The court ruled that the town ignored a couple’s efforts to complain about a building project.
RANGELEY – Maine supreme court justices ruled Monday that the town of Rangeley violated its own ordinance when it issued building permits for a new cottage in 1998.
Justices vacated a lower court decision that sided with the town.
They also determined that the new cottage was in “multiple violation” of the town’s zoning ordinance with the “blessing” of the town’s code enforcement officer, who granted the permit.
Rangeley’s Zoning Board of Appeals denied a 1999 appeal by George and Rosalyn Brackett, who wanted to stop a neighbor from tearing down a nonconforming cottage and building a new one on Rangeley Lake.
The Bracketts are summer residents of Rangeley who reside in New Hampshire. They returned to their camp on Rangeley Lake in July 1999 to find that their next-door neighbor William Sears had replaced his nonconforming dwelling, according to the supreme court document.
Although the Bracketts filed an appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals, the board ultimately concluded the appeal was not filed in a timely manner.
Supreme court justices disagreed, saying the Bracketts would have filed their appeal on the correct form weeks earlier, but the code enforcement officer and the town ignored their repeated efforts to address the matter.
Rangeley Town Manager Bill Lundrigan said he hasn’t had a chance to review the court’s decision.
“It is really too early for us to make a comment,” Lundrigan said.
The permit required Sears to construct the new cottage 48-plus feet from the shore but he “knowingly” constructed it 38-40 feet from the high water mark, the decision states.
Also, according to justices, the new cottage:
• Has a 348-square-foot deck that was not accurately described on the Nov. 3, 1998, application.
• Has a full basement, which adds to square-foot volume, which wasn’t figured into the footage.
Sears’ attorney Peter Clifford was unavailable for comment Tuesday.
According to the court decision, former Rangeley Code Enforcement Officer Peter Farnsworth didn’t have the authority to grant Sears a building permit to demolish the original cottage and replace it with an entirely new cottage.
The Bracketts received no notice of the permit. “If Sears’ application for the Nov. 3 permit had been processed properly, however, it would have gone before the town’s Planning Board, and the Bracketts would have been notified of Sears’ application,” the supreme court justices stated.
The time for litigating in ordinary cases remains prior to the start of construction, the court said.
“When the town violates its ordinance, and the permit holder violates its permit, and the abutter acts reasonably promptly, courts will recognize a ‘good cause exception’ to a town’s fixed appeal period,” the decision stated.
Members of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court sent the matter back to Franklin County Superior Court Monday with instructions to remand to the Rangeley Zoning Board of Appeals for determination of whether Sears’ new cottage violates the town’s ordinance.
The decision means the Bracketts get the opportunity to go back to the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals and Planning Board and ask them to properly apply the ordinances of the town of Rangeley, said David Pierson, the Bracketts’ attorney.
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