Board votes to remove unsafe building

Photo: Kayla Collins

DANGEROUS — An uninhabited trailer at 69 Morse Hill that has been deemed a dangerous building both by the selectmen and attorney Geoff Hole will be dismantled and removed from the property, selectmen decided during a public hearing November 8. 

WEST PARIS —  The board of selectmen at its November 8 meeting voted to hire out a contractor to demolish a trailer at 69 Morse Hill Road that has been deemed by an attorney as a "dangerous building."  

A public hearing opened at 5:15 p.m., pursuant to the dangerous building statute, during the regularly scheduled selectmen's meeting. 

The owners, Erica Johnson and her brother Richard Labay, Jr., though invited to the hearing, were not present. 

The board reviewed pictures and documentation of the building that dated back to February, 2012. 

"The trailer had been like that, I believe, since the summer of 2011," said Town Manager John White. The trailer was built in 1978. 

White said for about a year, he was told by the landowners the trailer would be dismantled and removed from the property, but he reported during the meeting that the trailer was still there. 

The building is in violation of the town's subdivision ordinance. 

Once the building is removed, selectmen said they will file a lien against the property. 

"I sent her a letter in April ... and told her face to face that it had to go A.S.A.P," White told the selectmen. 

He said he had also sent Johnson a letter in June, in July, and again in October instructing her to remove the trailer. 

The letter stated that if she neglected to remove it from the property the town would have no other option than to commence legal action and impose a fine of $100 a day, up to $2,500. 

Town attorney Geoff Hole of Portland law firm Bernstein Shur issued a notice for a dangerous building in October. 

"If anything, it [the trailer] is more of a danger now than it was in February because it is open and exposed," said White. Selectmen worried that children or animals would get inside the trailer when the landowners aren't home. 

Selectmen voted to hire someone to demolish the trailer and remove it from the property. They discussed perhaps using the ABC dumpster that has been sitting on the property for two years to haul away the debris.  

"We got to do what we go to do," said Selectman Wade Rainey. 

In other news, the board: 

• Voted to send out a supplemental tax bill for a building not assessed on Tax Map 17, Lot 39-11, owned by John and Susan Roberts. 

• Reported that the next selectmen meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 21 at 5 p.m., because of the Thanksgiving holiday. 

• Reported that 888 citizens of West Paris, about 75 percent, voted in the Presidential Election on November 6.