FARMINGTON – Five Planning Board members approved a request Monday for construction of a new Head Start day care facility at the end of Galilee Road. Two members abstained.

The project was approved despite concerns from five neighbors on the road.

The neighbors, Steve Salisbury, Lewis Doucette, Ken Smith, Charles Pottle and Dave Boulette, voiced concerns about traffic on a narrow road with a sharp corner access. In particular, they voiced thoughts of parents being in a rush to drop off their children and getting to work.

“I have no problem with the type of building or use of it,” said Steve Salisbury. “My concern is with the traffic.”

Most of the 18 Galilee Road residents are retired and like the freedom to walk the road even though it doesn’t have sidewalks or lighting.

The proposal would create a T-type extension of 275 feet beyond the end of Galilee Road. Galilee is on the upper part of Cascade Leisure Park, located off High Street behind the fairgrounds.

Head Start, now housed on the University of Maine campus, needs to get out of there by June. Construction on the new center will start this spring. Plans call for the facility’s completion by the end of September.

Robert Berry, project engineer for Main-Land Development Consultants Inc., speaking on behalf of Community Concepts plans, said the building would be approximately 3,500 square feet on an acre and a half, or about the size of two house lots. Along with the building that would house three classrooms for 28 children, there would be 19 parking spaces with grass from the building to the road. The new building would be on part of seven and a half acres there owned by Community Concepts.

Along with traffic and lighting, neighbors’ concerns centered on the road’s poor condition and what large construction vehicles and other delivery type vehicles could do to it. Water drainage into their backyards from the original development of the park also concerned the neighbors.

Berry explained that drainage from the new building would be slanted toward a wet land area away from their homes.

Access to the site from Maple Avenue was questioned, but that is private property and access, while part of the original Cascade Leisure Park plans, was dropped years ago, said Steve Kaiser, code enforcement officer.

Kaiser suggested that the neighbors’ concerns be passed on to the town’s Public Works Department as problems may need more attention as the project develops.

In other business, the board unanimously passed applications for a soil erosion control/storm water management, flood hazard development and shoreland zoning permit for the Bailey Hill construction project to be started this summer. That project is located at the end of Osborne Road where it connects with Bailey Hill at a large knoll that is considered a safety hazard.