FREEPORT – The issue of parking at the entrances to Sayles Field, and whether a parking lot should be built to ease safety concerns, has resurfaced.

The entrance to the 70-acre property owned by Freeport Conservation Trust, a parcel that includes two miles of trails, is off Pine Street, near the intersection of Church Road and a short walk north of the four corners in South Freeport.

Al Presgraves, the Freeport town engineer, said that people who use the property park along Pine Street or South Freeport Road.

Presgraves also is the town staffer on the Traffic & Parking Committee, which addressed several parking and signs issues to the Town Council last week. The Sayles Field issue is chief among them, he said.

“The committee would agree with me that the highest priority is the Sayles Field issue,” Presgraves said. “People parking along those roads cause concerns by neighbors on Church Road on access to their driveways, and on South Freeport Road on safety.”

The committee and the council have received a six-page packet of information, complete with photographs, from residents of Church Road, a dirt road off Pine Street.

Katrina Van Dusen, executive director of Freeport Conservation Trust, said that the Sayles Field parking issue is an old one.

“They have a point,” Van Dusen said, “and other people have different perspectives. I think it’s working well, and that’s what my board thinks. It’s never an easy answer for the board. For now, we’re not inclined to put in a parking lot.”

Van Dusen said that a parking lot would be situated off the Pine Street entrance to Sayles Field.

“It would be a sizeable expense to put in and manage,” she said. “The easement allows that we can put in a parking lot, and we’ve determined that’s not really the right thing to do right now. The only place I think you can make a safety concern is parking on Pine Street.”

Van Dusen added that use of Sayles Field has declined in recent years, though some residents of South Freeport use it extensively, even in winter, when they go snowshoeing.

The Traffic & Parking Committee also is studying the need for parking, and related signs, at Antoinette Jackman Trail off Litchfield Road, Calderwood Trail off Flying Point Road, Pettingill Farm, Quarry Woods near Mast Landing School and Lower Mast Landing Road, Ridge Trail off South Freeport Road and Sandy Beach.

“The Town Council has asked the committee to prioritize concerns on trail head parks,” Presgraves said.