Residents of Norway’s largest mobile home park are closer to getting a reprieve on lot rent hikes. 

The Select Board voted 4-1 Thursday in favor of a draft 180-day moratorium, an attempt to delay a plan by the corporate owners of Norway Commons to raise lot rents starting April 1.

The motion that passed called for Norway to base its moratorium on the one-year pause recently approved in Jay. Norway’s would be set for 180 days.

Once the draft is vetted by the town’s attorney the board will vote whether to schedule a special town meeting for residents to vote on the moratorium. The next meeting is scheduled for March 5.

Board Chair Russ Newcomb voted against the moratorium while Vice Chair Sarah Carter and Selectpersons Dennise Whitley and Anita Hakala approved. The fifth member, Danielle Wadsworth, was not in attendance.

Ahead of the vote, the board held a workshop to review mobile home park rent actions that have been taken or considered in other Maine towns in recent months.

A homeowners’ group from Norway Commons formed to contest Sun Communities’ fee increase, stating the company is using a loophole in Maine law meant to regulate mobile home lot rents, to instead inflate them.

The statute language reads that rent increases in mobile home parks are to be based on existing rents “in the area.” 

Sun Communities used an average lot rent of $741 to calculate the new rental fee. But no mobile home owner in Norway pays near that.

Lot rent for newly installed homes at Norway Commons starts at $632, according to longtime resident Sharon LeBlond. Her monthly fee is $407; she was informed her rent will increase to $439.50.

If area averages were limited to the Oxford Hills area, her increase would calculate to about half of what she is facing, a figure she said would be reasonable.

At the Feb. 5 Select Board meeting, LeBlond said she studied lot rents in parks throughout Maine and found just one, in an affluent, coastal southern Maine town, that approaches $741. 

“Increases should be based on the average of what we pay, not what other areas pay,” she told the board at its previous meeting, and Thursday. 

The residents group suggest Sun Communities’ basis is a geographic region as vague as the Northeast and includes other New England and mid-Atlantic states. 

The group approached the board more than two months ago, asking it to initiate a rent increase moratorium retroactive to Jan. 15 and use the time to develop a town ordinance that will prohibit Sun Communities from using a wide geographic area to calculate average rents.

If a mobile home lot rent ordinance is not ready for voter consideration at the annual town meeting in June, the moratorium could be extended.

The board told the residents group in January that it would delay any action until Norway hires a permanent town manager, which it said would be early in the year. But after making no hire and reposting the position, officials now have an untenable deadline to hold a special town meeting before the April 1 effective date of Sun Communities’ rent increase. 

When Thursday’s business meeting agenda came to the moratorium, Carter motioned for the board to move forward on it, over the objections of Newcomb and interim Town Manager Jeff Campbell.

The board cannot set a special town meeting date to vote on the moratorium until after its March 5 meeting at the earliest.

Because the town is required to provide at least 30 days advance notice of the meeting, the board would have to vote to call a special town meeting no later than March 3 in order to have it before the rent increase.

With a March 5 meeting, the earliest a special town meeting can be scheduled is April 4, after the rent hike goes into effect. If that is the case, residents will have to pay the increase and rely on Sun Communities to rebate them the difference during the moratorium period, with the town responsible making sure the company follows through.