By Gail Geraghty

Staff Writer

Ken Ainsley won the right to relocate a 50-foot buffer and drainage easement further down the hill from his home in the Mountain View Subdivision, so that he and his wife Laura could have a better view of the Presidential Range and Kezar Pond. The Bridgton Planning Board unanimously approved his request at their meeting on Tuesday.

“The area in front (of his home) has become an impenetrable thicket,” said Ainsley, in explaining his request. When he built his home in 2001 off Knights Hill Road, at 50 Mountain Way, he also purchased the lot in front of it, so as to not impede the view. Part of the purchase agreement Ainsley signed is a condition prohibiting further subdivision of his property.

Ainsley said the existing location of the drainage easement, just 25 feet from his home, was part of the subdivision plan approved in 2003, which assumed the two lots would remain separated. But since the two lots were consolidated into one lot by deed in 2006, there is no longer any need for the easement’s current location, he said. Ainsley added that the subdivision’s developer, Peter Mahar, an engineer, agrees.

“The small amount of storm water that may exit the Ainsley lot will continue to discharge to undeveloped woodland as it does today, only at a location approximately 250 feet away,” Mahar wrote in a letter of support to the board.

Ainsley said moving the buffer and drainage easement will allow him to clear out the thicket and have use of a front yard. Several abutters who attended the meeting said they were concerned about trees that had been removed near Ainsley’s property, and the fact that the former Overlook Road became a private road. But Board Chairman Steve Collins said those concerns were not an appropriate topic of discussion in reviewing Ainsley’s request.

“It’s a pretty straightforward application,” Collins said. The easement allows storm water to eventually drain to Kezar Pond, he noted, but because some of the view shed will be opened up, Collins requested Ainsley to build a berm, “to make sure the runoff goes down the road to the easement and make sure we’re not attacking the steeper slope.”

The board asked Ainsley to return to their next meeting to sign the Mylar for the revised plan.