Thetford
The current agreement will expire May 1, and Selectboard Chairman Stuart Rogers said the board would be making a decision on the club’s proposals during its meeting next week.
Members of the club, which runs a gun range on town-owned land, recently refused to sign a lease ratified by the board in February, saying Thetford had ended negotiations prematurely.
At Monday’s meeting, David Goodrich, the club president, asked that the town ease restrictions on firing intervals and high-caliber ammunition, as well as shuffle the club’s weekend shooting schedule.
Goodrich asked the board to lift a proposed ban on .50-caliber ammunition and allow the club members to use the range on alternating weekends. He also questioned a requirement in the proposed lease that gun-range users fire no more than one shot per second.
“It can’t be enforced,” he said. “Without cameras and a range officer you can’t expect us to enforce it. It just doesn’t work.”
For the past 20 years, the town has leased the land to the club for a dollar a year. As it stands, the new proposal would shorten that period to 10 years and impose restrictions on the number of shooting hours per day.
At Monday’s gathering, Rogers agreed to meet separately with club members and with concerned neighbors of the range, who have complained of noise.
Ted Levin, who lives near the club, called the move to reopen negotiations “unfair.”
“For two years, we moved back and forth,” he said. “The neighbors were one, the gun range members were 10; we ended up somewhere close to five. Now (the gun range members) are back and they’re closer to seven.”
In response, gun range members said the terms had changed too frequently for the club to catch up; when the group was presented with a document to sign, they said, some requirements were entirely new.
Some attendees also expressed mistrust toward the club, making particular reference to past comments from club member Bill Huff.
At a prior meeting, Huff had warned that if the lease weren’t renewed, the club likely would close, ending the environmental stewardship program it has in place to deal with contamination on the range site.
“These kinds of threats and saber rattling make me feel that the selectmen need to consider what kind of organization we’re entering a lease with,” Cynthia Huntington, of Post Mills, said.
Huff responded that his point had simply been that the town, unlike the club, did not have a plan in place to manage evironmental concerns on the property.
Board members were split over whether to accept the club’s requests.
Selectboard member James Dixon appeared to support keeping the lease ratified in February, noting that there was contention between club members and neighbors over the fire-rate restrictions and the high-caliber ammunition ban.
He said the town so far had “taken a balanced approach” in giving both sides some of what they wanted.
“I still don’t understand why we need to change it,” Dixon said later.
Selectboard member Jim Lanctot, in contrast, said he disagreed with Dixon that “an outright restriction” on some kinds of bullets was a balanced approach.
Rogers, for his part, said he was looking for compromise.
“Part of the onus falls to both sides,” he said.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at 603-727-3242 or at rwolfe@vnews.com.