Ogunquit News
Marginal Way Committee sets boundaries
By C. Ayn Douglass
OGUNQUIT - The hot potato issue of encroachments on Marginal Way is about to be tossed back to the Board of Selectmen by the Marginal Way Committee as a result of its Dec. 7 meeting at Dunaway Center.On Nov. 21, selectmen charged the committee to work out an agreement with one of the Marginal Way abutters to find a satisfactory solution to encroachments such as plantings and stonework on the Levy property that spill over onto Marginal Way.
The selectmen's vote was moved by Donato Tramuto and was supported 3-2. Tramuto and fellow board members Jackie Bevins and Jon Speers vote in favor, with Selectman John Abbott and Chairman John Miller voting against it.
At their meeting last Thursday, Dec. 7, Marginal Way Committee members said they believed they had made clear what their expectations were of the Levys by restoring the landscape to its original plantings and removing any steps, rocks or manufactured surfaces to form pathways along Marginal Way or access paths. The hemlock trees that the Levys planted also need to be removed and original plant varieties of viburnum need to be replaced to help prevent erosion.
The members did not believe it was their responsibility, as a committee, to hammer out an agreement with the Levys or any other violator.
"People are doing things that they think are enhancing their property and beautifying Marginal Way. In actuality, Marginal Way is supposed to be a wild ocean view and a protected buffer," Chairwoman Helen Horn said at the meeting. "Clearly, there's still an issue of town property and private property. We need to reaffirm what we decided two months ago - that everything goes back to the original and everyone should comply."
Bevins, who was at the meeting as a liaison from the Board of Selectmen, said all encroachments must be dealt with.
"It's a gray area and it will come back to you year after year," she said. "You've got to get these back or you're not going to have a Marginal Way."
The committee charged Loring DeAgazio with writing recommendations to the selectmen that will include stipulations specific to the Levy property as well as to other abutters who encroaching upon Marginal Way.
The recommendations include the removal of hemlock on the Levy property with the replacement of viburnum; keeping the pathways, but no stone or gravel will be allowed; reaffirming that maintenance of town property - Marginal Way - is the town's responsibility; rescinding an agreement with another abutting property for a wall and that the wall must be removed, and that no additional encroachment on Marginal Way will be allowed.
The Marginal Way Committee will present the recommendations to the Board of Selectmen at its next meeting, scheduled for this Tuesday, Dec. 19. It is the committee's belief that enforcement of their recommendations rests squarely with the selectmen and the Code Enforcement Office.
"Fourteen people have encroached on town property," committee member Gordon Lewis said. "If we break down Marginal Way and each member patrols a section of it and finds a problem, we need to bring it to the Code Enforcement Office."
