Before the Selectboard upgrades a third of a mile of Class 4 road, it owes the town a clear answer to a simple question — what makes this stretch unique?
Vermont law says little about how a town reclassifies any of its roads. The single requirement in statute, once a town has decided to act, sits in Title 19, Chapter 7, § 11(b):
"...the selectboard may order that the petitioner bear the cost of upgrading a class 4 town highway to the class 3 town highway standards established in subdivision 302(a)(3)(B) of this title. Nothing in this section shall be construed to require a town to maintain a class 4 highway or to upgrade a highway from class 4 to class 3. (Added 1985, No. 269 (Adj. Sess.), § 1; amended 1991, No. 47, § 2.)"
We ask the Selectboard, and our neighbors, to keep that language in mind. It settles three things plainly: a town is never obliged to reclassify a road; where it chooses to, it may place the cost of the upgrade on the petitioners; and in no case is the town required to pay for that upgrade itself. Each protection exists for good reason, and none should be surrendered without such a good reason.
With that in mind, three questions deserve clear answers during the public hearing.
Five families live on the .3-mile section of South Bear Swamp Road now proposed for an upgrade from Class 4 to Class 3. But five families also live on Notch Road, another Class 4 road, and at least five more live along Tamarack and Bushey, which run into one another. The 2025 Middlesex mileage map published by the State marks at least eight Class 4 roads in town.
So why this stretch — a Class 4 segment that connects to nowhere — and not the others? That is the question this hearing exists to answer, and the bar should be a high one: what unique public good, or genuine public necessity, does this particular road serve that the town's other Class 4 roads do not? If the reason offered would apply equally to Notch, or to Tamarack and Bushey, it is not a reason to reclassify South Bear Swamp Road.
Reclassifying this segment without a clear, unique public good sets a precedent the town will not be able to roll back. Consider:
A developer secures a road commissioner's approval for temporary improvements, runs construction equipment and materials over a Class 4 road, sells the lots, and the new owners then press the town to make the upgrade permanent. Once the town has reclassified one such road on no stronger grounds, the town has no principled way to tell the next set of residents no — to do so would be to treat one neighbor differently from another.
The even worse version is: a developer tears up a Class 4 road during construction, sells the properties, and the residents insist the town must not only repair the damage but bring the road to Class 3 standard, whatever the cost, and then maintain it in perpetuity. The statute quoted above was written precisely to spare towns that obligation. Why would the Selectboard hand away a protection the Legislature went out of its way to give it?
We have reviewed the public recordings on this question, the materials made available to residents, and spoken with neighbors privately. We could find no emergency and no necessity. At the April 28th hearing on the broader reclassification, the residents of the road made clear they do not want additional traffic on it at all — that they would prefer it closed to as much recreational use as possible. It is hard to locate the public good in a public road the public is discouraged from using.
What that meeting did surface was a good deal of disparagement and secondhand account of the conduct of former town officials. Whatever the truth of any of it, it has no bearing on whether South Bear Swamp Road, or any road, should be reclassified. The Selectboard should have said as much plainly — both to keep the discussion to relevant ground and to spare former public servants, none of them censured or convicted, from being maligned in a warned public meeting. If the town has erred in the past, it should make it right and follow the law. But neither rumor nor even proven past misconduct changes the merits of a road reclassification.
Middlesex maintains a Planning Commission, a Trails Commission, a Class 4 road and trails policy, and a highway ordinance. What are they for, if the Selectboard will set their reasonable recommendations aside when all else is equal?
In correspondence that began less than a week before this hearing, it emerged that the board was unaware of the town's own Highway Ordinance and its requirement that petitioners bear the cost of upgrading a road before it is reclassified. That ordinance is not buried; it is the first link under the Highway Ordinances heading at middlesexvermont.org/laws-and-ordinances. The volunteers on the Planning and Trails Commissions bring decades of combined experience to exactly these questions. A town that declines to follow its own ordinance, and the counsel of its own commissions, should at least be able to say why.
There is a final point, and we raise it carefully, because it concerns conduct. A public process is only as sound as the pressures acting on it. When a town's small staff is worn down by demands faster than it can answer them, and when decisions are pursued under the standing shadow of threatened litigation, the danger is that officials yield not to the merits but to the sheer cost of holding the line. Residents should be alert to government by attrition — decisions wrung from a worn-down staff, out of public view, by those with the resources to keep pushing — on this question or any other — because a decision made to relieve pressure is not the same as a decision made on its merits.
Our recommendation is straightforward. The Selectboard should slow down. It should require a proper petition. And in the meantime it should review, repair, and where necessary rewrite the policies and ordinances that govern decisions like this one, so that the next is settled by rule rather than by who pushes hardest. That is how a town keeps the trust of its residents.
Editorials are the considered opinion of The Middlesex Gazette — a one-man paper, kept by a neighbor for his neighbors. A town is best governed when its doings are known in every kitchen, and weighed in the open. Back to the front page →