Nahant administrator defends right-of-way survey

NAHANT-When Town Meeting was asked to approve $12,500 of Community Preservation Act funding to complete the next phase of mapping public ways, one resident questioned if the town was getting its money’s worth on the decade-old project.Town Administrator Mark Cullinan said in fact, “yes.”According to Cullinan, roughly 60 right-of-ways have been mapped out in Little Nahant alone.”Many are little or not known to the public,” he said. “Now they’ve been posted to let people know.”The town has been working to sorting out its right-of-ways for almost 10 years. Cullinan said it tackles two to three areas per year, which generally include title searches and surveys.The right-of-ways discovered on Little Nahant, Cullinan said, mostly include paths with access to the water.The town has always had an annual perambulation where residents take to the streets and walk through every right-of-way to ensure they stay open to the public and are not usurped by private landowners. However, Cullinan said in the past volunteers have not always been certain about exactly which paths were public rights of way and which were not.As an example, he pointed to the right of way on Howe Road that now runs between two relatively new, large homes. Cullinan said it was always assumed that the path from Howe Road to Short Beach was a public right of way but research showed it was not. The right of way, he said was actually built for the subdivision. It has since been deemed a public right of way, however.On the flip side, Cullinan said the town has discovered other right-of-ways such as an area off Phillips Way, that was thought to be private but is public.”We have found others that we thought were private but were public,” he said. “We’re getting through the process and I think it’s an important process to discover and maintain the public ways.”The funding was approved unanimously.