DIXFIELD — A local ATV club is asking the Select Board if members can be allowed to drive on lower Weld Street, providing more access to several businesses there.

“Our ordinance says there is no access from the Pine Street intersection on High Street to Route 2 because of the Church on the Hill, the bad corner and all that,” said Dan Mitchell of the River Valley Riders ATV Club. “Lower Weld Street has always been off limits, and Route 2.”

Mitchell told the board Aug. 10 that the club has less than 50 members.

“I’d like to get access down lower Weld Street. It would be an in-traffic access route,” he said. “You’d ride with traffic at the posted speed limit to get down to businesses, Mimi’s, Sam’s and Towle’s.”

Mitchell said that a lot of people ride to town from Rangeley.

“They’ll get to Dixfield and go to Ellis’, which is the only access we currently have, and the pumps don’t work,” he said. “So, we’ve had a lot of riding going down lower Weld Street over the last two summers. It increased considerably this summer.”

After talking to the local game warden, Mitchell said he went to Route 2, where there are signs for no ATVs, which are Department of Transportation approved signs.

“One right there at the corner by Sam’s, another at Blouin’s Service Station, and another one when you’re coming off the bridge from Peru to Mexico, a no ATV sign by the old dairy bar,” Mitchell said. “We’ve had quite a few people that are running down there.”

Mitchell said he’s also received his first complaints about Webb River Drive, which has been an access route for 28 years. He said access routes work well when there a lot of people to watch them, and terrible when they don’t.

“When people know they’re being watched, they tend to be doing things the way they should be doing it,” he said. “When you put an access route some place where there’s no houses, they’re terrible.”

The complaints coming from Webb River Drive report ATVers riding through late at night, many coming from a nearby campground.

“We’re talking 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, stopping in the street, yakking it up, and keeping people awake,” said Mitchell. He added that some of the people being loud were spoken to already about the noise.

He said the town has an ATV ordinance that was enacted at a town meeting. Mitchell said he would like a curfew for access routes added to the ordinance.

“I’ll leave the curfew up to the discretion of the board. Nine or 10 o’clock is what I had in mind,” he said.

Board Chair Dick Pickett said they would need to received the requests in writing. It would then go to the Planning Board and then back to the Select Board, before going through the process to amend the ordinance.

“We’ve also had a request, twice, from landowners up near Bull Rock, that they fix the ATV trail up there,” Mitchell said. “Once I get down, I’d come back to see you a second time because I want to make Holt Hill an access route to get to our trail at Bull Rock.”

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