By Ken Cleveland Landmark Correspondent<\/i><\/p>\n
HOLDEN \u2014 Town meeting voters will decide if a portion of Damon Street that is not a public way is accepted by the town.<\/p>\n
The ramifications for residents, however, could remove maintenance of a portion that is currently plowed by the town.<\/p>\n
But residents raised legal concerns about losing their control of a piece of land and concerns that it could be used to allow access to through traffic.<\/p>\n
Selectmen at their April 24 meeting assured residents that was not the intent, but rather the idea was to fix an issue.<\/p>\n
Since it was now being raised as possibly being private property, the town could not do any work on it, including plowing, Town Manager Peter Lukes said.<\/p>\n
The issue goes back to when the area was developed and land given to the town.<\/p>\n
Residents questioned whether that was allowed, and if so did abutters own to the middle of the road, which would prevent others using it and the town maintaining or plowing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing is going to change,\u201d Selectmen Chairman Anthony Renzoni said, with no plans to open any access from Damon Street to Davis Hill School. \u201cIf it was opened to the school, it would do nothing for traffic flow\u201d but would allow the town to legally maintain it.<\/p>\n
Renzoni, responding to residents who spoke during the citizens address portion of the meeting, said that \u201cI\u2019m with you; I don\u2019t trust government. We are looking to correct this small piece of land. The intent here is not to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents intending to ensure there was no through traffic or making it an access point to Davis Hill School may have opened the proverbial can of worms, since their arguments now could limit the town\u2019s ability to do work on the road.<\/p>\n
The issue will have to be decided at town meeting, where there is an article to address it and accept the layout of the road, now that the Board of Selectmen voted to lay it out as a public way.<\/p>\n
Town Counsel Steve Madaus\u00a0explained the process and said that if residents did not want to change it, town meeting could take that tack, but there was now an issue in which they would have to care for the roadway. If one-third of residents at the meeting vote against it, the change would fail.<\/p>\n
David White, a resident of another road who said he was familiar with the issues, said that if a tree falls on the road, residents now would have to clear it, and paving would come from the residents\u2019 resources. Plus the town could not plow the road.<\/p>\n
Renzoni said there are other private roads in town that are in the same situation and the town does not plow or maintain those roads. Roads accepted by the town must be built to town standards.<\/p>\n
The article would seek to include a portion of the existing street not legally accepted in the past, removing liability for residents and allowing travel.<\/p>\n
Layouts of the road on plans filed with the Worcester Registry of Deeds date back to 1949, and in 1964 and beyond show details in the area beyond the earlier development plans, including labelling portions as unaccepted.<\/p>\n
Town meeting is slated for May 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOLDEN \u2014 Town meeting voters will decide if a portion of Damon Street that is not a public way is accepted by the town. The ramifications for residents, however, could remove maintenance of a portion that is currently plowed by the town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}