Alna’s Spinney ramp issue continues

Alna plans to go to court over Jeff Spinney’s Sheepscot River ramp if he does not remove it. A town attorney said Dec. 29, last year’s appeals board decision requires removal. Spinney’s lawyer Kristin Collins told Wiscasset Newspaper Dec. 31, “to undo the work now would cause significant erosion problems.”

In an email to Collins Dec. 29, town attorney David Kallin rejects the terms of a proposed deal. One Spinney and selectmen reached last January allowed the project. Then in March the town’s appeals board reversed the planning board’s Dec. 10, 2020 approval, according to Kallin’s Nov. 10, 2021 notice to Collins.

The January 2021 deal did not and could not affect the appeals, still underway then, Kallin wrote. The notice called for removing the ramp by Dec. 10 and, if the matter is not resolved, he will go to Maine District Court as part of the enforcement selectmen authorized Sept. 15.

Then in the Dec. 29 email, Kallin told Collins he expects “to progress to (court) early in the new year, unless or until you’re able to (show) the site has been restored to its pre-permit condition.”

Collins told Wiscasset Newspaper in an email response to questions, “We are of course going to vigorously defend any enforcement action.” Besides the issues she is raising of erosion, the January 2021 agreement and a zoning board member’s non-residency, Collins argued the ramp has proven not to be “the big deal certain residents made it out to be, and it is time for the selectmen to move on to more important things.”

Also commenting Dec. 31, Spinney, a past planning board chair, questioned the timing of the rejection of the proposed updated agreement he said had been underway “for some time.” Ed Pentaleri, one of the appellants in the appeals board matter, was elected first selectman Dec. 14. “(With) the addition of Pentaleri to the (select) board ... this seems to have taken a new turn” and seems like a “personal vendetta,” Spinney said.

It is not, nor has the matter taken a new turn since the election, according to Pentaleri. Responding to questions via email Jan. 1, he said Collins on Dec. 10 – the town’s deadline for the ramp’s removal – asked for more time to submit a proposal; Kallin got Collins’ proposal Dec. 17; and selectmen saw it Dec. 20. “Under the circumstances, it's inaccurate to suggest that there had been any active work toward a compromise, or that Spinney's delay in responding to the notice of violation somehow reflects a vendetta by me,” Pentaleri wrote.

He added, the ramp matter is administrative and is in town counsel’s hands, as selectmen authorized Sept. 15.