ME - Woman facing stiff fines for building treehouse on her property
Alna woman ‘shocked’ at size of possible fine for tree house
http://www.wiscassetnewspaper.com/ar...ee-house/46966
The Alna Planning Board is recommending a $1,000 fine for a property owner with a partly built tree house near the Sheepscot River.
Selectmen have the final say on the fine that planning board members said could have been much higher for Lisa Packard, even several thousand dollars more.
State law allows for a fine of $100 to $2,500 for each day a shoreland violation continues, members said. They chose to propose a single fine.
“Considering the uproar that went up in this town, I think this is pretty light,” alternate member Jeff Spinney said Monday night.
The board voted 5-0 Monday to recommend selectmen levy the fine.
As proposed, Packard, of 91 Dock Road, would have to pay at least half the fine and might be able to work off some or all of the remaining $500, in service to the town.
Applying service toward the fine would be up to selectmen to consider, planning board members told Packard.
The minimum $500 payment stemmed from members’ estimate on the town’s costs for multiple meetings.
Packard said she had hoped for no fine; she is working to address the issue, and she pays higher taxes for shoreland property, she told planning board members.
“I guess I’m sad. I’m shocked at how steep it is,” Packard said about the fine that board members were mulling. “I made an error and I’m here and I’m following through.”
Packard questioned what problems a tree house poses for the river.
The board can’t treat a shoreland infraction differently because the structure is a tree house, Board Chairman Doug Baston told Packard.
“We can’t make qualitative judgments,” Baston said.
Board members continued to express their surprise that neither Packard, who works in environmental education, nor the carpenter building the tree house, asked the town first.
“Doing what you do for a living, it’s hard to believe that one of you didn’t at least have an inkling that you needed permission,” member Sean Day said.
“There really isn’t any reason that you shouldn’t have known that the rivers in Maine are sacrosanct,” Baston said.
Packard recently declined to tell the board who the carpenter was. (Well, good for her, at least she didn't ray him out. - AF) She has said he was a Somerville man staying in a cabin on her property to be nearer his children.
He had been building the tree house for his daughters for Christmas, she said. The use of the cabin has also come under scrutiny.
A court order issued years before Packard bought the property bars the cabin from being lived in. The carpenter is no longer staying there, Packard has said.
In a Jan. 7 letter, Alna Code Enforcement Officer Stan Waltz asks Packard to acknowledge that the cabin can only be used for sitting or reading. In a Jan. 9 response, Packard writes that it will only be used for sitting, reading, writing and resting.
Packard’s letter offers a Feb. 8 date for her to submit a site plan for tree plantings in place of dead ones that officials said were removed without the town’s permission; the tree house will come down by the same date, according to the letter.
But with this week’s snow melt, Packard told the planning board on Monday she may be able to get it down sooner.
Baston said he would meet with selectmen when they take up the planning board’s recommendation on the fine.
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Originally Posted by Anti Federalist
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