Editor’s note: This article is by Maggie Cassidy, of the Valley News in which it was first published May 20, 2015.
[T]HETFORD — The three towns along Lake Fairlee’s border have green-lighted an $850,000 project to replace its ailing dam and a mechanism to share in its control.
Meanwhile, the Maine resident who owns the dam and a camp house on top of it — and who needs to sign the dam over to Thetford, Fairlee and West Fairlee for construction to take place this summer — said he’s leaning toward doing so.
“More than likely,” Bryan Gregory said Tuesday night, when asked whether he would agree to the project.
Engineers who studied the dam have said it’s not a matter of whether it will fail, but when. Town officials who have been collaborating for more than three years said the issue came down to protecting the tax base: If the dam failed, the water line receded and lakefront property values suffered, they said, then non-lakefront homeowners would pay for the difference in the grand lists.
Voters appeared to heed those predictions on Tuesday, with bond shares passing 341-96 in Thetford, 120-38 in Fairlee and 66-12 in West Fairlee, and the so-called “interlocal agreement” for the towns to share in ownership of the dam — assuming Gregory allows it — passing with similar numbers.
Many voters outside the polls also said they wanted to protect a cherished resource that is a staple of the region.
“I’d hate to see the lake not be there at the size it is now,” Thetford resident Janice Robinson said as she walked back to her car after voting in favor of the project Tuesday afternoon.
Robinson said she doesn’t like increasing taxes and she longs for the days when there was greater public access on the lake. But she considered property owners, lake goers and others in making her vote.
“I don’t want to see that dam go out and look at all the people it would hurt,” she said.
In West Fairlee, yes-voter Geoffrey Gardner said the project was an uncommon and welcome example of ecological and economical interests aligning, while Fairlee’s Rick Senn, who lives on Lake Morey, said it was better to have a small increase in taxes now as opposed to a “burden unplanned” if the dam fails later.
Others were not convinced. Thetford resident Ehrhard Frost, who voted against the project, said the towns’ premise for the impact on the tax rates and the overall benefits to residents included too many uncertain variables. Officials have said lakefront property values could drop about 20 to 25 percent or more if the dam failed and that the effect would be felt “in perpetuity,” but Frost said the situation could stabilize more quickly than the 20-year bond period.
Frost also believed that lakefront property owners should pay a greater share of the project than the rest of the townspeople and noted that if the dam failed, the lake would remain, albeit changed.
“It’s not going away,” he said.
The towns’ shares of the $850,000 project were divided based on equalized values of lakefront property. Including principal and interest, that makes Thetford’s bond about $482,000, Fairlee’s about $373,000 and West Fairlee’s about $241,000.
Fairlee Selectboard Chairman Frank J. Barrett Jr., who has also chaired the Tri-Town Committee made up of residents studying the issue, attributed the overwhelming affirmative vote to strong collaboration among the three towns and to messaging that focused on direct tax impacts as opposed to more intangible concepts like ecology or the broader regional economy.
“Everyone kept their eye on the ball,” he said.
Barrett also said it’s a “bad road to go down” that presumed “rich people” who live on the lake should carry the burden of fixing the dam. He was proud, he said, “that the three towns took the position that this is a shared responsibility for all of us.”
Several voters expressed similar sentiments outside the polls on Tuesday, noting that property owners with more expensive homes are already paying a greater sum in property taxes and that many in the three towns — and beyond — use or benefit from the lake.
At the lake Tuesday afternoon, Topsham resident Nathan Rollins counted himself among them. He was there fishing with his roommates Marvin Durkee and Courtney Pulsifer, who is also his fiancee, and said he has been coming to the area to fish there for at least a decade.
“If I had a vote in it, I definitely would be willing to pay that extra if it means to go and fix the dam,” Rollins said.
Kingsbury Companies LLC of Waitsfield, Vermont, is expected to start mobilizing in late June, with construction beginning in earnest around early July.
