NEWRY — A former longtime selectman has debunked sections of an unsigned handbill being circulated prior to Monday’s special town meeting on four proposed ordinances.
The handbill targets former Selectman Steve Wight’s proposal to formally create a Newry Conservation Commission, saying it isn’t needed.
It also threatens that private landowners will close their land to public recreational use such as all-terrain vehicle riding and snowmobiling if additional regulations are levied and Maine continues to close its own land holdings.
“The untruths and threats it contains have many in town very concerned,” Wight said Friday.
“The threat to close snowmobile trails was the same threat that they got down in Greenwood a couple years ago when they were going through their attempt at doing hillside and ridge-top development,” he said. “(The handbill) probably comes from the same source.”
Wight said his only concern is that it has “a lot of misinformation in it.”
Wight’s ordinance stipulates that the commission would serve as an advisory to selectmen on matters related to land-use issues in Newry.
The handbill states, “Additional regulations developed by the Conservation Committee will lead to landowners being told what they can or cannot do and the depreciation of land values.”
The proposed Conservation Commission would have no power whatsoever, Wight said.
“All they are is a group that looks into open space issues and conservation issues within the town and advises selectmen, just like individual members of the community could do the same thing, but this gives a little more of a status to the group,” he said.
Additionally, he said the commission “would be looking out for the habitat and the conservation concerns of the community.
“Beyond that, a lot of towns now are either spending a lot of money or having donated — in the case of Bethel — forestlands they can turn into community forests, and we’ve had the beginnings of an offer from somebody who wanted to do that for us in Newry, and we would need a Conservation Commission to oversee that,” Wight said.
He said the handbill states that part of the commission’s charge “will lead to confrontation, infringement on private landowner rights and duplication of existing regulations.”
“The ordinance follows the state law directly, so I don’t see a problem there,” Wight said.
Last spring, Newry selectmen tasked Wight with forming a Conservation Committee to look into creating a commission. Five people were found to serve as the committee’s members and they met every month until summer.
By midsummer, Wight said, they created an ordinance proposal to form a conservation commission, but selectmen put it off to await creation of other ordinances.
On Nov. 21, selectmen held a public hearing on Wight’s proposal and three other ordinances: to require permits for most building or remodeling projects worth $1,000 or more; to restrict wind energy development to the top of Sunday River Ski Resort’s Barker Mountain; and to allow the Planning Board to request a pre-application hearing with applicants for major subdivision and site plan review projects.
All four will go before voters during a special town meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 19, at the town office.
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