Voters OK Ending Town Maintenance of Deer Cove Road

The following article is from the Conway Daily Sun.

Ossipee—October 21, 2026—By seven votes, Ossipee voters Wednesday approved converting a portion of Deer Cove Road from a town-maintained Class V road to a Class VI road, which won’t get town maintenance going forward.

Deer Cove Road intersects with Route 16 across from Aubuchon Hardware and then meets up with South Shore Road and curves northeast along the shore of Ossipee Lake’s Deer Cove.

The vote at a special town meeting was 65-58 in favor of discontinuing the section from South Shore Road north to its dead end. The road will remain public, but the town will no longer be obligated to maintain it.

The vote followed months of debate between town officials and property owners over the narrow lakeside road, particularly whether the town has adequate rights to a turnaround for highway trucks at the dead end.

Deer Cove Road resident Beth Buswell urged voters to reject the change, citing concerns about emergency access and arguing that residents had cooperated with the town in trying to resolve the road’s problems.

“Downgrading this road doesn’t just pass the buck; it creates real safety issues,” Buswell said. “We risk the possibility that fire trucks, ambulances, police cruisers may be unable to reach our homes in an emergency.”

Buswell also noted that many affected property owners are seasonal residents and therefore were unable to vote Wednesday. She argued that the town could continue working with residents while seeking state assistance for drainage and road improvements.

Other voters, however, questioned whether residents could expect the town to maintain a public road while treating the neighborhood as private.

Marie McConarty of West Ossipee said she delivered mail along Deer Cove Road for more than 20 years and has seen the difficulty of navigating the road, particularly during the summer, when kids play in the road.  She said privately built walls along the road created ruts as the water freezes and thaws.

She said many Ossipee residents live on private roads and organize among themselves to pay for plowing, sanding and other services. She said residents of the road look at travelers with suspicion even though the road is open to the public. She said it’s a nice place to walk because the road has a view of the lake.

“When I walk down on the road with a dog… everyone’s always giving you like a stink eye,” said McConarty.  “They pay big taxes down there. I get what they’re doing, but you can’t have it both ways,” she said, to applause from the audience.

Selectman James Rines told voters that officials spent the summer meeting with property owners after voters tabled a similar proposal in March. He said residents agreed to address walls, platforms and other obstacles affecting the town’s right of way, leaving the turnaround as the major unresolved issue.

The disagreement partly involves a road layout dating to 1916 that Rines said established a 16½-foot right of way and provided for a turnaround. The current property owner and the town are in conflict over the property’s use.

Rines said the owner offered to allow the town to widen his driveway and use it as a turnaround from Nov. 1 to April 1, but the town believes a turnaround on a public Class V road needs to be available to the public year-round.

Although Rines supported putting the matter before voters, he said he personally opposed converting the road.

“I am not in favor, personally, as one voting, as one resident in town, of abandoning this road or changing the classification to a Class VI road,” Rines said.

Public Works Director TJ Eldridge said the road has become increasingly difficult and unsafe to plow. He said highway employees need a safe place to turn around rather than backing out during snowstorms.

“When it’s midnight and the wind’s blowing 30 miles an hour on that lake, the snow’s coming behind them they’ve (plow truck drivers) got flashing lights going, trying to back out is not fun for them,” said Eldridge.

He said that if voters rejected Class VI status, the department would continue maintaining the road, but “we have to have a safe place to turn around.”

Eldridge also disputed claims that town drainage was causing environmental problems, saying the disputed section currently has no town-owned drainage system.

“The drainage might be illegal, but it’s not the town’s,” said Eldridge.