Chester board wrestles with Class 4 road issues

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

There was no calm before the storm at the Nov. 5 Chester Select Board meeting with property owner Kirk MacGinnis forcefully making demands of the chair even before the minutes from the Oct. 1 meeting could be reviewed.

In a confrontational style that includes handouts listing statute citations that he asserts have been violated,  MacGinnis told Board Chair Lee Gustafson that he had an issue with the minutes and that if Gustafson did not open comments for him he would interrupt.

After a brief exchange with MacGinnis, Gustafson told him to “cut the attitude,” but that seemed like wishful thinking. Before the discussion of the Class 4 road agenda item, both Gustafson and Vice Chair Arne Jonynas spoke about the process and the goal of the policy, which is to lay out how such roads would be handled by the town. They noted that each road is an individual case and would be handled as such. Also, they pointed to the policy giving the Select Board the authority to regulate what sorts of traffic could use — or not use — a Class 4 road.

When the discussion of a policy for Class 4 roads  began, MacGinnis – who owns two pieces of property on Wymans Falls Road – read from his “public statement for record” that asserted that private land was “under siege” not only by deadly crime and accidents as well as illegal dumping and burning, but by unpermitted work by the Chester Conservation Committee on bridging the stream. In it, he also accused the Chester Police Department of harassment.

He went on to cite the Vermont Constitution and state laws to claim that his due process rights had been denied by Town Manager Julie Hance. MacGinnis also pointed to email responses from several landowners who also have concerns about the Class 4 roads and their properties.

Finally, and most volubly, he stated that while he has lived in Florida for many years, he is a native Vermonter and the last heir to a farm here and that he served 20 years in the Cold War Navy.

His written demand was a “Roll-call vote to TABLE this policy and hear the discontinuance petition under 19 VSA 708,” ending with “If denied, ‘Objection stands – proceed at your peril.’ ” (Bold type, capitalization are MacGinnis’)

Hance explained that there is currently no petition to discontinue the road but that could be done by getting the signatures of voters and/or landowners equal in number to 5 percent of the total number of voters on the checklist.

Following MacGinnis, a number of other residents spoke about Class 4 roads in more measured tones. Some said they considered the road a “driveway” and others told of groups of Jeeps running up and down through their properties. A few objected to needing permits to work on the roads that lead to their properties while others said that improvements they had made to a road – at their own expense – had been ruined by such traffic, with no way to recoup that loss.

On the other side of the question, residents living near or on Class 4 roads spoke of their use of the roads, which they described as valuable assets belonging to everyone in town.

After everyone who wanted to speak had the chance, Gustafson said the board would not be voting on adopting the policy and thanked those who had attended the meeting.  He said the topic would be on a future agenda.