(May 18, 2017) The Town of Berlin will not pursue land records confirming it owns part Harrison Avenue north of the Adkins Company, Town Administrator Laura Allen said last Thursday.
Representatives from the Adkins Company expressed concerns over a truck ban related to planned Baker Street repairs during a recent Town Council meeting. If Baker Street is closed to trucks, they said, it would affect the business because they believed the Harrison family owned a portion of Harrison Avenue.
All but about 60 feet of Adkins land is next to Harrison Avenue and the company owns a part of the road, which it blocked from public use last June in a dispute with the town.
Town officials, however, said the company has access in and out of the north end because the town owned that section.
“My sense was, from the meeting, that the council didn’t want the town attorney or town staff to dig into that any longer,” Allen said. “They’ve approved the ordinance and they’ve approved the resolution, so they’ve taken steps to do what they need to do if they want to ban Baker Street [from heavy truck traffic].”
She said the ban would go into effect 20 days after it was passed on May 8.
“We already have the signs, we just haven’t put them up yet, because we’re waiting for the resolution and ordinance process to work itself through,” Allen said.
Repairs of Baker Street should begin during the next several months, once the town passes the fiscal year 2018 budget. A public hearing and a vote on the budget were scheduled for June 12.
Elsewhere in Berlin, Allen said the town is running into some challenges associated with construction on West Street.
“There’s concrete in part of the road and concrete not in part of the road, and apparently concrete and pavement interact differently,” she said. “We’re trying to figure out a way to pave the road so it has a tight final product even though we’ve sort of gone in and made these little patchy cuts. We’re working on that.”
Allen said stormwater upgrades on Williams Street and on Graham, Grice and Nelson streets “should be going out to bid relatively quickly.”
“The challenge we’re having there is getting State Highway approval in some of the things we want to do,” she said. “It’s just a difference of opinion in terms of how to approach the project.”