ROME — The Board of Selectmen is asking the Planning Board to reconsider a fine it imposed on a contractor who rebuilt a camp too close to the shoreline of Great Pond and to require the building be moved back instead.
Selectmen on Monday voted unanimously to send the penalty of a fine on G&L Contracting, of Belgrade, back to the Planning Board.
Town officials said the contractor rebuilt a camp on South Mountain Road in violation of the town’s shore land zoning ordinance without informing town officials.
The Planning Board is scheduled to take up the issue on Monday.
Selectmen and Planning Board members don’t want to set a precedent that might open the door for property owners to build or renovate in violation of the ordinance, then pay town fines as part of the price of doing business.
In March, the Planning Board issued a permit to G&L to renovate a camp at 10 South Mountain Road. The camp is 30 feet from the shoreline, but was grandfathered so it did not violate the ordinance, which requires new construction to be at least 100 feet away from the shore.
According to the ordinance, if more than 50 percent of a structure is damaged, destroyed or moved, a new structure must be moved back from the shoreline to the most practical extent determined by the Planning Board.
In early December, Code Enforcement Officer Andrew Marble reviewed the building after hearing reports it may be violating the ordinance. He found that the camp had been almost entirely rebuilt. Although the camp had the same footprint, the construction violated the ordinance. No town official was notified about the extent of the renovation.
A phone message left at G&L’s Belgrade Lakes office was not returned Tuesday.
After a site visit last week, the Planning Board voted 3-2 to revise the building permit with the condition that G&L pay a fine it negotiated with the selectmen, Marble said Tuesday.
But at its meeting Monday, the three selectmen voted to send the issue back to the Planning Board to reconsider.
Instead of imposing a fine, the selectmen want the building to be moved back from the waterfront, Selectman Richard LaBelle said in an interview Tuesday.
“The position of the Board of Selectmen is that there needs to be some corrective action rather than just some punitive action,” LaBelle said. The contractors discovered extensive mold in the camp when they started work and ended up doing more work than expected, he said.
Allowing the property owner to keep the building where it was and pay a fine could set a precedent that would put a “price tag” on building against the town’s shore land zoning rules, LaBelle said.
“The ordinance is not there to punish people. It is there to ensure compliance,” he said.
Planning Board Chairman Dick Greenan said Tuesday that there is enough room that the camp could have been moved farther away from the shore, but taking it to the 100-foot threshold would involve taking down too many trees that could damage the shoreline.
G&L Contracting is a reputable firm that the Planning Board has worked with before on different projects, and Greenan isn’t sure why the builders didn’t contact the town when it found problems with the building and realized they would have to remove more than half of it.
Planning Board members, like the selectmen, want to prevent a situation in which people include a probable fine into the cost of building or renovating a camp that violates shore land zoning, Greenan said. He cited communities on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire where that practice is common.
“That’s the thing we want to avoid over here,” Greenan said.
Because the selectmen voted not to impose a fine, the applicant can’t meet a condition of the permit, Marble said Tuesday.
The Planning Board can decide to revisit the permit and fine on Monday, or the issue may be referred to the Rome Board of Appeals, he said.
Peter McGuire — 861-9239
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