NORRIDGEWOCK, Maine — Jeffrey Daniels has a saying: “Smoke tires, not drugs.”
A longtime dream of the 23-year-old came to fruition this spring, when he installed a paved 60-foot-diameter burnout pit on his grandmother’s property off Ward Hill Road, near the Madison town line. There, he said, people could spin their car wheels freely without endangering others — or running into trouble with the law.
“I used to tear up the streets when I was younger, and all my buddies did,” Daniels said in a recent interview. “About all of us got caught.”
“It just ain’t worth it,” he continued. “You’re putting other people at risk. I’m trying to get all these people off the streets.”
For neighbors, though, the burnout pit — dubbed Jeffrey’s Automotive Battlegrounds — has not been all that Daniels chocks it up to be. They say the smoke, odor and noise they endured this summer was nothing short of a nightmare.
“I hate to be that neighbor,” Randy Belanger, who lives across Ward Hill Road, told the Norridgewock Planning Board earlier this month. “But it is terrible.”
The town effectively shut down the pit in August, and it’s now up to the Planning Board to determine whether to approve a building permit retroactively. Board members say they want more input from the public before making a final decision.
After tabling a vote on the application Sept. 10, the board scheduled a formal public hearing for 6 p.m. Oct. 8 at the Mill Stream Elementary School gymnasium. The board chose the larger venue after its initial meeting drew a full house to the town office meeting room.
Neighbors complain
Daniels and his family say they want to work with the town, but they have cast doubt over the validity of neighbors’ complaints. Daniels also believes some were responsible for suspected vandalism to the pit, in the days after the Planning Board first discussed the application.
Politics has also entered the arena. Some, including Daniels, have speculated the town code enforcement officer’s recent purchase of land just down the road may have played a role in the town’s enforcement action.
Matt Everett, who is both Norridgewock’s code enforcement officer and Select Board chair, said in a phone call Wednesday that he bought the land before this issue arose and his purchase had nothing to do with the town’s enforcement actions.
Somerset County Registry of Deeds records show Everett and his wife in early June purchased two adjacent parcels on Ward Hill Road, across the street and about a half-mile downhill from the Daniels’ property. Everett said he doesn’t live there.
Everett referred questions about the project to Town Manager Richard LaBelle, given its application is pending before the Planning Board.
The town issued a stop work order to Daniels in mid-August, LaBelle said after September’s meeting.
The town had received complaints about the pit earlier in the summer, and, at some point, asked Daniels to stop hosting events, LaBelle said. That seemed to work, until officials saw on social media in August that Daniels was planning another large event, he said.
According to Daniels’ application submitted Aug. 5, the pit was paved in June in an existing sandpit in the woods. It includes a 60-foot-diameter asphalt pad and a 10-foot-wide, 30-foot-long access road, which cost about $30,000.
The property itself is a family compound, with several dwellings housing generations of the Daniels family, a garage and some horses, accompanied by a flock of wandering ducks.
Until a few years ago, the property had also been a junkyard for decades, Daniels said. The pit, on the farthest part of the property from the road, was created years ago when it was mined for gravel, he said. It’s surrounded by tree-lined embankments.
The sole owner listed in property records is Josephine Daniels, grandmother of Jeffrey Daniels. She has given her grandson full permission to use the pit, according to a handwritten letter filed with the town.
“It is a confined, safe place for young people to get together and blow off steam,” Josephine Daniels told the planning board earlier this month. “That’s all they do. The worst thing they do is ruin their own tires.”
A growing motorsport
The activity, Jeffrey Daniels said, has caught on as an organized motorsport, somewhat akin to a demolition derby, first in Australia and now in the U.S.
A burnout requires a driver to hold a vehicle stationary while spinning its tires, generating both smoke and noise; it’s often a celebratory move by NASCAR race winners. It’s also known as a peel out or brakestand.
Events this summer were generally on Sundays and averaged about 150 attendees, Daniels’ application says.
Flyers advertised admission is $10 per person, with additional donations accepted. Some events are fundraisers, and he’s trying to recoup the cost of paving, but he said he’s not in it for the money.
Some people travel far to participate, Daniels said. He said two places held events in southern Maine, although one apparently closed because its owner went to jail. The Topsham and Pittston fairs this year held burnout competitions, too.
The events are family-friendly, he said. No drugs are allowed. He said he arranges rides home for anyone attempting to leave who appears to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Among other measures Daniels said he takes to ensure safety, participants must sign waivers. Portable toilets are brought in for events. Vehicle radiators must be filled with water, to prevent hazardous radiator fluid from going into the ground.
Daniels said the rural area has always had noise before he built the pad. He works on performance vehicles in his shop. He and his friends, before this year, used the sand pit for other automotive activities. People have logged their land. A music and cannabis festival used to take place nearby each year.
The noise from the burnout competitions, Daniels said, does not bother his infant daughter or his elderly grandparents. And the wind during the summer months, he said, typically blows south — so he struggles to understand how neighbors to his north are complaining of smoke drifting onto their properties.
“This crazy noise people are talking about, and especially the smoke,” Daniels said, “it’s not the case.”
Joy Caswell, who lives just over the Madison town line, says otherwise. The noise sends her inside her house, shutting her windows, she told the Planning Board.
“You can’t even go outside on a beautiful day and enjoy the peace and quiet,” Caswell said. “My nervous system is shot. The noise is so bad.”
The board got an earful from Daniels’ neighbors, as well as from some of his supporters.
As it made its way through site plan review criteria, the board set some conditions for issuing a permit, including requiring Daniels to hire a sheriff’s deputy for a traffic detail during events and to put down water on the pavement to limit smoke.
The board, with agreement from Daniels and neighbors, seemed poised at one point to permit Daniels to hold a trial event to allow for a site visit. But members ultimately backed off that idea, realizing that could be a slippery slope. They also questioned whether a smaller gathering would accurately simulate the impacts of one of Daniels’ large-scale events.
Daniels said he was open to other conditions the town deems necessary to satisfy neighbors. Those he suggested as possibilities included requiring participants to use certain brands of tires that produce less smoke and limiting the times he can hold meets.
“It was a long time coming, and, finally, it happened,” Daniels said. “I went a little crazy with it, you know what I mean? A dream that I had for six years had finally come true.”
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Jake Freudberg can be reached at jfreudberg@centralmaine.com.