China special town meeting to consider Old Rte. 202 issue

by Mary Grow

On Monday, Aug. 25, at 6 p.m., China holds a special, open town meeting in the town office meeting room.

After electing a moderator, voters will discuss and approve or reject two actions proposed by the select board, as follows.

— Approving the board’s Aug. 11 Order of Discontinuance of a Public Easement for Old Route 202, at 1380 Lakeview Drive, paying nothing in damages for the action; and
— Giving to The Landing, LLC, the restaurant at the address, “whatever interest it [the town] has (if any),” in adjacent property.

If voters approve both questions, they will settle a question that has generated intermittent discussion for 50 years – and, select board chairman Wayne Chadwick says, cost thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Town attorney Amanda Meader, who has extensively researched the issue (she said she did not bill the town for all her time), and Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood estimate the section of road in question is about 400 feet long and 49.5 feet wide. It runs from Causeway Street south to Route 202 (Lakeview Drive), around the head of China Lake’s east basin in front of and as the driveway for The Landing.

Meader said The Landing owners plan to have a survey done that should provide definite dimensions.

In September 1972, the state opened the relocated Route 202, crossing the muldoon above China Lake farther north and staying farther from the lake. Meader quoted from a Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) document saying the parts of the old road no longer used “shall revert to their original status to be disposed of by the officials concerned.”

Since then, China officials have at intervals tried to determine whether they have any rights in the disused roadway. The first inquiry Meader found was in the summer of 1975, from Town Manager Ira Singer.

Meader shared with town officials a copy of a July 28, 1975, reply from Waterville attorney Sidney H. Geller. Geller found that in March 1810, the towns of Fairfax (later Albion) and Harlem (later China) laid out the road. He found no evidence that any landowner gave either town title to any part of the land under the road.

Geller explained two things could have happened. If there were easements, the abutting landowners would own to the center of the roadway if the road were discontinued. If there were no easements, the town would own the land if the road were discontinued.

He could find no evidence in records to support either alternative.

In the summer of 1985, Town Manager Adele Suga queried discontinuing the road. Apparently no action was taken. By then, MDOT claimed it owned some of the land.

At the annual 1994 town meeting, voters discontinued the section of Old Route 202. However, Meader said at the Aug. 11 public hearing on the proposed warrant articles, the discontinuance apparently did not conform to state law, so in a “superconfusing” development, it did not have the intended effect.

Meader cited yet another opinion, from MDOT Legal Administrator Amy Hughes to Town Manager Daniel L’Heureux, in June 2014. Hughes assumed there was an easement originally; if so, she said, the town has an easement. In addition, she believed the state owns a small triangle of land north of the restaurant building.

At the Aug. 11 hearing, Tory and Kimberly Stark explained that they need the issue resolved to clarify what land they own. They plan to make improvements to The Landing, for which they need their property defined (see the Aug. 14 issue of The Town Line, p. 3).

The special town meeting will be followed by a select board meeting.