Paris puts new subdivision rules to public vote

PARIS — Paris selectmen voted 3-1, with one abstention, Monday, to put a citizen-drafted subdivision ordinance before voters at a June 9 referendum.

A petition signed by 255 Paris citizens asked the board to call a special town meeting within 60 days to rule on proposed changes to the town’s 19-month old ordinance. 

However, town attorney Geoffrey Hole, of the Portland firm Bernstein Shur, told selectmen that Maine law gives them an option — call a special town meeting or put the issue on the warrant for the next regularly scheduled session.

“It’s very clear in both state law and case law that you have a right to go either way,” said Hole.

Selectmen Ray Glover and Skip Herrick both favored a referendum vote because recent Paris history shows that far more citizens will vote in the ballot booth than will attend town meeting.  More than 900 people weighed in on the current subdivision rules in June 2007, while fewer than 150 voted on a trio of other ordinances at a special town meeting in September of that year.

“In my opinion, we need to have the greatest number of citizens vote on this and I don’t think a special town meeting affords that opportunity,” said Glover.

However, Selectmen David Ivey sided with a half-dozen residents in the audience who urged quick action.

“While I believe that a referendum is the best way for the legislative body to deal with an ordinance, I think we have to consider the fact that over 200 people signed this petition,” he said.  “Personally, I’m very tired of this whole subdivision issue.  We need to put this to rest.”

Former selectmen Ernie Fitts, speaking from the audience, said selectmen needed to put the ordinance to a vote before the snow melts.  Since last summer, he said, supporters of the ordinance proposal have posted large tracts of land in protest of “unfair treatment” by municipal officials.

“There seems to be such hatred of these people who have chunks of land they may want to do something with and it’s just crippling this town,” said Fitts.  “Because of that, if they can’t get their way on some things, they will shut all the trails down.  Right now, I have a snow machine that's just sitting on my lawn because I can’t get anywhere.”

The fight over Paris’ subdivision ordinance dates to January 2006, when the town announced plans to update rules unchanged since 1974.  After much debate a new ordinance passed by just 19 votes, 487-468.

The close vote created a rift in the town, with two distinct factions.  One group, made up primarily of folks with small-scale development interests, claimed town officials colluded to overstep the stated goals of the update.  The new ordinance did not merely bring local development rules into compliance with state law, they said.  Instead, they claimed, it created blocks to development by creating unnecessary restrictions, adding costly new procedures, granting new powers to the code enforcement office and eliminating all recourse outside the courts for questioning planning board decisions.

On the other side, a group including a large number of Paris Hill residents, identified a conspiracy among the first faction, working in alleged consort with newly elected selectmen, to ease the rules and promote personal development interests at the expense of citizens at large.

Both groups accused the other of abusing the parliamentary process, while claiming that its own course was most likely to preserve the character of Paris.

The year-old, sometimes acrimonious debate, with its lawsuits, marathon selectboard meetings and accusations of vote trading has created what some refer to as a sort of “subdivision fatigue.”

“I never thought it would come to this,” said planning board member Franca Ainsworth, Monday.  “We need to not look like such a really not-with-it town.”

Selectman Glen Young, charged with voting bias in a complaint filed and later withdrawn in Superior Court, revealed for the first time Monday just how far the fight has gone behind the scenes.  This past summer, he says, someone tried to burn down his barn. 

Paris Fire Chief Brad Frost declined comment Monday, saying he has yet to receive an official report of the incident from the state fire marshal’s office.

Young also claimed his barn was targeted one other time during the summer, when someone broke in and killed his daughter’s heifer.

“I’ve had to move into the farm because my 76-year old mother has been sleeping with a gun,” he said.

Young also claimed that while newspaper articles during the recent campaign season detailed the alleged theft of campaign signs by members of his camp, Selectman Skip Herrick admitted to moving his signs himself.

When challenged to admit that his signs were not stolen, Herrick said he could not recall the conversation alluded to by Young, and complained that the meeting was getting “off topic.”

Still, Herrick was praised by Chris Stearns, a champion of the ordinance proposal, for saying he’s willing to consider the construction of gravel roads in subdivisions.  Stearns was sued by Paris in 2007 in an attempt to make him pave a private road he did not own, leading to his development — a technical subdivision because Stearns sought to divide his property in half less than five years after it has been split form a larger lot.

Monday’s meeting also featured a mini-sequel of the long-running feud between Fitts and Selectman Gerald Kilgore.  In a heated exchange, Fitts called it “mind-boggling” that Paris current subdivision ordinance could force the paving of logging roads leading into woodlots.  Kilgore said “we all know” property divided into woodlots will eventually become house lots.

The requirement for paved roads stems from a belief that they are, in the long run, less costly to the town.  However, while Glover said that rule protects property owners from incurring the cost of paving roads prior to acceptance as public streets, Young said developers will only pass that cost on in the purchase price of house lots.

The result, he said, is that lower and middle income families will find it increasingly difficult to live in Paris.  Young has posted a “small piece” of his 2,500 farm, he said, to draw attention to the fact that should he be forced into selling land to pay his bills, potential buyers are unlikely to come form his end of the income scale.

“I’m just for families,” he said.  “That’s all I’ve been saying.  That’s what this is about.”

What it’s also about is the 57-page ordinance proposal submitted November 27 by Paris attorney Dana Hanley, that has caused some concern because the accompanying petition signatures, turned in December 22, were not notarized, nor were petition circulators identified.

Hanley also has declined to name the author or authors of the ordinance proposal, although he has denied that it was produced by his firm.  The reason he’s said, is that the drafters hope to have their proposal considered by voters based on its own merits, without any prejudice that may be leveled at the source.

Because it could not be verified that names were put to the petition in the presence of circulators, some have questioned whether the petition would hold up in court, if challenged.

Attorney Hole did not address that issue Monday, limiting his comments to the fact that the petition did not include the exact wording of an article to be placed on a warrant.  Hole said selectmen “shouldn’t “worry too much about that.”  He would draft wording for the referendum vote, he said.

In the hallway after the meeting, Hole said he did not investigate the validity of the petition.

“I have not looked at that one way or the other,” he said.  “There’s no reason not to put this in front of voters.”

Asked if the lack of a notary seal on the petition might open them up to a legal challenge, Hole declined to venture an opinion.

“Things sometimes vary between state law and local law [regarding petitions],” said Hole, “so I would not want to comment on that.”

Still, it would be hard for anyone to say that Paris has not done due diligence regarding the Hanley ordinance.

Town Clerk Anne Pastore compared all 255 petition signatures to the names as signed on voter registration cards in Paris.  The results, certified January 5, show verified 221 valid signatures.  By state law, supporters of the ordinance proposal needed to gather 211 signatures to force the issue onto a town meeting warrant over the objections of selectmen.

According to Town Manager Sharon Jackson, town employees also spent more than 20 hours making a line-by-line comparison of the new proposal to the existing ordinance.  The result shows precisely what Hanley’s unknown clients hope to add and subtract from Paris’ current development rules.  Copies of that document are available at the town office, free of charge to Paris voters.

Finally, as the urging of selectboard Chairman Raymond Glover, selectmen scheduled a series of four public hearings on the ordinance proposal, to take place on the first Tuesday of each month from now until Primary Day, June 9, when it will be put to a vote.

Those hearings will take place at 7 p.m. on February 3, March 3, April 7 and May 5, at the town office.

“This is very complicated stuff and I don’t think anyone is going to understand it all in one sitting,” said Glover.

It’s certain that both philosophical camps will be out in full force at those hearings.  At this point, it appears any challenge to the ordinance proposal will come during those hearings, and not in the courts.

After Monday’s meeting, former selectman Janet Jamison said she would “definitely be on the horn” to Jackson the following day, to ask why Hole did not address the lack of a notary seal on the petitions.

However, with a vote scheduled for a June referendum instead of a special town meeting — thus assuring, in theory at least, that as many people will get to vote on the new ordinance as weighed in on the current one — Jamison said she is disinclined to derail the process.

Instead, it is Hanley who seems least pleased with Monday's vote.

"You've had nearly 300 people from the town of Paris ask for a special town meeting," he said, Tuesday.  "For selectmen to hide behind their lawyer and prevent that doesn't appear to be [an action in support of the democratic process."