By Jen Otterson,Staff Writer

OTISFIELD – Residents at Wednesday’s selectmen’s meeting asked the town for help with dirt roads that are rough and eroding.

Tim and Heidi Blake spoke on behalf of residents in the Wayaka Pines Road area, and Jane Fahey gave a PowerPoint presentation on road erosion in the Silvaqua area of town.

Tim Blake said residents of Lake Road, Wacipi Pines Road and Wayaka Pines Road had complained to Road Commissioner Richard Bean over the past few years, but had not received a response from him.

“We believe that what’s being done now is inadequate to prevent erosion and washboarding of the road,” he said.

“We don’t expect a boulevard,” Blake added, but residents would at least like to see the Wayaka Pines Road crowned. Blake said Wayaka Pines Road is mostly sand, and doesn’t have enough gravel in it to hold together.

The owner of a private road in the area has had his road crowned, ditched and surfaced with stone dust, according to Blake, and has seen maintenance costs decrease since.

The road doesn’t need to be graded as often as it needed to be before the work was done.

Board Chairman Mark Cyr told Blake that he had done the right thing by bringing the issue to Bean first and assured him that “we are concerned about erosion.” Cyr said he would speak with Bean about the roads.

Fahey had similar complaints about the roads in the Silvaqua region.

The pictures in her presentation showed sand that had been washed off Parkway during spring rains. She commented on a picture of a beach on Thompson Lake: “That beach did not exist before. That’s Parkway.”

“Do we want to continue to add to Silvaqua’s beach?” she asked selectmen.

Cyr pointed out that the roads in the Silvaqua area are older roads. “Unfortunately, we’re stuck with how they originally were developed.” He asked, though, if it would be best to ask the town at the March meeting to hire an engineer to look at the roads.

Jim Bishop, chairman of the Road Study Committee, said representatives of the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments had driven each of the town’s roads Wednesday and will present the town a prioritized list of the roads, with the cost to fix each.

This was one of the final steps in the committee’s work. The group is now looking into ways to finance work on the town’s roads.

“I don’t think grants are going to be likely to help us out,” he said.

The group has considered proposing a road bond. Cyr suggested a meeting between selectmen and the road and finance committees.

The finance committee deadline for 2006 budgets is Nov. 15.