Hillcrest Drive laid out as public highway, with all but 2 residents providing easements

LACONIA — City councilors voted unanimously in favor of laying out Hillcrest Drive as a public highway at their meeting on Monday night. 

City staff received a petition to lay out Hillcrest as a public highway. The majority of property owners provided necessary easements to accept the private sections of Hillcrest as public, according to a staff report, but two property owners who abut the private sections of Hillcrest have not. 

Because the planning department had previously approved a plat for Hillcrest, a road plat for Hillcrest doesn’t need to be reviewed by the planning board prior to coming before city councilors.

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

“This is a project that has been going on for a while, originally there was a request and an indication by the council to want to make this a public way as opposed to private,” City Manager Kirk Beattie said Monday night. “Historically, the policy had always been, before you would be willing to even entertain it, we had to have 100% of the abutters say that they would approve that if it moved forward. This street was not one that we could get 100% on, we went back ... after a series of public hearings, you guys made the decision that we would entertain this if we had a majority of abutters at least approving to move forward, give us the easements to want to move forward on this.”

The city is required to determine the amount of damages to be paid for taking the right of way for those property owners who didn’t provide easements. A dissatisfied landowner who opposes the layout of the road has the right to appeal in Belknap County Superior Court within 60 days.

“We’ve looked at it based on projects that we’ve recently done, and we’ve looked at it based off of what the value of the property is that’s adjoining that piece of property,” Public Works Director Wes Anderson said Monday. “The adjoining properties, for just that little piece that’s underneath the road and in the right of way, was in the neighborhood of $100,000 or more. On Academy Street, we had a small section that we needed to take to make a permanent easement for the purpose of new bridge construction. During that process we determined that the value of that was less than $500, but the state’s guidance is they won’t do less than $1,000.”

When looking through the process and because all of the relevant land is beneath a paved road or adjoining it in the right of way, and it's not buildable, they made the decision to double what the typical lowest state value, coming to $2,000.

The city assessed damages in the amount of $2,000 to George Spencer and the Breault Family Revocable Trust in taking the property for the road. 

“As far as Hillcrest Drive goes, part of it is already a public road,” Ward 6 Councilor Tony Felch said. “The two people that did not give easements, their driveways are on the side that [is] already a public road, so they don’t have anything to gain or lose by not having it on their side lots.” 

Scott Mowery of Hillcrest Drive told councilors he’s lived on the road since 1998, and would like to see it laid out as a public highway. 

“The city goes down there twice a day,” Mowery said. “I’m not sure what the reason, why you would not want to take this over, because you’ve got to plow half of it anyways. Just back maybe 20 years ago, they put water lines in there and now we have 12 inverted speed bumps in there — it controls the speed limit, but it doesn’t do anything for the damage to the vehicles.” 

Jeff Derynioski, also of Hillcrest, told councilors he too supports laying it out as a public highway.

“We have several older couples that I think would benefit greatly from this, not having to worry about whether the roads are going to be paved, whether the roads are going to be plowed, whether trash is going to be picked up.”