Belfast City Council votes $5,000 to re-state the obvious...but it won't matter.

[Wednesday, March 6, 2024. Belfast, Maine] Last night the Belfast city council decided that a boundary line between Belfast and the village of Northport might have moved in the last 211 years, despite assurances from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court (aka the Law Court) that the boundary remains where it was located in 1813.


Faced with the need to respond to the Law Court's remand of Belfast's decisions to grant municipal permits to Nordic Aquafarms and running out of reasons to answer promptly, city's attorney Kristin Collins advised the council members to use an "archaic rule" called "perambulation" to buy themselves a little more time.


What attorney Collins failed to address in her advice to the council was the inconvenient truth that there is no need for a "perambulation" because Northport does not dispute the location of the current municipal boundary! Consider this short history of the border. It begins in colonial times, when what we call “Maine” was still part of Massachusetts.

- Belfast was organized as a town in 1769.
- Northport’s boundary was first established in 1795.
- Belfast’s boundary was established in 1813 and the coordinates for that boundary were magnetically determined, so they are easily “discoverable” today.
- Officials from both towns perambulated the border in 1865 and found nothing to quarrel about.
- There was peace on the border until January 2018, when Nordic Aquafarms came to town. To get permits, Nordic needed surveys. Nordic retained surveyor Richard Dorsky for the job.
- Dorsky produced a survey of the boundary line on January 25, 2019 that put the line where it is today.
- Surveyor Don Richards, retained by Nordic opponents, produced his own survey on October 19, 2019.
- Dorsky's January 2019 survey and Richards October 2019 survey were nearly identical. The two surveyors agreed on where the mouth of the Little River was and where the boundary line went. No conflict there.
- But Nordic was not happy with Dorsky's January 2019 survey, so he changed it several times to please his client. Law suits ensued.
- On February 16, 2021, Maine’s highest court confirmed the essential facts of the Dorsky and Richards 2019 surveys. Still no outcry from Northport…or Belfast.
- On March 5, 2024, Belfast city council decides that the Law Court's 2021 ruling requires the city to launch a second perambulation of the border...even though it does not. 

The perambulation will cost taxpayers $5,000. Unfortunately that’s just a drop in the bucket. Because Belfast won’t consider dropping the eminent domain case, it will have to go back to court, and that will take another two years of legal fees -- costing many thousands of dollars being paid by Belfast taxpayers. 

One final inconvenient truth: municipalities cannot change their borders with the perambulation process. In Maine, only the state legislature can set or alter the internal boundaries of the state.

The line on the left indicates the Belfast-Northport boundary as surveyed by Donald R. Richards. The line on the right indicates the boundary line determined by Gartley & Dorsky Engineering & Surveying, which incorrectly places Northport property over the Belfast boundary and which the city used to take that property by eminent domain. Image courtesy of Donald R. Richards.

So let's be clear:

The Friends of Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area strongly object to the Belfast city council's authorization of a "perambulation" of its municipal border with Northport because it is a misuse of the perambulation process and a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.

Here are the key points:

1. There is no dispute regarding the Belfast-Northport boundary been those municipalities.


2. The location of the Northport boundary is irrelevant to determining the location of the Belfast boundary and to our contention that the City took land outside its municipal boundaries.


3. Belfast has mischaracterized another attempt to delay obeying the Law Court by calling this exercise a perambulation under 30-A M.R.S. § 2851 so that they could impose 50% of the cost of this boondoggle onto the citizens of Northport — who have no dog in this fight and should not be dragging into this fight by Belfast’s misrepresentations about the existence of a fantasy dispute.

4. The city lawyer says the perambulation is the only way forward, but that’s not true. Drop the eminent domain and it’s all over. Belfast is holding onto the belief that Nordic’s project is going to get built -- why?