HARTFORD – The Planning Board met Monday to discuss a request by Pine Shores Homeowners Association to revise its permit, which stipulates it must handle its own trash disposal.

The association represents owners in the 50-plus-lot subdivision on the south shore of Canton Lake. The original 1990 subdivision permit stipulated that owners be responsible for removing their trash.

The board workshop was supposed to come up with a list of documents needed from Pine Shores to complete its application for an amendment to its permit to eliminate the trash stipulation.

David Bowen, who represented Pine Shores, said the subdivision is the only one in town that has conditions placed on trash removal. He said the owners collectively pay $50,000 in taxes and there is only one child there attending school.

“In my mind, this is discrimination,” he said.

Selectman Scott Swain countered, “All buyers knew the conditions that were in the deed, and one of those conditions was that Pine Shores would be responsible for their trash removal.”

Planning Board Chairman Dan Maddox said the request for an amendment would be reviewed as if this was a new subdivision applying.

Pine Shores was developed by Patten Corp. in the late 1980s and received Planning Board approval in 1990. In an agreement with the town, the developer donated five acres of lakeshore property, along with an 800-foot-long beach and a right of way to it.

The privately-owned Pine Shores Drive is the main road to the gated community. The town’s right of way is via Thompson Lane, off Pine Shores Drive. However, Thompson Lane leads to a parking lot, and from there beach access if by foot along a woods path and boardwalk. Therefore, emergency vehicles can’t get to the town beach unless allowed to continue down Pine Shores Drive through the locked gate.

A Hartford-Pine Shores advisory committee tried to resolve the continuing conflict between the association and the town about emergency vehicle access to the town beach. They recommended:

• The town have access to the beach via Pine Shores Drive, as intended in the original agreement with Patten Corp., for police, fire and ambulance vehicles, handicapped people and to service the Porta Potti.

• Residents of Pine Shores would be afforded disposal of solid waste as are other Hartford residents.

• A member from each group would form a committee for one year to oversee the implementation of the agreement.

• The key to Pine Shores Drive gate would be kept in the Town Office to be signed out on a ledger.

The advisory committee added to this recommendation that the town be given a deeded access to the road.

Pine Shores could not sign such an agreement because homeowners along the Pine Shores Drive own to its center. Such a decision presently would require that 75 percent of the owners agree.

No decision was made on the request to the board.

Swain asked that minutes of each Planning Board meeting be sent to the town office in a timely manner.

The next Planning Board meeting is June 7.