Council votes again on Weirs streets to satisfy legal requirement

LACONIA — The designation of two dirt streets in Weirs Beach as emergency lanes has been reaffirmed by the City Council.

The council’s vote on Monday echoed its decision in October about Plantation Road and Colonial Drive. The council needed to vote on the matter again because the first vote on Oct. 25 was taken without first holding a formal public hearing. The public hearing took place on Monday evening prior to the vote.

The emergency lane designation allows the city to continue doing minimal maintenance on the two streets located off Route 11B, including snowplowing and sanding of the streets during the winter.

John Dewaele, who owns a house on neighboring Heritage Road, the only person to speak during the hearing, said the city should accept full responsibility for the two streets based on an assurance the residents of the area had received from a former Public Works director, and also because the city has been doing limited maintenance on the streets since the 1970s.

City Manager Scott Myers said however, that although the then-Public Works Director Paul Moynihan had said in a memo that Plantation and Colonial were city streets, that statement did not carry the same kind of legal weight as a formal approval by the council would carry.

He repeated his assertion that the streets were not built, only “roughed out.”

The emergency lane designation is scheduled to continue until May 2025. In the meantime, the city and the residents on the two streets are supposed to agree on how to bring the streets up to city standards and how the cost will be split between the city and the residents.

The streets were put in as part of a subdivision that was created about 60 years ago. The development was halted in 1974 when the city said the developer was not following city regulations. The streets and the unsold lots have changed ownership a number of times in the ensuing years.

Myers has said he opposes having the city accept the streets “as-is” because the city would have to spend what he said would be millions of dollars to install a storm drain system that would meet federal clean-water regulations.

Dewaele said Myers’ estimate for installing storm drains is seriously inflated.