
Gorham sisters Maureen Wood, pictured in the foreground, with Christina Mitchell standing behind her. Contributed / Christina Mitchell
A Gorham woman has filed a lawsuit naming the town of Gorham as defendant over town denial of a home building permit for her family’s County Road property involving her wheelchair-bound sister.
Christina Mitchell, the caregiver for her disabled sister, Maureen Wood, 59, wants to build a new home on the 14 acres of their Gorham property to better accommodate her sister.
Mitchell said the family’s home at 34 County Road was sold in December and another family is now living in it. Mitchell and her sister are now residing in Jackman.
Court documents say that before submitting a building permit application “town officials led (Mitchell) to believe that the application would be approved.”
The town’s code enforcement office denied Mitchell a permit in October and the denial was upheld by the town’s Board of Appeals in a divided 4-2 vote last month. The matter involves a contract zoning agreement on the property the sisters’ mother signed several years ago.
“I’m extremely disappointed in a town we had a business in since 1976,” Mitchell, owner of a property management business, recently told the American Journal.
Mitchell’s attorney, Daniel Kramer of the Troubh Heisler law firm in Scarborough, filed a lawsuit for Mitchell Jan. 14 in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland.
Town Manager Ephrem Paraschak did not return an American Journal email request on Jan. 27 seeking comment about the lawsuit by the paper’s deadline Wednesday.
Mitchell, trustee of the C.A. Mitchell Trust, wants a residence on the the first floor of a home with a business on the second floor to avoid installing an elevator costing, the lawsuit says, “up to $150,000 as well as a back-up generator in the amount of $20,000 in order for her handicapped sister to access the residence.”
The court documents reveal the town cited a contract zone on the property Gorham granted to Carol A. Wood, the sisters’ mother, in 2012 that only allows a second-floor residence above a business in a mixed use building. The Appeals Board concluded, according to court documents, a “single-family dwelling is not permitted under the contract zoning agreement.”
But Mitchell’s lawsuit appears to challenge the legality of the contract zone.
“The petitioner submits that the contract zoning agreement is invalid under the Maine Human Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act because said contract zoning agreement has a discriminatory effect on a protected class, i.e. handicapped persons.”
It further says, “The failure to include a reasonable accommodation or exception in the contract zoning agreement for handicapped persons denies the petitioner of due process of law and equal protection of the law under both the Constitution of the United States and that of the state of Maine.”
The lawsuit seeks a “reversal or modification” of the town’s decision and further relief as the court deems “just and appropriate.”
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