Councilors to consider emergency lane declaration, road acceptance Monday night

LACONIA — City councilors will hold one public hearing and consider several other items relating to private roads within city limits at their meeting on Monday night.

The council meeting is set for 7 p.m. on Monday, May 12, at City Hall downtown. 

The public hearing scheduled for money is to deal with a request to extend emergency lane designations for Plantation and Colonial roads. Both roads are located off Endicott Street East in the Weirs. 

Councilors declared Plantation and Colonial roads to be emergency lanes at their meeting on Oct. 28, 2024 — the designation was set to expire on either April 30, or the date of a Superior Court ruling on Joy Sabato et al v City of Laconia, whichever came first. Councillor Anthony Felch (Ward 6) informed Public Works Director Wesley Anderson on April 22 that he would ask councilors to extend the designation until a decision was made in court.

The relevant trial is set for Oct. 2-3, according to a city staff report. 

In order to extend the designation, councilors must hold a public hearing and provide notice to abutting property owners 10 days beforehand. Letters to those property owners were mailed on May 1. The council can’t declare a private road to be an emergency lane without permission of abutting landowners, and permission can be withdrawn at any time. 

If a private road is declared an emergency lane, the city can expend funds to remove brush, repair culverts or do other work “deemed necessary to render such a way passable by firefighting equipment and rescue or other emergency vehicles”. 

To declare a road an emergency lane, councilors have to determine if there’s a public need for keeping such a lane passable for emergency vehicles, and if it's supported by a public interest and isn’t for the private benefit of the abutters of that road. 

If councilors support Felch’s request, Anderson recommends setting the expiration date for Oct. 31, or the date of a court decision, whichever is first. 

In other business, councilors will consider laying out Hillcrest Drive as a public highway. 

The majority of property owners there have provided necessary easements to the city to accept private portions of Hillcrest Drive, but George Spencer of 23 Hillcrest and Breault Family Revocable Trust of 41 Hillcrest have not. 

Because the city’s Planning Board previously approved a plat for Hillcrest Drive, a road plat for Hillcrest doesn’t need to be reviewed by the planning board prior to this item appearing before the city council. 

According to state law, the layout needs to be approved by a majority vote of councilors present at the meeting. A public hearing on this matter was held on April 14. 

Councilors, in deliberating, must consider the following factors: integration with the existing road system; easing of the city’s existing traffic; improvement to the convenience of traffic; facilitation of transportation for school children; improved accessibility to business districts and employment centers; improved accessibility for fire, police and other emergency services; whether it would benefit a significant portion or just a small fraction of the city’s tax base or year-round residents; and the anticipated frequency of road use. 

The public interest, as described above, is balanced against the burden to the city if the petition were granted. Those burdens include items such as anticipated construction and ongoing maintenance costs pertaining to the road itself, and the impact to city infrastructure due to municipal growth as a result of increased traffic on the road, according to a staff report. 

The city has to determine the value of damages in taking the right of way for the property owners who do not provide easements. A landowner dissatisfied with the layout of the road can appeal in Superior Court within 60 days. 

According to a report, the driveways for both 23 and 41 Hillcrest are on the portion of the road that’s already accepted, but 23 Hillcrest has a second driveway on the private portion. Both properties have fences near the boundary of the right-of-way for the private road, so the area needed from both properties for the proposed public highway is unbuildable — city staff recommend the council approve damages in the amount of $2,000 for each lot. 

If the offer is accepted, transfer and payment must be complete within 30 days, unless an extension is agreed upon. If the offer isn’t accepted, councilors can make a “declaration of taking” to the Board of Tax and Land Appeals, or the owner can appeal the amount to the same.