The Freedom Select Board has unanimously rejected an agreement intended to resolve an abandoned road dispute by settling a lawsuit that since mid-2024 has cost taxpayers $30,200 in legal expenses.
With their vote, the three municipal officers ignored their attorney’s advice to sign a proposed Consent Decree and honored the will of the majority of the 70 residents (about 10% of the town’s population) who spoke against the agreement at the Select Board meeting and hearing Feb. 28. The board also received a petition signed by 75 residents urging rejection.
The dispute over public access to Beaver Ridge Road has divided Freedom and cast a pall over town business for the better part of two years, even leading to the recall of former Select Board member Heather Donahue.
More than a dozen of those present urged the Select Board to accept the decree. One woman, gesturing toward the audience, said, “This is not the town of Freedom,” urging the Select Board to schedule a referendum on the Consent Decree so that all citizens would have an opportunity to weigh in. Letters from another dozen residents, including and one signed by 12 townspeople, supported the decree. Another speaker noted that the board could reject, amend or approve the Consent Decree. But the only motion offered up was to “deny” it.
Select Board Chair Laura Greeley later told the Midcoast Villager that the board members had agreed in advance to support what the majority of residents wanted. “I believe the people made it clear that they weren’t interested in a Consent Decree, but rather the finality of a court ruling,” she said.
The dispute is now headed to trial in Waldo County Superior Court in Belfast. According to a scheduling order from the court, the parties to the lawsuit — members of the Hadyniak family and the town of Freedom — are expected to designate expert witnesses by March 17 and conclude discovery by June 17. Meanwhile, the town has a proposed agreement with Gartley & Dorsky Engineering and Surveying with an $8,000 retainer for a historic survey.
Town attorney Bill Kelly opened the 10 a.m. meeting Saturday in the Mount View High School auditorium with background on the dispute and an explanation of how it reached a point at which Justice Patrick Larson last fall ordered the parties to settle it. The court-ordered mediation that followed was conducted by attorney and mediator Durwood Parkinson.
The draft Consent Decree, Kelly said, represented an effort to resolve confusing, conflicting and ambiguous language in town records and arrive at an agreement that would be in the best interests of the town. With the agreement, “we eliminate the risk of a trial and get a definite result,” Kelly said, noting that a judge could rule in a less favorable way for the town.
He also explained that under Maine law, public roads are often not owned by the town: 99% of the time, he said, the roads are owned by the abutters along both sides of the road. And the Superior Court has jurisdiction over those roads.
The proposed Consent Decree would have granted a 15-foot-wide public easement down the center of the road and laid out rules for its public use. Kelly explained that some of the language in the decree — which residents later in the meeting said they found objectionable — resulted from the hostility openly displayed in the town over the road issue.
The biggest sticking points appeared to be: restrictions against the use of ATVs and snowmobiles along the 1.5-mile disputed section of Beaver Ridge Road; prohibitions against loud electronics (e.g., boom boxes); no use of the road after dark except with permission; a requirement to pick up after dogs and horses; and a prohibition on parking, which was seen as a particular problem for anyone with mobility issues who wished to drive to the area and walk along the road.
Lynn Hadyniak said her family, which moved to Freedom 30 years ago, built the section of Beaver Ridge Road that serves their property, and installed the power lines. Her husband has maintained it, plowing it in winter, she said. Catherine Hadyniak pointed out that existing state law already prohibits snowmobiles within 200 feet of a dwelling and on privately maintained roads, which would outlaw snowmobile use on the road in any case.
A number of those who spoke, many of whom said they had researched the road issues, presented their own views of the history of the road and laws pertaining to the dispute. They maintained that it is a public way.
Still others displayed open hostility toward the Hadyniak family because they are “from away.” Tyler Hadyniak and his twin brother Kyle were 4 when they were brought to Freedom 30 years ago by their parents, Chuck and Lynn Hadyniak, with their grandparents, Sallyann and Charles “Wassey” Hadyniak. Tyler, now an attorney, represents his family in the lawsuit against the town.
After a number of disparaging comments from townspeople about the Hadyniaks, Steve Bennett rose to say he wanted to dispel a rumor: He’d been asked about “a family from New Jersey who were trying to steal our road.” He said, “They’re not from New Jersey. They’re from Freedom.”
About the road issues, Bennett noted that it would be dangerous to have motorized vehicles and pedestrians both using the road and said he found the Consent Decree to be “a good compromise.”
Greeley said again during the meeting that she would not sign the Consent Decree if it retained a clause acknowledging that the Hadyniaks “acted reasonably and in good faith … when they posted the disputed portion of the road as private and forbade entry by others.” During the meeting she claimed that Tyler Hadyniak told her after a Planning Board meeting that the Select Board “could save years of legal fees and years of litigation by giving this road to us,” which he denies.
Hadyniak said he did mention to Greeley that other towns have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on abandoned road cases — usually because they are trying to get a road declared abandoned (the opposite of this case) because that would save the town considerable money on road maintenance.
