The Saco City Council met on March 2, 2026, at 6:30 PM to discuss the Portland Road Route 1 road diet, public testimony on the Blue Haven mobile home park moratorium, a proposed repeal of that moratorium, and a zoning map amendment for Flag Pond Road. The council voted 7-0 to approve minutes and a consent item, and after extensive debate, voted 6-1 to place the moratorium repeal on the March 9, 2026 agenda.
Next meeting: March 9, 2026, with the moratorium repeal item on the agenda.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Sacco City Council meeting for March 2nd, 2026 at 6:30. I do apologize for the issue that we had with the door. We are getting that worked and fixed at this moment. And to start the meeting, before we follow the call the official start to order, um, I do have deputy administrator Prescott and Director Moore who will be presenting information regarding the Portland Road Route 1 road diet. Good evening, Mayor, City Council, and City Administrator. We just wanted to give an update to the road diet. Previously we had a presenter who was gonna come from BHB who did our analysis, but uh we got a letter from DOT in response to our submission, so we just kind of wanted to go over a few things with that. So with the letter that we received, they provided 12 comments back to us, and of those 12 comments, some of them had multiple pieces. So kind of where we're at right now is they had they had suggested that right now they can't support the road diet based on how the analysis was performed. They would prefer that this was done as a demonstration project. There's not a uh a road diet that has gone in permanently without a um demonstration project. And right now our plan is to bring this back to traffic safety, who would you know approve the original request and share the the letter with them, and we can certainly look at other options. We have the uh Portland Road Master Plan, we have reimagined Route One, so there's other there's other avenues that we can bring safety improvements to Route One, but unfortunately, right now with the tight time frame that they have with their project and they're gonna be advertising it in a couple of weeks. It this is not gonna be uh an option at this point. Okay, great. Thank you. Any questions or comments for Director Moore? Councilor Gale? Just uh in terms of the demonstration, what would a demonstration project look like if that was something we'd be interested in? So unfortunately, right now, where they're gonna be paving that, it doesn't really give us an option for a demonstration project. We reached out to them last summer and was trying to work through a demonstration project, and it got to uh to a stage where they were requiring us to do a thin overlay and restrict the roadway in order to do the temporary configuration, and it just came became unfeasible for the city to expend the amount of money to do a demonstration project. And we did look at if they could do one in between the milling and shimming, paint the demonstration project, and then come back and do the final surface pavement, but they are concerned with contractor availability and the added cost to have a contractor mobilized twice. So we did look at that option as well. Okay, great. Yep. Quick follow-up question. So when it goes back to traffic safety, are the folks um who um who came and presented public comment? Are those do we have a good set of contact names and lists that we can send out to notify those folks, even though a project may not necessarily be occurring? Yes, we can go ahead and uh talk with traffic safety about potentially notifying them of the change. Um we did go back and look at our em our uh mailing and email distribution lists over the period, and many of those folks were were on it in some fashion. So we have we think we have enough info to certainly send out, but we'll have that conversation with traffic safety first. Councilor Hewitt. Just to confirm, um the it will continue to be two lanes north and two lane south until otherwise. Correct. It'll be the same configuration that there is right now. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Do we know at this time? Is it planned for the March 19th traffic safety meeting, or will we be looking at April? No, we'll uh we'll have that on the March. Okay. Yep, thank you. Okay, not seeing any additional questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, moving on to call the official meeting to order. I would like to make note of all members present this evening, including our city administrator Ryan Pelletier, and would you please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance? Great.