Brunette: Latest maneuver preserves his options

LACONIA — The Lakeport resident whose move to have a city board rehear their decision to allow a retaining wall at the construction site to be installed close to his property has meant further delays for the major redevelopment project.

Peter Brunette, who lives at 23 Park St., said Friday he requested the Zoning Board of Adjustment to rehear the matter in order to preserve his legal options, although he is unsure what he will ultimately do.

Brunette lives in a house directly behind Paugus Elm, a combination commercial and residential complex just off Lakeport Square being developed by Scott Everett who restored the Lakeport Opera House.

Brunette has argued that the retaining wall — made by driving 35-feet long corrugated metal sheets into the ground — along the rear of the construction site is a structure and therefore is subject to the minimum distance which a structure must be set back from his property line.

City Planning Director Dean Trefethen decided that the retaining wall is a construction technique, and hence not a structure, so it's not subject to the setback requirements. Brunette appealed Trefethen’s decision. On Wednesday the ZBA unanimously upheld Trefethen’s decision, giving an apparent green light for work at the construction site to proceed.

Brunette's decision to ask for a rehearing turned that light red.

“I’m preserving my right to seek injunctive relief,” said of his request for a rehearing.

An applicant who loses a case before the ZBA cannot take their case directly to a court, but instead must first seek a rehearing.

Brunette believes the ZBA was wrong on legal grounds on two points.

First, he believes the retaining wall, which will remain in place after the construction work is finished though it will no longer be visible, is a structure.

“The Zoning Ordinance is open to interpretation,” he said of his insistence that Trefethen’s and the ZBA’s conclusions are incorrect.

He also said the board was in error in finding that, because the Paugus Elm site is bounded on three sides by a city street, it has no rear boundary. Normally, in a case where a commercial development abuts a residential property at the back, the setback required by the Zoning Ordinance is 25 feet.

“I argued (that maintaining that there is no rear line to the Paugus Elm site) defeats the purpose of having a setback, Brunette said.

“I haven’t decided whether to take it further,” Brunette said. “I hope it doesn’t come to that. I just want them to move (the retaining wall) further away from my property.”

No date has been set for the ZBA to rehear Brunette’s appeal. But Trefethen said in an email Thursday that he hoped the meeting would take place next week.