By Mike Eldred

WILMINGTON- Selectboard members dropped language in a proposed road ordinance that would have required the town to discontinue several roads after dozens of local residents turned out to express their concern.

Under the proposed ordinance, the town would discontinue any road of 0.20 miles or shorter serving fewer than seven homes. “Connector roads” would have been exempt. The rule, if it had been adopted, would have meant that 14 town roads, serving a total of 28 residents, would be dropped.

Property owners said that road maintenance was the most important town service they receive for the taxes they pay. Several property owners noted that recent property appraisals had doubled the value of some properties – and some had increased even more. They suggested that they’d be entitled to a substantial tax abatement if their properties were no longer on a town-maintained road. At least one property owner wondered if the proposed ordinance had been intentionally introduced after the reappraisal.

“In the last three months the town of Wilmington has doubled many assessments,” said property owner John Oates. “Some increases in assessments were even greater than that. So, apparently, now that increased assessments are in place, some property owners could lose the town government service that might mean the most to them, and may even lose access to their property altogether. Is there a nexus or an intended sequencing of these two recent town initiatives, first the increase in assessments followed by proposed road discontinuance?”

Gene Charney noted that the road he lives on, Steep Hill Road, was on the list as being 0.19 miles long. “It’s way longer than 0.19 miles,” he said. “Part of it is Class IV road and part of it is Class III road, but it’s all town road. I haven’t heard any explanation of why it isn’t considered one continuous road. It’s traveled from one end to the other almost every day.”

And Charney echoed the concern of several other members of the public, that discontinuing the town roads could deny some property owners access to their land. If a town road is discontinued, ownership of the road reverts to adjacent property owners. Charney suggested that if one property owner owned property on both sides of the road, a property further down the road could become landlocked.

Several people asked if the proposed rule was intended to save the town money. “If you’re doing this as a money saving measure, you may as well get rid of some of the town help and a couple, three trucks,” suggested Bob Covey. “If you’re not going to give (property owners) the service, then you don’t need them.”

After the hearing was closed, town manager Bob Rusten explained that the ordinance was originally developed to provide a policy for taking on private roads when asked to do so. “The old way was that someone would come in, the town would deny their request, they’d go to court, and the town would end up taking the road over,” he said. “We thought there was a better way to address this, without the expense of a court case.”

The proposed rule to discontinue a road mirrored the minimum requirements for taking up a road, Rusten said. “The board discussed whether we should be consistent, and if we want to be consistent should we discontinue roads that don’t meet the criteria.”

In reaction to testimony from property owners, the board quickly agreed to drop any requirement to discontinue existing town highways. The board agreed to work on a refined draft that included a process for taking up roads.

The board also convened a hearing as the board of health, to address the ongoing issue of pigs and pig manure that’s spilling out of one Ray Hill Road property and flowing onto the property of Frank and Jane Flanagan. The Flanagans have complained for months about the smell that has permeated their home and everything on their property. Frank Flanagan said his truck was undriveable after he made the mistake of leaving the windows open overnight.

Health officer Alice Herrick kicked off the meeting with news from Betty Lou Scott, the owner of the pigs.

Two of the five full-grown pet pigs had been removed from the property, Herrick reported, and Scott would not be in attendance at the hearing because she was working to remove the other three pigs. But she recommended that the board continue with the proceeding since, even if the remaining pigs were removed, the manure that was the cause of the proposed health order would still be on the property.

Herrick offered the board a list of options they could consider for inclusion in the health order.

“I would suggest two actions,” Herrick said. “The ground needs to be stabilized or moved. It could be physically moved with a piece of equipment and trucked off-site and replaced with clean fill. Or it could be stabilized by planting a quick growing vegetative cover like winter rye.”

If the board were to opt for the ground cover method, Herrick also suggested that an earthen berm be constructed to contain the manure until the ground cover could become established enough to prevent runoff.

Before the board could make a decision, Jules Wertheimer, agent for the property owner, RHR Development, complained that he hadn’t received enough notice of the hearing, that he had never heard about any problem with the pigs, didn’t know any of the people involved, and that he was incensed that his name was included on the health order, marking him as a criminal. He had nothing to do with the pigs, he said. “I’m not a pig man,” he said. “I’m Jewish. We don’t eat pigs.”

Herrick reiterated her history of contact with Wertheimer, noting that at one point, she had notified him that he would be served a notice of intent regarding the evening’s hearing, but that he had left a note on her door saying he had to return to New York because he had “a flat tire.”

Board members explained that it wasn’t the pigs that were the problem, it was the manure that was flowing from his property, and that the problem was his responsibility because it would remain even after his tenants and the pigs were gone.

The boards signed the order, requiring Scott and Wertheimer to remove all of the contaminated mud and manure mixture from both properties and replace it with clean fill within seven days.