Expiration on Melendy Pond lease program shocks tenants

Friday, December 18, 2009

By HATTIE BERNSTEIN

Staff Writer

BROOKLINE – On a map used a few years ago to manage weed treatment, Melendy Pond looks like a Valentine: The heart-shaped, 19-acre body of water is edged in pink and filled in with blue and white squiggles, a slash of red marking the northwest boundary.

For more than half a century, the pond, hidden by trees along state Route 13, has been a getaway for seasonal residents who own vacation homes set on tiny parcels leased from the town.

In the beginning, the buildings were camps; small, perfunctory and perfectly suited to roughing it in the great outdoors.

But over the years, residents have added on, expanded, remodeled and updated many of the homes that sit on town-owned land that’s rented annually for between $60 and $125.

Homeowners and their guests have enjoyed swimming, boating, fishing and picnics in the summer and hiking, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in the winter.

And for as long as the community has existed, homeowners have assumed that the lease arrangement with the town would go on forever.

Seven years ago, however, voters at the 2002 Brookline Town Meeting decided to end the lease program by not renewing or creating new leases that extended beyond Dec. 31, 2020. Once the leases expired, the town would take back the land it had received as a gift in 1930, and the homeowners would be forced to move their buildings – an unlikely prospect – or abandon them.

It wasn’t until this past September, however, when a Merrimack couple seeking a tax rebate on their Melendy Pond summer home went before the Board of Selectmen, that the vote to end the leases really hit home.

“Nobody really knew. We were kind of blind-sided,” said Michelle Eriquezzo, owner with her husband, Jon, of a cottage on 2 Second St. that Jon’s father purchased in 1975.

Neither the Melendy Pond Authority, the elected body that manages the lease program, nor the town had sent out letters to the 27 homeowners after the Town Meeting vote seven years ago. Homeowners only began finding out when their leases were up for renewal, or in the Eriquezzos case, when they sought an abatement.

“We accidentally stumbled upon it,” Michelle Eriquezzo said.

Since then, the Eriquezzos and some of their neighbors have started organizing a campaign to reverse the town’s decision.

The group plans to submit a petition warrant article to appear on the ballot at the March 2010 Town Meeting, asking voters to continue leasing the land under their homes.

“I believe a lot of people didn’t even know it was town land. A part of me thinks the vote in 2002 was kind of a blind vote,” said Brookline resident Carol Farwell, who also owns a cottage on Melendy Pond. “I don’t think the camp owners knew how it would affect them.”

Farwell is the tenant representative to the Melendy Pond Authority, the board that administers the lease program.

She said that even though she attended the Town Meeting where the vote was taken, she never took the decision to heart.

“It was 2002. I had 18 years to figure things out, and I thought things could possibly change,” she recalled.

She said her cottage has been in her family since the late 1960s.

“Only a handful of us live here in Brookline and knew about it. The others found out when they went to update their lease,” she said.

To place a petition warrant article on the March ballot, it must be submitted by a registered voter and be signed by 25 registered voters. The deadline to submit petition articles is Feb. 2.

Farwell said she is doing the research on how to draft the warrant article.

“I’m hoping they see it’s not hurting anything,” she said. “There’s income for the town, and I don’t see why it needs to be 2020. Push it out 50 years.”

While the 2002 vote did not have an immediate impact on residents or property sales at Melendy Pond, in recent years, homes have been slow to sell, according to a local real estate agent and some neighborhood residents.

Some speculate that the flat market may be a response to both the sluggish economy and the shortened leases.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

Homeowners continue to pay rent on the land as well as property taxes based on a “linear depreciation” set by the town’s Board of Assessors. Values, last updated during a townwide revaluation in 2006, decrease until three years before the lease ends, when the value becomes zero. For example, a home valued at $100,000 that has 23 years left on its lease goes down in value $5,000 a year for the next 20 years; for the last three years of the lease, the property has no assessed value.

In total, the town collects about $80,000 in annual property taxes from the seasonal residents.

Peter Webb, chairman of the Melendy Pond Authority, said the decision to end the leasing program reflects the town’s changing needs.

For one thing, Brookline has become one of the fastest- growing communities in the state and could use the additional land.

For another, what began as a vacation community has become something more permanent for some residents, including at least one who has received public assistance from the town and another who has sent a child to town schools, even though seasonal residents agree to waive access to those services as part of their lease agreements.

Webb suggested that some residents have made their homes at Melendy Pond permanent residences, a situation that down the road could overburden the town’s infrastructure – and taxpayers.

“If push came to shove, they’d be entitled to all the same services, at a discount,” Webb said, adding that at some point “seasonal camps ceased being seasonal camps. There’s been a gradual, quiet evolution, not entirely disclosed.

“Life has moved on in the past 60 years, and the advisability of the program is under consideration.”

That’s not the perspective shared by Melendy Pond residents, who said they feel as if a rug has been pulled out from under them.

“You try to take people on their word,” said Paul DuBois, a retired business owner from Newburyport, Mass., who purchased his cottage at 1 Second St. in 2005 with 18 years left on the lease. “The lease program had gone on for so long, who in their right mind would have thought … ?”

DuBois said he never thought to consult a lawyer. Several of his neighbors said the same thing.

“No one would ever buy property under those conditions,” DuBois said. “That wasn’t the implied deal.”

What’s best for the town?

For the past decade, study committees have been convened and issued reports on the leasing program. The most recent, submitted to the Board of Selectmen in November, endorsed a plan to continue to lower property values and establish a fund to pay for the future demolition of the homes.

Two years ago, the Melendy Pond Authority paid $12,000 to demolish an abandoned property on the pond, authority members pointed out.

The authority has also contributed money to pay for milfoil treatment in the pond.

“Townspeople want to do the right thing,” Webb said. “But this is town property occupied by tenants.”

But Marcia Farwell, a local real estate agent who has been unable to sell homes on the pond, said the town is “remiss” for not compensating the residents.

“I personally don’t think it’s fair,” said Farwell, who is Carol Farwell’s aunt. “Till a few years ago, there was no problem.”

But Webb, the MPA chairman, said that the town could use the 19-acre pond and surrounding 265 acres of woods for recreation and conservation.

Early in the process, officials had considered developing the land around the pond for house lots, but that idea was short-lived.

The land won’t revert to the town, however, until the last lease expires in 2032.

And it won’t be all of the land, since one longtime resident owns his home and the land under it.

Meanwhile, townspeople continue to have public access to the pond and woods from Old Milford Road. (State law requires public access to bodies of water that are 10 acres or more. The woods are conservation land and open for public use.)

Fighting for their homes

Homeowners are gearing up for a public education campaign, and they aren’t reluctant to make waves.

Jon Eriquezzo, head of the Melendy Pond Association, said he’s thought about distributing pamphlets or talking to people at the transfer station.

Eriquezzo remembers spending summers at the pond with his family after his father, Geno, a Connecticut school principal, purchased the family’s cottage in the mid-1970s.

In 1986, Jon Eriquezzo brought his wife, Michelle, to the family’s vacation home for their honeymoon.

“I fell in love with New Hampshire,” said Michelle Eriquezzo, a real estate agent who has listed and sold properties on the pond. “Two weeks later, we moved to Milford and rented an apartment.”

The couple’s three children grew up spending summers on the pond with their parents and grandparents, swimming, fishing, boating and enjoying the annual Fourth of July celebrations and picnics.

Jon Eriquezzo speaks fondly of a neighbor who would paddle over in his boat, bringing tomatoes he’d grown in his garden. Michelle Eriquezzo remembers how the family looked forward to every summer.

“It’s a pond with a lot of memories,” she said.

Last month, on a gloomy Friday afternoon, Jon Eriquezzo gave a reporter a tour of the community.

“Five years ago, my children asked if we’d ever sell the house,” he said. “We said, ‘No.’ It’s part of our family. They have dreams about (one day) taking their kids here.”

Unless town voters can be convinced to reverse the 2002 decision to end the lease program, that won’t happen.

The family’s lease expires on Nov. 5, 2021.

It’s the same situation for other families.

“I really didn’t give it a lot of thought,” said Connecticut resident Joan Genest, a neighbor of the Eriquezzos, who said she was shocked to learn recently that the town planned to end the leases.

Genest purchased her cottage in 1995 with the idea of keeping it in her large family – five children and 10 grandchildren – who have spent summer vacations there for the past 14 years.

Others said they purchased homes on the pond thinking they would use them as retirement getaways.

DuBois, the Newburyport resident, said he looked at a number of vacation properties before settling on his camp, next door to the Eriquezzos. In retrospect, he said, he would have done better to forgo the “bargain,” a house that was furnished from “soup to nuts,” and purchase his own land.

“When I signed the papers, they said, ‘This will go on forever,’ ” DuBois recalled.

Harlene and Harold Briggs have had a cottage on the pond since 1964.

Harold, 75, is a retired postmaster and a veteran of the U.S. Marines. He said he and his wife spend summers at Melendy Pond and winters in Mexico.

“We’ve put a lot of money into the place, took good care of it, and my husband worked with the Conservation Commission to get the water tested,” said Harlene last month, a few days before the couple was planning to leave town for the winter. “We’ve really done our share, and we’re very disappointed.”

“I’m very concerned,” said Harold. “It kind of upsets me. I’d planned to live here till I die.”

Meanwhile, residents like Larry Garneau, a homeowner on the pond since 1998, are kicking themselves for not paying closer attention when they purchased their waterfront properties.

“It’s a lose-lose on my side,” said Garneau, 53.

His lease ends in 2021.

He is retired from the U.S. Army. His wife, Michele, a Manchester librarian, still works. Their permanent address is in Merrimack.

Garneau said the couple has spent thousands of dollars over the past several years, replacing windows and the furnace and repairing the roof.

Had he known what was coming, Garneau added, he would have looked elsewhere for a vacation home.

“The prior owners said when it comes time to renew, they’ll probably upgrade the lease amount,” he said.

Now, he’s hoping that the town will reconsider ending the program.

“If they gave me a 99-year lease, I wouldn’t mind paying a little bit more,” Garneau said. “I could deed it to my daughter.”

That’s a long road.

First, the Melendy Pond Association must get a warrant article on the ballot. Then, it must convince Brookline voters that continuing the lease program is in the best interest of the town and the homeowners.

“There are legitimate equities on both sides which are in conflict,” observed Peter Webb, the authority chairman.

For Michelle Eriquezzo, however, the situation isn’t so cut and dried.

“Out of all this land, is there not a way to accommodate this?” she said. “We really want to stay. We want to know how we can make it work.”

Hattie Bernstein can be reached at 673-3100 ext. 24 or hbernstein@cabinet.com.