FARMINGTON – A question of ownership and responsibility for the Schoolhouse Road bridge in Madrid Township was addressed during the Franklin County Commissioners meeting Tuesday afternoon.
Jo Richmond, who lives on Schoolhouse Road beyond the bridge, approached the commissioners with renewed concerns about the safety of the bridge, saying that the condition has worsened after the floods and rain this summer.
When the Town of Madrid de-organized or disincorporated in 2000, it became a township and came under the responsibility of Franklin County. This included the ownership of the town’s assets. While Richmond said the town owned the bridge on Schoolhouse Road and therefore the county is responsible for repairs and maintenance, the county said that the town never formally took ownership of the bridge and thus the county has no responsibility to conduct repairs.
In October 2021, the Franklin County Commissioners voted to resurface the bridge using five timber mats the county already owned and one additional mat that would be purchased, with the understanding that the residents would then take ownership and responsibility of the bridge.
This work did not happen, Richmond said.
In 2021, road commissioner Mike Pond researched the bridge and could find no documentation on who owned the bridge. It is not in the Maine Department of Transportation list of bridges and is not inspected regularly by MaineDOT, and there are very few records available for Madrid as the town office records burned in the 90s.
In June 2022, the commissioners were advised not to spend funds on the bridge as they could not prove the county owned the bridge.
During the meeting Tuesday, October 3, Jeff Wing, a former selectman of Madrid before the town was disincorporated, said that the bridge was on town property. The deed for the schoolhouse lot and the town garage property extends to the center of the stream the bridge crosses, Wing said, so the town owned at least half of the bridge. Therefore, it should have been handed over to the county in the disincorporation process.
Richmond said she has spoken with two contractors who were paid by the county to perform repairs on the Schoolhouse Road bridge after the town was disincorporated.
County administrator Amy Bernard said she looked through the Madrid town reports from 1930 to 2000 and could find no records that the town owned the bridge. She said there is a procedure that towns must follow to have the town residents, which is the local legislative body, accept responsibility for assets and infrastructure such as roads and bridges. She can find no evidence that this procedure was followed in Madrid with regards to the Schoolhouse Road bridge.
Pond reiterated that the state records do not have the Schoolhouse Road bridge on the MaineDOT list of bridges.
In the town meeting warrant for 1983, which Bernard referenced, the voters are asked to see what action the town will take in regard to discontinuing the maintenance of several roads. This article addressed four roads including “the road running Westerly from Reeds Mills Road past the Town Garage.”
Bernard said the town voted to discontinue the road beyond the town garage.
In the early 90s, Madrid named all of their roads. Bernard said the town established Schoolhouse Road as the road from Reeds Mill Road to the town garage driveway. This is only a couple hundred feet.
Bernard said she spoke with the State Unorganized Territories administrator who said there are notes from the previous UT administrator that reference a bridge on the de-organization plan that was not a town bridge and which does not have a MaineDOT number. Bernard believes this is the Schoolhouse Road bridge.
Richmond brought up FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) repairs to the Schoolhouse Road bridge in 1998 and asked who organized those repairs if the bridge was not owned by the town.
Bernard said she went to the Franklin County Emergency Management Agency for those records and said that to their knowledge, the bridge was never fixed with FEMA funds. She added that the repairs reported in 1998 were after the town office records burned, so if the town went to FEMA and said that the bridge was one of the town assets, there were not a lot of ways to verify that information without the town records. She would imagine FEMA and the Town of Madrid would try to ‘do the right thing’ by the residents on that road.
“I think it just shows that it’s a comedy of errors in the past,” Commissioner Terry Brann said. He said that when he first became a commissioner he was called by people from Madrid. “I was told that I needed to be educated on how they did things in Madrid. They did them differently. So I don’t have a lot of faith in some of the people that you had information from.”
Richmond presented the commissioners with information from LURC, the state’s Land Use Regulatory Commission or Land Use Planning Commission. This documentation apparently references the Schoolhouse Road bridge.
Commissioner Lance Harvell reviewed this document and said while the document said the bridge was the county’s, the document appeared to be a comprehensive plan, not the de-organization plan or a legislative document.
Bernard said that the bridge has never been inspected by the state and has not been given a MaineDOT number. While the town listed the bridge as an asset, she believes the correct procedures were not followed to accept the road in town meeting; because the warrant from the 80s shows the town discontinued the road beyond the town garage, the town did not have ownership of the bridge and therefore the county does not have ownership now.
“I’m baffled by the fact that no matter what, the bridge is hooked to town property,” Wing said. “It tells me that it has to be town property, doesn’t it? Is the schoolhouse town property, sitting on that lot? It’s physically on the lot, the bridge is physically on the lot.”
The commissioners voted unanimously to confirm that the Schoolhouse Road bridge is not and never had been county property.
In other business, the commissioners set two public hearings to take place at the November 7 meeting; the first is for TIF amendments and the second is for the UT budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
This meeting was recorded by Mt. Blue TV and is available for viewing online at MtBlueTV.org
