VOLUNTOWN - After years of town meetings and court proceedings surrounding a land dispute, town officials said plans are ready to move forward on the construction of a public works garage.
"This has been going on for longer than I have been on the Board of Selectmen. I hardly know where to begin," First Selectman Tracey Hanson said. "The court case was the most recent roadblock."
An amended site plan proposes a 6,000 square foot metal town garage building on 15.24 acres, including parking, a septic system, a well, fuel tanks, paving and other improvements, and a 2,400-square-foot salt shed, according to court documents.
"Right now, what they have is a shed," Hanson said. "They can’t park their trucks in it, so they’re lying on the cold ground to work on their trucks."
Hanson said the new garage will not be lavish, but rather give crews the same perks any other garage would offer such as bathrooms, showers, sleeping quarters and a place to park vehicles.
"Right now, there isn’t a bathroom at the garage - just an outhouse," she said.
The project will be funded through a $500,000 STEAP grant Voluntown received in March 2015. Hanson said construction must begin by June in order to retain the grant funding.
Copies of the plan are available at Town Hall, she said.
In July 2016, the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission approved final site designs for a public works garage on Gate Street, behind the Voluntown Elementary School bus depot. But the project stalled to a standstill after resident Ed Grenier appealed the commission’s ruling, arguing plans for the garage’s driveway infringed on his property line.
The town claimed the driveway is on its property, but Grenier said it is part of a family home at 110 Gate St., which he owns. Grenier took the issue to court, suing the Planning and Zoning Commission.
CLA Engineers of Norwich was hired to re-survey the disputed land.
The zoning dispute lasted until the end of 2017, when resolution finally came in the shape of an agreement that was first approved by residents in a vote and then by a judge.
On Oct. 26, the town held a meeting on two specifics of the settlement that required town approval - the Restrictive Covenant and the Boundary Line Agreement and Exchange of Quit Claim Deeds.
According to meeting minutes, the covenant mandates the town cannot utilize or build within a 200-foot buffer on the Beachdale Road side of the property. The covenant exists so long as Grenier, or his descendents, own the abutting residence.
The latter agreement and exchange of deeds essentially functions as a compromise between a current survey of the land, which shows the town property line going through the driveway, and a historic survey, which "shows the land differently," records said. The compromise shows the town line drawn around the perimeter of the driveway in question.
Residents approved the settlement 50-14.
Ed Grenier's lawyer, Robert Aveena, did not return a request for comment.