JAY – Selectmen reviewed options Wednesday for public access to Parker Pond, a popular recreation area.
Despite some bickering between some landowners in the audience, selectmen and others agreed to try to work out an agreement to let the public use the private dirt road.
The road was posted by some landowners in 2004 due to excessive partying, noise and litter.
People are able to use the road with written permission or if they own land along it.
Parker Pond is listed as a Great Pond in Maine and is also an alternate water source for the Livermore Falls Water District that serves customers in Jay and Livermore Falls.
More than 370 people signed a petition asking selectmen to take all necessary steps to make Parker Pond Road a town way or recreational easement in 2004.
Chairman Bill Harlow said residents voted at least three times since 1958 to not close the road. In 1992, when the road closure was before residents again, Harlow said, it was discovered that the road was never accepted by the town so the issue was withdrawn from a vote.
Resident Dick Sproul, who owns property on East Jay Road that crosses Parker Pond Road, said he didn’t want to give his property away or sell it to the town because then the town could turn around and discontinue the road, and he and other landowners would be stuck with maintenance.
Sproul said he has always let people use his property to hunt and has not posted it.
Raymond Paul, whose children own property closest to East Jay Road, said all they had asked the town for was police patrols and some maintenance. But since it was a private way, he said, he was told that couldn’t happen.
Town Attorney Michael Gentile said there are ways to craft a voluntary easement so the public could use the road and allow parties to terminate it at any time.
Selectmen tabled the issue so the parties could work out an agreement.
“Since Feb. 16, 2004, this has put us through hell plain and simple, and we don’t deserve it,” Sproul’s wife, Jeanne Sproul, said
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