman Steve Call, voted against it.

“You’re taking something that I think should be resolved before you just try to duck it and bypass it,” Thibodeau told Pullen at Wednesday’s meeting.

Thibodeau said Friday that besides costing about $2,000, the paving could set a precedent for owners of other private roads to ask for the town to pave their road.

Pullen defended the paving, saying Friday that snow plowing contracts for the past 10 years included all of the road for plowing.

Since the issue was raised last fall, Pullen has researched the property, but he said it has been no simple task and that documentation is sparse.

And even if one agrees with Thibodeau’s cost figure – the town manager thinks the actual figure may be about half his estimate – Pullen said that the lawyer fees to get a final answer would be an added expense. Pullen also questioned what the subsequent outcome would be and if it were discovered the town was wrong, whether it would mean the paving would have to be ripped up.

As a result of Wednesday’s vote and further discussions, Pullen said that he would continue doing research in the hopes of finding key documents that will help determine ownership of the section of road.

With town officials working on the budget in preparation for the June town meeting, Pullen said he was looking to get the issue behind them.