Veterans are also working to improve Kilbreth Cemetery.
By Cora C. Briggs
Special to the Sun Journal

LIVERMORE – Resident Emily Pike received high praise from town officials Monday night when it was reported she had taken upon herself the maintenance of the outhouse at Brettuns Beach.

“She reports people seem to be a little better with it since she started her efforts,” said Administrative Assistant Kurt Schaub, who added that Pike cleans the facility weekly as her contribution to the town.

Another public service project at Brettuns was reported by Dennis Stires, vice chairman of the Cemetery Committee, who said area veterans will work on the Kilbreth Cemetery this summer.

Kilbreth is an ancient lot on a knoll near the beach and has frequently been vandalized. The veterans will repair the fence surrounding the lot, plant ground cover, repair fallen and broken stones, and place a list of persons buried there on file at the town office.

“The cemetery has long been neglected and continues to be destroyed by whoever finds it a place to vent their energies,” Stires wrote. “It is not possible to keep such people out, but it is possible to make it an appropriate cemetery where veterans and their families are buried.”

In other business, the board approved borrowing $56,330 from Androscoggin Savings at 3.28 percent over five years to purchase the new highway truck.

They also signed the contract for ambulance service with Franklin Memorial Hospital and will name two people to an ambulance advisory board.

Schaub reported that the middle section of Route 4, which had been scheduled for reconstruction this summer, will not be done until next year but the state will repair the collapsed granite wall of the cemetery at the north end of Long Pond.

The town is still struggling with the Batten Road issue, the most recent development being letters from Attorney Lee Bragg to property owners Ken Constantine and Ralph Walton.

Bragg wrote that the board has decided the gate installed by the owners must be removed, since a public easement over the road was retained when the road was discontinued by the town in 1988.

“The existence of a public easement means that the selectpersons have little choice but to request the removal of the gate,” he stated.

“I understand that the installation of the gate, and other activities on the site, have been undertaken in good faith to allow better use of your own property and to reduce the likelihood of inappropriate activities by others,” Bragg continued.

“Under these circumstances, the board would like to find a reasonable solution to the matter which addresses your concerns and restores public access.”

Such a solution was not forthcoming Monday night as Constantine questioned who would be responsible once the gate was down. He also requested that the actual location of the road, which goes through a gravel mining operation, be staked out so he would know where it goes.

“If the gates go down, I post my land, there will be no hunting, no fishing and no road,” Constantine vowed.

Walton’s daughter, who wasn’t further identified, told the board her father would lose his mining license, putting him out of business, if the gate were taken down.

“My father will honor his word, I think the town officials should honor theirs,” she told the board. That word was an agreement between the two men and a former board in 1992.

The issue will be back on the agenda for Aug. 4, Schaub said, when Bragg may have received an answer from Walton and Constantine.

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