JAY — Selectmen set a special meeting for Monday to discuss properties on Oak and Stone streets that have sheds, a fence and a utility pole infringing on the town’s Stone Street Baseball Park land.

The special meeting will begin at 6 p.m., Nov. 29, at the town office.

Those structures are 2 to 6 feet over the town’s property line with a CMP pole that is about 15 feet over the line. Property owners have been asked to attend the meeting.

The issue came to light after Richard “Babe” and Mary Binette were in the process of selling their house on Oak Street, located near the town office, and a mortgage survey was done by the bank for the potential buyer. It was discovered the couple’s shed was over the town line by about 3 feet. It is within a wooded area that abuts the field.

The couple can not sell the house unless the issue is fixed.

“In reviewing this area we found that the property abutting the Binette’s has a shed that also appears to be located across the property line on town land,” Code Enforcement Officer Shiloh Ring wrote in a memo to selectmen.

There is also a pool fence and utility pole on two other properties that are also over the line.

Some of the properties have previously sold but the other title companies did not pick up on the structures infringing on town property, town officials said Monday during a selectmen’s meeting.

The town had Toby Kachnovich do a survey on the property a couple of years ago. He went up and rechecked the lines on Monday. He also discovered a storage building on Stone Street that is built 16 feet onto the town’s property, highway foreman John Johnson said.

The easiest thing for the town to do, according to Kachnovich, Johnson said, is to move the town’s property line 15 feet to keep the property line straight. The cost would be about $450 for each abutting property owner that has a structure over the line for Kachnovich to amend their deeds, Johnson said. If a property owner opts out, then it would cost the other owners more money, he said.

The owners would also have to purchase the additional property that is currently owned by the town at fair market value, Town Manager Ruth Cushman said. A special town meeting would need to be set to do that, she said.

If voters reject selling the property to those owners, then the structures infringing on the town’s property would have to be removed. In the Binette’s case, their large shed was built on a cement slab years ago.

The Binette’s said they thought they owned more land. One map showed that one side is 120 feet and another 115 feet while the mortgage company’s survey shows 115 feet on both sides.

The total area the town would be giving up, not including the Stone Street shed, appears to be 7,530 square feet, Board Vice Chairman Warren Bryant said.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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