Neighborhood anger regarding a shooting range in Steep Falls could lead to a townwide firearms ordinance.

Responding to neighbors’ concerns about shooting in a Steep Falls gravel pit, the Standish Town Council will consider a firearms ordinance Tuesday that would ban the use of firearms on third-party properties in the periods between official hunting seasons.

If approved, the “Shooting Facility Ordinance” would be the town’s first regulating firearms, according to Town Manager Gordon Billington.

“You will not be able to discharge a firearm on another’s property except during hunting season,” Billington said. “It would greatly restrict the use of firearms in Standish.

“If you want to take your .22 with your son and teach him how to shoot a .22 in the woods you couldn’t do that unless you own those woods,” he added.

The ordinance comes on the heels of a petition drive organized by property owners in the Richville neighborhood, along Route 114, many of whom are outraged by the use of a large, nearby gravel pit known as Maietta’s pit as an informal shooting range for law enforcement and, in particular, recreational firearms users. The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office has used the pit as a SWAT-team training site for years.

On Nov. 12, Deb Boxer, a resident of Cole Hill Road, submitted a petition with 45 signatures calling on the town to “disallow” the continued use of the Maietta pit, owned by Maietta Enterprises of Scarborough, as a “shooting range.”

On Dec. 23, about 10 Richville property owners attended a Standish Ordinance Committee meeting, according to the committee chairman, Michael Blanck. They expressed anger regarding noise and safety issues related to shooting activities at the pit last summer, when the Saco-based firearms training company, Weaponcraft, held a number of daylong classes there in which large quantities of ammunition were discharged in rapid succession, according to Blanck. The property owners also brought pictures of a bullet lodged in the Chapman Way summer home of Maynard Jackson, which, they said came from someone shooting at the pit.

“We get a lot of out-of-towners who have shot there when they took a Weaponcraft class and so now they still continue coming there with total disregard,” Blanck said. “It sounds like a war zone, apparently. They have total disregard for anybody. It’s not very safe.”

Now, Blanck is sponsoring a firearms ordinance that would have townwide implications. According to Billington, the town is not allowed to ban activities on one site, as that would be akin to spot zoning, an illegal practice. The proposed ordinance would affect other gravel pits in town used as informal shooting ranges, as well as firearms use in general.

A draft of the proposed ordinance mandates that property owners acquire shooting-range licenses, approved by the Town Council after a public hearing. Shooting ranges would need to be sited a half-mile from any occupied existing dwellings, and noise levels would not be allowed to exceed 65 decibels, according to the draft. Each license would require the licensee to acquire $3 million in comprehensive general liability insurance. Violations of the ordinance could result in a minimum $100 fine, as well.

“In order to protect the public’s safety and welfare, it is the intent of this ordinance to prohibit the discharge of firearms other than during hunting activities, or by property owners when conducted in accordance with existing laws, or at unlicensed shooting facilities and shooting ranges and to regulate and license all shooting facilities and shooting ranges within the town,” according to the draft ordinance.

Although town officials considered holding an immediate emergency vote on the ordinance, due to the perceived urgency of the situation, they reconsidered, opting to hold a conventional legislative process instead. On Tuesday at 7 p.m., the council will conduct a first reading of the ordinance language. This will likely be followed by a public hearing at the subsequent council meeting, and then a final vote at a third council meeting.

The sudden turn of events has outraged Vincent Maietta, the owner of the Maietta pit, and Uel Gardner, Weaponcraft’s chief operating officer. They say the Richville property owners are embellishing and even fabricating horror stories in order to shut down shooting at the site and that town officials are simply playing along.

“They just want to get these voters to be happy and stop the guns,” Maietta added, referring to town officials. “There are a couple of neighbors up there that come from the inner city and aren’t used to gun noise.

“I think that it’s really harmful when people make up stories that are unsubstantiated,” Maietta added.

Maietta’s family has owned the 109-acre site since the early 1990s, and has significantly expanded gravel extraction at the site in the past two decades as part of its construction business. According to Maietta, gravel extraction has slowed considerably at the site in recent years, due to the economic slowdown. As firearms regulations have accumulated in southern Maine, the site has become increasingly attractive as a location for a wide variety of shooting-range-style activities, according to many observers. The considerable sand on site also makes it attractive, theoretically limiting the risk of bullets ricocheting off rocks.

But abutters and nearby property owners say the shooting has become intolerable, with constant noise and safety issues disrupting their weekends, scaring children and pets, and posing threats to their well-being. According to Janet Lampron, a 30-year resident of the area whose uncle, Clarence Harmon, previously owned the site, shooting activities at Maietta’s pit should be shut down completely.

“It just seems like this gravel pit has run its course and it should be shut down, (especially) when someone finds a bullet in someone’s garage, and people’s animals are afraid to be outside, and people’s kids are afraid to be outside,” Lampron said.

The arrival of Weaponcraft last summer was the last straw for many neighbors. According to Gardner, Maietta said it was OK for him to use the pit for classes. Gardner estimates that from July 1 to Sept. 3, 2014, Weaponcraft held about a dozen classes at the site. He said the company invested more than $4,000 in sand-hauling operations in order to make the site safer.

“Vinny offered it to us,” Gardner said. “We needed a better place to train. We need a place where we can shoot longer distances safely.”

Weaponcraft offers a variety of daylong training courses, some of which emulate military and law-enforcement operations. Many of the courses have trainees shoot hundreds of rounds of ammunition with handguns and rifles.

“There were people there that were shooting high-action bolt rifles, one person with an instructor, shooting every few minutes a round or two, and then there were times when there were classes with six or eight people shooting at once,” Gardner said.

In early September, the town of Standish sent Maietta a cease-and-desist order, calling on Weaponcraft to stop using the site for “recreational” purposes. According to Gardner, Weaponcraft stopped using the site following the order. Weaponcraft’s website still lists Maietta’s pit as one of its three course locations.

Standish officials are concerned that the listing is attracting out-of-town residents to the site. They said they have asked Gardner to take down the listing, and he has not complied.

“Our classes are not limited to Maine residents,” Gardner said, in response to the concerns about outsiders shooting in the pit. “How many people that are complaining about this are actually born in the state of Maine?”

According to Lester Ordway, an abutter to the pit who has lived on Richville Road since 1990, the Weaponcraft classes on weekends were intolerable. Ordway said that he has spoken with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and the State Fire Marshal’s Office – which exploded confiscated material on the site several times – about noise and safety concerns. Both law enforcements departments were responsive, he said. The Weaponcraft situation, he said, has been much worse.

“The real big issue came when Weaponcraft tried to open a school in the pit, where they were shooting up to 10,000 rounds on Saturdays and Sundays,” Ordway said. “They want to do it all the time. It was an illegal business and they got told to shut it down. They had no permits from the town to do a change-of-use in that pit.”

According to neighbors, out-of-towners and locals come to the site to shoot weapons and occasionally hunt. Maietta said he has only given permission to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and Weaponcraft to use the site. Maietta warned that the ordinance could restrict valuable sheriff’s department SWAT-team training in the pit.

“Just because they say something happened, the city council can’t just change the laws,” Maietta said.

Billington said he did not know if the proposed ordinance would prevent SWAT training at the pit. Sheriff’s Capt. Don Goulet said the department would not oppose any firearms ordinance, even if it did restrict its use of the site.

“It would have little impact,” Goulet said. “I’ve anticipated that there could be a day that shooting out of the pit is no longer allowed, and the [SWAT] team would just find a different location to do that.”

Referring to bullets hitting homes, Maietta said he was incredulous about claims that Jackson’s house on Chapman Way was shot by someone using the pit. He suggested that Jackson had shot his own house.

“Someone put a bullet in his house, in my opinion,” Maietta said.

Deputy John Cross of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office investigated the incident on Oct. 16, according to Goulet. According to Goulet, Cross found a bullet and a bullet hole on an exterior wall of Jackson’s garage facing the pit. According to Goulet, Cross could not determine the origins of the bullet hole.

“It’s not conclusive that that’s where it came from,” Goulet said. “He thinks it’s plausible that it could have come from the pit.”

According to Ordway, who also sits on the town’s Planning Board and ran for the state Legislature in November, the issue is quite “difficult” to handle, since town officials don’t want to ban traditional hunting in Standish.

“People don’t want to ban their neighbors from shooting,” Ordway said. “People want to stop the influx of out-of-towners coming here and shooting, and that’s the big issue.

“There’s no ordinances to control somebody from shooting 10,000 rounds, but if I shoot off one firecracker I can be fined $250 by town ordinance,” Ordway added.

On Oct. 16, Deputy John Cross of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office found a bullet and a bullet hole on an exterior wall of summer resident Maynard Jackson’s garage, which faces a Standish pit that has become an informal shooting range.Photo courtesy of Lester Ordway