FREEDOM, Maine — A 2-year-old dispute over public rights to Beaver Ridge Road continues with questions on the local ballot for the Nov. 3 midterm election. The Select Board poses a ballot question that could lead to the town taking a public recreational easement by eminent domain.
Freedom voters are asked to decide whether to spend $38,000 for an appraiser to determine the fair market value of a 1.5-rod-wide (24.75-foot) strip of property that each abutter owns to the centerline of the 1.5-mile disputed section of the road. Voters are also asked to authorize the Select Board to hire the appraiser. Additional cost to the town would be about $2,500 for each property evaluated; possibly less.
As Select Board Chair Laura Greeley explained it during a public hearing last month, the three-member board sees this as the town’s best way forward with a residents’ lawsuit against the town pending in Superior Court to resolve road ownership with no guaranteed outcome, and a surveyor’s report that the board views as just “his opinion.” Certain townspeople who have done their own research disagree with the findings of historical surveyor Jim Dorsky, whom the Select Board hired for the task, and Greeley made it clear that the Select Board sides with them.
Dorsky found that the road was discontinued in 1919 and remains so, and that the abutting property owners own to the road’s centerline. His findings support the position of the Hadyniak family, who filed a lawsuit against the town in July 2024, seeking a declaratory judgment as to whether the road is a public way or private property.
If Freedom voters approve the Nov. 3 ballot measure, the board will proceed with survey work to set values for 13 to 15 parcels abutting the 1.5-mile section of the road, and then purchase that property by agreement with the owners or take it by eminent domain condemnation. In a condemnation, the owners would receive compensation for the property’s value.
With the lawsuit unresolved and title to the road “defective,” Greeley said Sept. 19, “it makes sense to proceed to seek to definitely clarify the town’s public rights in the Beaver Ridge Road using the condemnation eminent domain process” which is “specifically used … where title is defective.”
The majority of townspeople who spoke during the hearing opposed taking property by eminent domain. Some expressed sympathy for the Hadyniaks and the vandalism and damage done to the road they maintain over the last year or more, particularly by ATV drivers. Other abutting property owners spoke about the damage done by water runoff into their fields caused by ATVs driven over the dirt road during mud season. Trees have been illegally cut down as well and discarded in the disputed portion.
During the hearing, Greeley at times interrupted or followed residents’ comments with her views refuting what she thought was incorrect. She also dressed down one speaker, for which she was later criticized by another. One resident asked her to refrain from interrupting, with only one hour for the public to speak.
Heather Donahue, the former actress who starred in the “Blair Witch Project,” said she also disliked eminent domain. Her repeated public pronouncements in 2023 and ’24 about the Hadyniaks’ excluding the public from their private road ultimately triggered the family’s lawsuit.
Work on the town’s comprehensive plan, she said, had underscored for her the importance of being outside. Being in the forest, being in the trees, running into neighbors, “is actually fundamental to a healthy community,” she said. With a lawsuit destined to go on through multiple appeals, she said, that “has to, in a town with our limited resources, bring us around to creative solutions.”
Toward the end of the session, Select Board member Lissa Widoff offered additional perspective. “Freedom really is a hub of trails,” she said, “a hub of snowmobile trails and foot access trails, and eBikes are on the rise. People come and they say well, where are the trails? In some ways this is an opportunity for the town to look at this holistically….
“It’s hard for people to turn away from the fact that this is a very, very old road, and an old road carries with it history and emotion and care and also private property rights,” Widoff acknowledged. “The law says what is considered traditional access for people. But similarly, motorized recreation has its costs as well, so we understand the challenges that landowners face with that kind of use.
“All of that said, our proposal here stems from what to us, under legal advisement, is the logical next step. Voters will have the chance to vote it down. …If people don’t want to go to the next step, it is end of story. If no, it remains in the court process.
“We’re doing our best basically to defend some degree of public access.”
Also on the local ballot
Freedom voters are also asked to approve two ordinances on the Nov. 3 ballot. One aims to reduce the number and frequency of recall petitions to remove municipal officers from the town Select Board. The other seeks a moratorium on siting and developing large-scale data centers.
The proposed ordinance for recall petitions is an effort to make it less easy to launch a recall effort for a frivolous reason — a personality conflict, for example. “The right of recall can be an important part of the democratic process,” the draft ordinance reads. “However, recall elections also have the potential for abuse….” The updated ordinance makes it a policy that voters may request a recall in “extraordinary situations.” It also requires that the petition for recall must contain signatures equal to 25% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.
The 180-day data center moratorium cites public concerns about impact on quality of life; property values; environmental, health and safety concerns; potential impact on electrical power and water consumption; noise and heat generation; strain on infrastructure; and potential impact on town resources and facilities.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.