GREENVILLE, Maine — The Maine Land Use Regulation Commission will decide Friday whether to refer an enforcement action against the owner of Big Squaw Mountain Ski Resort to the Maine Attorney General’s Office.
LURC will hold its monthly meeting at 9:30 a.m. in Greenville, where it will vote on the matter.
Mountain Inc., which operates Big Squaw Mountain Ski Resort in Big Moose Township, is accused of harvesting 155 acres of land near the now-unused resort.
James Confalone, CEO of Mountain Inc., bought about 7,000 acres in 1994 from the Bureau of Parks and Lands. About 1,200 acres have timber harvesting restrictions set by the Bureau of Parks and Lands.
LURC says that the harvest was done without permit approval and that the land has deed restrictions for timber harvesting.
Confalone could not be reached by phone on Thursday.
Rodney Folsom, a real estate agent in Greenville who is a spokesman for Mountain Inc., said he plans to attend Friday’s meeting.
“We don’t think there was a violation. It just needs an after-the-fact permit,” said Folsom on Thursday. “[LURC has] their point of view and we have ours. We have an attorney who feels different.”
Confalone’s wife, Karen, is the director and president of OFLC Inc., which owns land abutting the harvested lot. In January 2010, Miami-based OFLC filed a forestry operations notification for timber harvesting and land management road construction on its property. The harvesting was to occur only in Lot 2.1. However, 54.9 acres of land was harvested in Lot 2.2 on Plan 01, which falls under the deed restrictions on James Confalone’s property.
LURC sent Confalone a notice of violation on Aug. 31, 2011, for harvesting timber on the restricted parcel of land.
Two months later, the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands sent a letter to Confalone requesting planning documents describing justification showing compliance with the deed restrictions.
On Nov. 7, Confalone responded to the Bureau of Parks and Lands letter, but didn’t offer any planning documents or justification that shows compliance with the deed restrictions, said LURC in a memorandum regarding the incident.
This April, further investigation uncovered additional harvesting by — or on behalf of — Mountain Inc. without a permit from LURC and in violation of deed restrictions, according to LURC. In all, about 155 acres were harvested. The Maine Forest Service estimated that the stumpage value of the harvested wood is $51,183, with an estimated mill gate value of $136,277.
LURC staff entered into settlement negotiations with Mountain Inc. to resolve the violations associated with the timber harvesting. The discussion included Folsom, an agent for Mountain Inc., and Silas Ames, a timber harvester and agent who signed the forestry operations notification for OFLC.
“We were not able to reach a settlement agreement,” acting LURC Director Samantha Horn Olsen said Thursday.
Folsom stressed that Mountain Inc. disagrees that a violation occurred.
“The deed doesn’t specify where and what you do. The deed is very vague,” he said. “We’re improving the mountain, so there shouldn’t be an issue anyway.”
According to the memorandum from LURC, Mountain Inc. stands accused of construction or operation of a development without a permit issued from LURC; not providing evidence of sufficient right, title or interest for permit approval; and not demonstrating title, right or interest to LURC’s satisfaction.
Rod Falla, LURC’s Greenville region supervisor, said in April that only three exceptions were allowed in the land deed for Confalone to harvest timber in the restricted parcel: Harvesting is allowed for trails, lifts, snowmaking facilities, construction of transient accommodations and vacation homes for lease or sale, and all related improvements, including roadways serving those areas and the ski area resort; for firewood or lumber for the resort and improvements; and for harvesting dead or dying timber and blowdowns.
Folsom told the Bangor Daily News in April that the timber was harvested to extend ski trails.
This is the same Confalone who denied the general public long standing vehicular access to Mountain View Pond by way of the old farm. For a short time, vehicular access was only permitted by going through his new locked gate he built for the purposes of making it his private pond. Confalone is a greedy man from Florida and knew nothing about Maine law and that we the people own all the natural ponds larger than 10 acres including the land beneath them. In order to get Mr. Confalone on track legally, I sought the help of IF&W Commissioner Lee Perry. In the end, IF&W chose to build a new public landing rather than fight a legal battle with this greedy, wealthy man who does not always abide by the Maine laws.
The nerve. Gating his own property.
You obviously don’t have a clue about the laws pertaining to right of ways. That is what he gated off.
Then why did the DIFW or ANYONE else not pursue it? Instead they ”
chose to build a new public landing rather than fight a legal battle with this greedy, wealthy man who does not always abide by the Maine laws.”
Mountain View Pond is also known as Fitzgerald Pond in case I confused some of you.
It is private land and the government needs to stay out of it, if this company wants to clear cut their entire land they should be allowed. Private land ownership is just that private.
My friend, all the land in Maine was first acquired by some arrogant invader who simply claimed it. This greedy invader then awarded it or sold it to another greedy invader. The Confalone land was actually a parcel of land that the King of England gave to a Bingham man named William Bingham. And please understand that just because someone purchased a parcel of land from someone who acquired it from someone who merely claimed originally it does not give one the right to pollute your land, the sky or your neighbor’s land. If you don’t like the law as written, we have in place a democratic system to change it. Any person who does not abide by the law deserves to be punished under the penalties of the law. If we don’t abide by the laws, then we have chaos.
“All the land in Maine” was not first acquired by “arrogant invaders who simply claimed it” — unless this refers to a millennium of primitive, tribalist savages with no concept of property rights. Civilized people claiming previously unowned land is not an “arrogant invasion”.
Regardless of how a parcel of land was in fact acquired, or simply imagined, those earlier people are dead and have nothing to do with us. Land was used long before there was a civilized concept of property rights and such earlier use does not nullify property rights today.
It has taken a very long time for mankind to rise out of primitive tribalism to an advanced civilization recognizing the rights of the individual, including property rights. The ridiculous sophistry of the left claiming we can’t own land because someone in the past did something, or is claimed to have done something, which we would regard as wrong is a fallacious attempt to deny the very possibility of property rights.
Logging, so hated by viros, is not “pollution”. This viro’s sniffing that “we have a democratic system” ignores that property rights have been abrogated by the mob rule and statist version of democracy, and does not refute the original poster’s position that government should return to respecting private property rights. It is the progressive imposition of bureaucratic control over many decades that has brought us today’s “chaos” by destroying the protection of the rights of the individual under the “rule of law” instead of the “rule of men” under the discretion of bureaucrats exercising power. No one “deserves” that system or punishment under such a system.
We are much more savage now.
Speak for yourself.
1) Read up on pre-Columbian Native American civilization.
2) Try to grasp the concept that what you do on your land can and will affect your neighbor’s ability to use or enjoy their land. Your right to swing your arms around ends where my nose begins. Improper logging operations can kill lakes and rivers, and bury your house in mud.
Logging is not hated by any so-called “viros” that I know. Improper logging or other development is a different story. Without strong government oversight, property owners and developers will not operate safely or sustainably. This is overwhelmingly evident in recent history in the US, and to deny it is the epitome of self-deception.
Ya.
Strong government.
Just what the doktor ordered.
The eco-fascists like the “earthling creature” are worse than “strong government”, they represent the opposite of the purpose of government in principle. We need a strong government to protect the rights of the individual, including property rights, which is the opposite of the viro agenda for control over the “environment”, i.e., their surroundings, i.e., everything, i.e., all of us.
We constantly see in this “earthling” creature’s posts a false equation of individualism with burying someone’s cabin in a mud slide, the “destruction” of the earth, etc. — all claimed to require government bureaucratic control over everything we do — to prevent most of it, denounced as “greed”, etc. — in a society in which what we do is only by permission of viro bureaucracy and no private property rights. This has been the progression of government in Maine for decades under the viro lobby.
The viro lobby has done everything it could to destroy the natural resources industry, including logging, on behalf of their misanthropic wilderness agenda. Their notion of “sustainable” logging is to make it uneconomical to “sustain” the wilderness and return humanity to “pre-Columian” (one of their favorite terms) tribal primitivism with no property rights.
Do we really want to allow corporations ($$) to be free to do ANYTHING? Or, do we actually need limits? Enforcing and determining the limits is always the tricky part.
As an aside to a previous post about “arrogant invaders”. I’ve heard there is some history on the ownership of Kinneo Island, an Indian dispute, and the railroad that developed it. Legally kicking people off the island?
There are tens of thousands (or more) of corporations of all kinds. Progressive’s fanning hatred of corporations, which are voluntary associations of individuals, should be regarded as irrelevant and does not justify the imposition of statist “limits” on anyone beyond the ordinary enforcement of people’s rights in a free society against criminal behavior.
Railroads are not arrogant invaders. The railroad came to Moosehead in the early 1900s, long after the Indian wars. Whether or not eminent domain was used you don’t seem to know, but there have been eminent domain abuses by government at all levels kicking people off their land “legally” all over the country; whether or not the victims in any of them were of Indian descent is not relevant.
Not to bicker about property rights vs. the commons and all that, but if the common definition of the verb “civilized” (as in “advanced civilization”) has it right, then civilized people have moved from primitive to a technically advanced and rati0nally ordered cultural development. As far as our society’s boasting of being civilized, the “technologically advanced” piece fits; as to the rationally ordered stage of cultural development, we’re not there yet, and may be hard wired in such a way as to never get there. As long as our reptile brain plays its necessary role in our physical survival (which includes our banding together for common protection against any manner of threats, physical and otherwise) its hard to see any chance of moving beyond the various tribal knots into which we continuously tie ourselves. What, if anything, can explain our fear of the “other,” even when they too are civilized types who honor private property? Why else do we possess enough explosive power we say we are willing to use to obliterate the other advanced civilizations we see as threats? Surely all that advanced weaponry can’t be designed with which to battle “tribalist savages.” No, I fear we are as tribal as ever despite the disastrous course it could take. The possible good news for our kind, to be circumspect, is that humanity, like all other life forms, is an evolutionary work in progress, which means no one can say for sure what future forms our species might assume. I doubt it will be one which holds (as some do) individual prerogative at such a sacrosanct level as to be considered the ultimate outcome of development; our innate tribal instinct won’t allow it. That could be a good thing; that the same behavior might in time become global in which the common good (“promote the general welfare”) is an utmost consideration in human interaction.No one knows what political forms may be required, but it is doubtful many today would like them. But we needn’t hold our breath for that day – we’re not close, nor are we closing in on it at the rate we’re going – not in this country at any rate, for many in high places today are using a model from the nineteenth century robber barons’ “Gilded Age,” a digital one of course, (as the best of all worlds
As to the “rule of law” vs “rule of men,” when men and women such as those serving on the LURC, are fulfilling their legal obligation (under the law) as best they can, they aren’t automatically writing law on their own. If an ordinance is in full compliance with the law that makes it possible, how can it be a simple matter of bureaucracy riding roughshod over hapless individuals? Those whose behavior gets caught up short will usually believe they have been picked on, but that’s not news to anyone who has ever been stopped by a cop for doing something others seem to get away with. If that happens, a democratic people are welcome to change the law, which is exactly what many seek to do. Whether they succeed or fail is of no fault of the law or the bureaucrats, it is the success or failure of their arguments to sway enough support for the desired outcome.
The advances in standard of living unimagined in earlier times were made possible by economic development and technology that only possible once the right of the individual to pursue his own goals and his own happiness in political freedom was recognized and protected. That is the advance in human civilization especially since the Enlightenment.
Statism and collectivism demanding a retrogression to a national or “global common good” is the opposite and a return to tribalism on a much more vast and hideous scale. Neither tribalism not any other idea is an innate idea or principle of humans; it is a notion adopted prior to the superior thought and ideas which got us out of that stifling, primitivist muck.
The use of technology to defend a relatively free nation against the wars and agression caused by statist and collectivist nations is a right of human survival. Wars are caused by the wholesale trampling of the rights of the individual and come from the worst statist societies. Wars will end when statism and collectivism are abolished, if ever.
The progressive imposition of more and more bureaucratic control by agencies such as LURC, DEP and MRS is made possible by legislation granting arbitrary and ambiguous power to bureaucracy, and is becoming worse. It will continue to become worse in a downward spiral until enough citizens recognize the requirements of human survival in a free society.
The efforts by the LePage administration to improve the “attitude” of contentious, hostile, arbitrary bureaucrats is not enough without structural change reforming the laws empowering them by re-establishing the principle of protecting the rights of the individual under objective law. Until then we will continue to have abusive “rule by men” rather then the rule of law for valid purposes.
Not if there is a legal document – which Confalone would have known about when he purchased the property – that dictates otherwise.
Another bit of information (law) for greedy and over possessive landowners. Since the 1640 colonial ordinances, the people in both Mass. and Maine have the legal right to trespass by foot over unimproved land to access or egress a great pond. The law today is called The Great Ponds Act. The law also states that any person who denies the trespass can be criminally or civily charged by the Attorney General. In Maine, No Trespassing signs have NO legal significance on unimproved land if the trespass is within the bounds of the Great Ponds Act that was passed in 1975. And please understand that the legal trespasser can carry a gun or a camera or whatever else he might wish to carry like a kayak or a canoe. As a landowner myself, I’ve never quite understood what makes a landower so greedy and possessive of his land.
The existing trails at Squaw are not being attended to, and Folsom’s claim is that the harvest was for trail expansion purposes. What a joke!
Makes a difference as to who posts what property.
Confalone, (who may well be a dipstick but has a great PR person with ample BS….creating ski trails indeed!!!), does have a right to post his road and prevent damage to property he paid for and annually pays taxes for. The Great Ponds Act grants access for foot traffic only, not ATV’s or snowmobilers or four-wheel drive trucks tearing up roads, fields, woods and anything else they feel is “public land”. While not all ATV’ers and sledders do such things, a few have spoiled it for those of us that treat other people’s property and their subsequent rights with respect. So walk to the pond or use the IF&W trail and stop whining. Roxanne Q has the right to post her land as well and agree with her position or not (and I do not ), the fact is, that right is nevertheless hers to employ.
I don’t recall all this whining when the Audubon Society took over Borestone Mountain and estopped all fishing on Sunrise Pond as well as vehicle access on the old road for people that wanted to climb the mountain. Why not? Because the Sanctuary supports the initiatives and programs of the left-leaning tree hugging snail saving salamander loving anti-everything crowd. (side note: old J.J. Audubon shot nearly one of everything he made a painting of… no wonder the detail was so accurate!!)
This, like most of the other posts in this thread, is off the point; Confalone should be taken to task for contractual breeches and dealt with accordingly, but to follow the theme of this conversation; property rights have existed since my native American ancestors lost the land, and that’s the way it is today. So walk to Borestone, walk to Mountain View Pond, walk all across Roxanne’s land (Plum Creek will still let you drive through to get there for free even though continually castigated by all those same antis), or don’t complain when the neighbor’s kid comes over and trashes your property with his four wheeler or when someone drives onto your land to dump an old refrigerator and some tires.. Personally, I don’t want those ruts on my lawn or the trash on my land, but that doesn’t make me greedy and possessive or arrogant. My lot is small, Confalone’s, Roxanne’s and Plum Creek’s are large… same rules.
Just something else Confalone and Folsom have done to rape the mountain. It was a sad day for Greenville when the state sold the mountain.
And it will get sadder yet, with what we have at the helm in Augusta “overseeing” things. Stay tuned for more examples of Lepew’s “Open for Business” tactics.
Frankly we do have a good governor who is doing his job. And his name is not Lepew.
When the state sold the mountain? Then where were you and others who could have purchased Squaw Mnt. from the state? Too late to cry about that at this time.
“After the fact permit”? Huh?
You mean if you get caught doing something you’re not supposed to do, you can file the permit and it’s all better?
Does this guy do ANYTHING that doesn’t look ridiculous? And how about an after-the-fact permit? What the heck does that accomplish?