FREEPORT — Town officials have hired a professional facilitator to moderate tonight’s meeting with a citizens group that’s concerned about local planning and development practices, including a proposal to build an indoor soccer stadium on town land in a rural residential area.

Members of the Save Our Neighborhoods Coalition said they will attend the meeting but won’t participate in the panel discussion and narrow agenda that the Town Council has planned for the workshop at 6:30 p.m.

The two-hour meeting will focus on the proposal by Seacoast United Maine to build an indoor-outdoor soccer complex on town-owned land near Hedgehog Mountain. Council Chairman Jim Cassida asked the coalition to choose as many as seven members to represent it in a discussion with the seven-member council.

“If they’re going to set it up as a debate, that’s not going to happen because we don’t agree on the subject of the debate,” said Lucy Lloyd, spokeswoman for the coalition. “Why are they hiring a facilitator to talk with residents? They’ve set the agenda. It’s their workshop. We’ll go and hear what they have to say. There won’t be any need for a facilitator.”

Cassida and Town Manager Dale Olmstead didn’t respond to calls Monday to answer questions about tonight’s workshop, including the cost of hiring Lesa Andreasen of Freeport to moderate the meeting at the community center on Depot Street.

The coalition had asked to discuss broader concerns, Lloyd said, such as preserving zoning that prevents commercial development in residential neighborhoods, defining public-land use policies and increasing public participation in land-use planning.

The council wanted to limit tonight’s workshop to the Seacoast United proposal in an effort to keep the meeting focused, Cassida said in an email to Lloyd.

Only the seven selected coalition members would be allowed to speak to councilors, and questions would be “pre-defined,” but audience members would be allowed to submit additional questions on index cards, Cassida said in an email to Olmstead.

Lloyd noted that the council has a workshop scheduled with Seacoast United representatives on Jan. 17 to discuss the status of their proposal.

The council has “penciled in” another workshop with the coalition on Jan. 24 and will schedule additional sessions, if needed, to address the group’s broader concerns, Cassida wrote in an email to councilors.

The coalition organized in November and gathered 200 signatures in December to oppose the council’s support for the soccer club’s proposal. However, the coalition’s concerns date back years, Lloyd said.

On Monday, Cassida distributed a detailed timeline, compiled by a town administrator, that starts with the council’s decision in December 2008 to spend $8,850 on a study of needs for athletic fields. It lists dozens of public and private field-related meetings through 2011 that involved town councilors and Freeport Economic Development Corp. board members.

The council decided in April to give 12 acres near the Pownal Road fields to the soccer club, where it plans two outdoor soccer fields and an indoor arena. In exchange for the $300,000 parcel, the town would get some public use of the $4 million complex.

At the same time, the council decided to buy 37 acres on Hunter Road with $2.3 million in surplus funds. Many coalition members say the decision on such a large expenditure should have been made in a townwide referendum.

Since then, a group of business owners and residents known as Freeport Fields and Trails has developed several fields on the Hunter Road property, which is now part of a 250-acre tract of town-owned land between Hunter and Pownal roads.

In November, the Planning Board recommended that the council reject zoning changes needed to build the soccer complex in a rural residential district, where the facility would draw more than 100 cars per hour during peak use.

In recent weeks, Seacoast United has started looking at other potential sites for a soccer complex in Freeport and other towns, though the club remains primarily interested in the property near Hedgehog Mountain, said spokesman Mike Healy.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at: kbouchard@pressherald.com

 

Copy the Story Link