BETHEL – Voters decided Wednesday to abandon a 1.3-mile portion of Chase Road, Town Manager Scott Cole said, thus settling the lawsuit David B. Oakes v. Inhabitants of the Town of Bethel, et al.
Chase Road is 2.2 miles and connects Route 26 on the north to Chandler Hill Road on the south. By a vote of 76 to 45, residents chose “to not contest David B. Oakes’ contention that the Chase Road, as it proceeds from the Chandler Hill Road, terminates as a town road at the Oakes property line,” Cole said.
The second option was to take the 1.3-mile section of the road and pay Oakes $4,600 for his half-mile portion of it.
“In the end, the voters felt that the town ought not to have an interest in the road,” the town manager said. He added that by Thursday, Chase Road had been blocked at the south entrance on Chandler Hill Road.
It took residents until 11 p.m. to finish voting on the warrant Wednesday, Cole said.
Article 37 was approving, changing the town code with regard to competitive bidding. The town’s minimum for sending a project or procurement out to bid was bumped from $3,500 to $10,000, Cole said.
He added that the town has so many procurements in the $4,000-to-$10,000 range that it made sense to raise the minimum to save time.
“The selectmen decided that there was no danger in raising the threshold and the public agreed with them,” Cole said.
Article 38 was accepted, reducing the number of members on the Airport Authority, the oversight committee for airport policy, from seven to five, and eliminates the requirement for the authority to have a certain number of pilots. Before residents approved the change, the town code stipulated that three of the seven authority members be pilots.
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