Special town meeting set in Palmyra

PALMYRA – The Board of Selectmen Wednesday night set a special town meeting for Saturday, July 15, to handle at least eight issues, ranging from controlling town growth to upgrading dirt roads.

One of the articles will propose changing the zoning in Palmyra’s downtown section from commercial to residential.

“We want to retain the quaintness of the village,” planning board member Becky Wiers told the selectmen. Since most of the new commercial growth and development appears to be happening on both sides of the Interstate 95 exchange on the Newport town line, town planners want to minimize the impact on the downtown area.

Currently the section contains several churches, the town hall, the post office, the town park, a handful of businesses and many homes.

“This is a great idea,” Selectman Herbert Brindley said.

Other proposals that will be voted on include:

. Appropriating additional funds to upgrade the town’s dirt roads. The amount has not been decided upon yet.

. Approving the location of a dog park on Route 2 by the Public Works garage.

. Accepting a new comprehensive plan.

. Appropriating additional road paving funds.

. Accepting a new cemetery ordinance that will require all headstones to have bases.

. Appropriating $5,000 as the town’s share of operations for the Hartland-St. Albans Ambulance.

. Accepting the state shore-land zoning ordinance.

In other business, the selectmen agreed to provide the town’s attorney, Ed Bearor of Bangor, with more town records to help him determine their role in settling a dispute between residents of the Nokomis Park subdivision and the park’s developer, Hadley Smith.

The residents maintain that a requirement placed on Smith by the planning board in 1989, to pave a portion of the subdivision, should be enforced, despite later votes by the selectmen to overturn the paving requirement.

Chairman of the selectmen Sheila Pooler said that the requirement was dropped when it was found that it was not being enforced across the board. “We felt if one developer didn’t have to do it, none of them did,” she said.

Bearor said that from the town records that he had seen, which did not include the 1989 ruling from the planning board, it appeared that the town would not likely win a case against the developer in court. “If you brought an action, it would likely be unsuccessful. You would be trying to enforce an action that has already been appealed,” Bearor said.

Don Harriman of the park’s landowner association, said “We have a mess.” He maintained that it was created when the selectmen failed to enforce the planning board’s requirements. “The entire planning board resigned over this issue when the selectmen failed to back up the planning board,” he said.

Harriman said the bottom line is that the paving was required at the time the subdivision was approved and that requirement is not affected by any vote or action taken in later years.

Bearor said he would review the 1989 planning board minutes and will return a recommendation to the selectmen within a week.