After a 3-2 planning board vote on Zoom Thursday night, Dec. 10, if he gets any other agencies’ permits he needs, Alna’s Jeff Spinney can roll a mat down to the Sheepscot River as a boat ramp; he can also replace some earth with gravel. But with his previous ramp request headed for mediation Dec. 16, he was not sure what project he will choose for his Golden Ridge Road property.

“I’ve got multiple things going on and I’m going to see them probably through to the end on all aspects, and then evaluate what’s the best thing to do. And if the other items drag out for a long time, then I can always fall back to this (mat) option while I’m battling with the others,” Spinney said in a phone interview minutes after the vote. He will also look at which items need Maine Department of Environmental Protection or other approval. And he noted, abutters who opposed his latest proposal to the planning board can appeal Thursday’s outcome. “I’m not foolish enough to think that they’re going to accept the answer.”

Second Selectman Doug Baston told Wiscasset Newspaper Friday morning, the town had not received word of an appeal, but he would be surprised if there is not one, given “the volleyball that this thing has turned into.”

In the post-meeting interview, Spinney reiterated the roll-out ramp was not his first choice. “But it will do as a temporary choice, while I’m dealing with the other issues.”

In the meeting, member Beth Whitney, part of the majority vote for the proposal, said she preferred the prior one and hopes it succeeds in mediation.

Board chair Jim Amaral’s suggested conditions on the latest application’s approval, involving access for residents and power limits on boat motors, did not take with the board. Nor did his suggestion to have, at most, three boats in the water at once. Members saw no way to enforce it.  

“Let’s count that as another bad idea on my part,” Amaral said.

On the public access idea, members and Spinney, past chair, raised liability and other issues. And Spinney said he makes “a good will effort to be inclusive.”

Whitney, Taylor McGraw and Joel Verney passed the proposal. Amaral and Laurie Hiestand dissented on that and on some of the lead-up votes on standards the proposal had to meet.

Hiestand said the replaced earth and the mat over it make a structure – something that holds something else up, she said. Verney countered, that would make a tarp on a lawn a structure if driven over. And Whitney said mud is not a structure unless it is made into bricks and used to build something.

That part of the ordinance can be read multiple ways, McGraw said. 

Members agreed 5-0 the proposal does not interfere with a beach or harm habitat, and minimizes impact on fisheries.

Amaral again wondered if a smaller mat would work. “They wouldn’t make a ramp that would be too small to be usable,” he said. Bigger protects the land better, Verney said. Spinney said, according to the maker, the bigger one is better for mud and silt.

Members said if the DEP or other agencies reject the proposal over erosion or aesthetics, that would nullify the local approval.

Resident Cathy Johnson publicly opposed the rejected proposal and the new one the board passed. She commented via email Friday, “I am very disappointed in the majority of the planning board ... This decision threatens this pristine stretch of the Sheepscot River. But there remain many ways to stop this project and I remain hopeful that this project will never be constructed and the river will remain sacrosanct.”

The board will vote Jan. 5 on a fact-finding document Amaral drafts in connection with the approval.