Concerns about Child Hollow Road have not been resolved.
By Terry Karkos
Staff Writer

DIXFIELD – A handful of people left Monday night’s Board of Selectmen meeting exasperated after officials failed to agree to place a road issue before voters.

But, selectmen said later, the option remained for someone to draft a petition and collect enough signatures to force placement of the matter on the June town meeting warrant.

The issue involved getting selectmen to either call a special town meeting to vote on accepting the private Child Hollow Road as a town road, or to place the matter on the town meeting warrant themselves.

But when Selectman Stephen Donahue motioned to put the matter on the June warrant, fellow selectmen, Chairman Hugh Daley, Eugene Skibitsky, Sandra Buchanan and Montell Kennedy, steadfastly refused to second the motion, effectively killing it.

Prior to Donahue’s motion, the idea was discussed at length. Then, after two Child Hollow Road residents left, and selectmen moved on to another agenda topic, Robert Child drew attention back to the road issue.

Child built the road to town specifications despite being fed misinformation over a period of years by town officials from the town’s outdated, confusing and ambiguous Private Road Design and Construction Standards Ordinance, according to officials.

Selectmen have interpreted the ordinance to mean that the dirt road must first be paved before they could place the matter before voters.

Evidence, however, was presented that precedent had been set to accept private roads as town ways before they were paved.

That’s when Child Hollow Road resident Ronda Palmer voiced her frustrations with the board, asking, “How can you sit there and say the road needs to be paved before you can accept it?”

Selectmen’s secretary Charlotte M. Collins told the board that the graveled Taylor Road, which was accepted as a town way at the June 1995 town meeting, “had potholes and dips in it” when it was accepted.

Town Manager Nanci Allard said partially paved Lancaster Street was also accepted at the same meeting as a town road.

Daley then agreed that precedent had been set, but the board still refused to budge from its position.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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