A request from Lonnie Kennedy-Patterson to vacate an Oct. 3, off-agenda vote was approved Tuesday night, because the board did not follow its own procedures.

Kennedy-Patterson had written a memo that the vote to support on-street parking in the Maine Department of Transportation “Option 2” plan for downtown Wiscasset, which came during a public comment period, did not support the public’s vote in June, as one of the selectmen maintained. Ben Rines Jr. said the spontaneous vote was a measure to provide the town’s support for the public’s actions.

“The referendum only spoke to the changes in Option 2,” Kennedy-Patterson countered. “It didn’t mention parking at all.” Option 2 stated that parking spaces would be removed on Main, Middle, and Water streets, all of which became part of the MDOT’s plan. Only after the plan was enacted in November 2016 did opposition – mostly from downtown building and business owners – begin to arise. The June referendum asked voters to “disapprove and reject, by a binding Referendum,” changes petitioners claimed MDOT made since the June 2016 vote. 

Chair Judy Colby said the fair thing to do would be to take another vote at the next selectmen’s meeting, giving the public in favor of the MDOT project an opportunity to be heard before the vote. Rines disagreed, saying the Oct. 3 vote was taken in support of the referendum vote. The new vote was scheduled for the board’s Nov. 7 meeting.

The board considered the airport abrogation easements. Present were town attorney Shana Mueller and Tim Lesage, an aviation engineer speaking for MDOT and for the Federal Aviation Administration. Lesage said  the FAA had made it clear that areas adjacent to the airport’s runway had to have trees cut down. Since the properties are owned by other people, the town and the FAA performed an appraisal on the lands that would need “abrogation easements” to protect pilots, especially those flying in or out at night, and make fair market price offers for the easements.

Matters with two of the properties were settled in 2016, with the FAA paying 90 percent of the costs to obtain the easements, MDOT paying five percent, and the town paying five percent. The easement matter with the larger property, however, Chewonki Campground, has not yet been settled. The appraisal was done, and a review appraisal also done, and an offer was made to the owners. But because the campground wanted its own appraisal and was unable to find an appraiser, it did not respond to the offer.

According to Mueller, the campground still has not been able to find an appraiser, and in the meantime, FAA has suspended grants for capital improvement costs at the airport. Part of the runway area has been restricted for night use, and Wiscasset is already losing money, according to Lesage, because some people are not able to use the airport, aren’t buying gas or are tying down small planes, the restrictions.

The other option, one that no one wants to consider, is taking the property by eminent domain. However, if the case does not resolve, Mueller said, that may have to be the town’s option. The town has already done almost everything it would need to do to take the property by eminent domain; it has done the appraisals and offered a fair market value sum for the easement.

“We’d much prefer to do this by negotiation,” Mueller said. “But we can’t continue to miss grant opportunities for the airport.”

In other action, the board held a public hearing on the Nov. 7 warrant; heard comments, mostly about the MDOT project and the Chewonki Campground project; agreed to the road closures on Federal, Washington, Hooper, and Warren streets for the Halloween parade and the “Nightmare on Federal Street” block party and trick or trunk event, beginning at 4 p.m. and ending at 6:30 p.m.; opened two bids for road sand; and agreed to pay for a recording secretary for the Historic Preservation Commission out of the restored Planning Department funds. The town also sold a parcel to Central Maine Power for $30,000.

Town Manager Marian Anderson announced that in the case between the Bryants and the town of Wiscasset and the Cohens involving the storage of fireworks in the rural zone, Wiscasset and the Cohens found that their case was overturned on appeal. It is now before the Maine State Supreme Judicial Court, which held the proceedings at Rumford High School as part of a living civics lesson. No decision has been rendered as of yet. She also announced that $500 had been received from E. Davies Allen for the restoration and display of artifacts from the schooners Hesper and Luther Little. The artifacts will be displayed at the waterfront.