Weeks Mills residents seek reduced speed limits

by Mary Grow

Weeks Mills residents Marilyn Reed, Dwaine Drummond and Kyle Pierce attended the Oct. 21 China select board meeting to ask board members to try to get the speed limit reduced through their village in southeastern China.

The Maine Department of Transportation sets speed limits. Town officials can request an MDOT review, and select board members voted unanimously to do so.

Their request will focus on Deer Hill and Weeks Mills roads. The former comes into the village from the east and meets the latter, which continues west.

Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood said the part of the road through the village, where a bridge crosses the west branch of the Sheepscot River, used to be posted at 25 miles an hour. That was an error, she said, and the section is now unmarked, which means, as a rural road, the speed limit is 45 miles an hour.

Pierce, who contacted Hapgood, said school buses and large, heavily loaded trucks travel dangerously fast for a narrow, hilly road. She is especially concerned about safety on the bridge, which is a center for recreational anglers.

Drummond added that vehicles going down the steep hills easily exceed the 45-mile-an-hour limit. Drivers routinely ignore stop signs, he said. He urged more enforcement, as well as a lower speed limit.

Hapgood could not predict whether MDOT personnel will limit their review to the roads town officials request, or what action they will take.

In other business Oct. 21, Hapgood reported Palermo voters had approved the revised transfer station agreement with China at an Oct. 17 special town meeting, by a vote of 48 to 15. Consequently, she said, she rescinded the November 2023 letter canceling the inter-town agreement; Palermo residents will continue to share China’s transfer station.

The manager had no new information about the planned records storage vault at the town office (see the Oct. 10 issue of The Town Line, p. 3). The Municipal Building Committee is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 24, in the town office, to review the plan and proposed implementation.

Hapgood had contacted Delta Ambulance directors about the organization’s finances, as select board members consider whether to pay their entire 2025 Delta bill in advance, for a discount (see the previously cited Oct. 10 article). Only two directors had responded, she said.

Because board chairman Wayne Chadwick was late getting to the Oct. 21 meeting, Blane Casey acted as chairman. Other board members praised his handling of the meeting.

The manager announced that the town office will host a Halloween celebration, from 5 to 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 31.

The next regular select board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4.

On Tuesday, Nov. 5, local and state voting will be in the former portable building behind the town office, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.