FORT KENT – Snowmobile access to businesses in the downtown is increasingly important as the winter tourism sport grows in northern Maine.

But access in Fort Kent has been through a small residential area just south of Main Street which has caused traffic and noise problems along St. Joseph Street. Municipal officials are trying to find a solution to the problems.

To date, municipal officials have not authorized any streets in town to be used as access ways for snowmobilers. And yet, restaurants, hotels and motels and at least two snowmobile dealers need the winter season business.

“Municipal roads may not be used as access to places of business unless municipal officers designate a public way to be used as a snowmobile access route,” town attorney Robert Michaud has instructed the Town Council. “Once this is done the route must be posted conspicuously at regular intervals.

“The route must also have highly visible signs designating the route,” Michaud wrote in his opinion. “Snowmobiles must also travel on the right hand side of the road, with motor vehicle traffic.”

“We need a plan,” Town Councilor Paul Bouchard said last week.

“You need to do something because what is happening is illegal,” said Robert Plourde, a Fort Kent lawyer and a resident of a street adjacent to St. Joseph Street. “You need public hearings and a lot of discussion on this.”

Other town councilors felt access should be denied until a plan is approved for snowmobile traffic in the downtown.

Although the subject was tabled at a Town Council meeting earlier this month, it will come up again. Meetings will be held, the Town Council agreed.

In other business last week, the Town Council denied a request for winter road maintenance on East Michigan Settlement Road. The road was closed to winter maintenance in 1989, and also in 1999 by town meeting action.

This past year, Melissa V. Jandreau and her family built a home 700 feet up the East Michigan Settlement Road from where the snowplow goes by. She wrote that she and her husband need winter access to get to work and school.

She claims the road is a town road. When the road was closed to winter maintenance, there were no homes on that section of road.

Citing statutes on the closing of roads to winter maintenance, and the fear of opening a Pandora’s box of requests, the Town Council voted unanimously to refuse the request.

Town Manager Donald Guimond said there are about a dozen residences built on roads closed to winter maintenance in Fort Kent. He said the Jandreaus had also an Oct. 1 deadline for such a request. The Jandreaus, according to Guimond, received information on making such a request more than two months ago.

The Jandreaus could not be reached by telephone for comment.