JAY — Voters are expected to decide at the annual town meeting whether to freeze lot rents at the town’s mobile home parks.
The Jay Select Board voted 4-1 Monday night to place the item on the warrant for the annual town meeting, usually held in April.
If approved, the moratorium would be retroactive to Dec. 8, the day the board voted to put it on the warrant.
“They (members of the Select Board) did the best they could under the law,” Judy Redman said as she left the meeting. She and her husband, Harold Redman Jr., live in manufactured housing in the Hidden Circle mobile home park.
“This means if they (the owners of the park) hit us again, we’ll get our money back,” added Harold Redman Jr., 78.
The Redmans said they had moved in 2007 to Hidden Circle from Canton.
Selectman Thomas Goding did not respond to a voicemail message Tuesday morning requesting comment on his vote against the motion.
The Select Board acted on the retroactive rent freeze on advice from the town attorney, Agnieszka Dixon.
The town has home-rule authority to enact a moratorium, Dixon wrote, but the process would take longer than in a municipality with a council form of government because voters must decide the measure at a special or annual town meeting.
Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere said the town “will work with the attorney to develop a draft for the board’s consideration.” One unresolved issue is how long the moratorium would last.
“Ultimately, the board must approve the draft language before it goes on the town meeting warrant,” LeFreniere said.
By making the moratorium retroactive to Dec. 8, the board avoided calling a special town meeting in the winter because any rent increase after that date would be subject to the freeze. The move also made it difficult, if not impossible, for park owners to raise rents again soon.
Dixon wrote that the park owners could challenge a moratorium, but “such challenges are notoriously difficult to win and are often not pursued because of the short life of a moratorium.”
Residents of three mobile home parks — Hidden Circle, Lambert Street and Pine Haven — asked the board Nov. 24 to consider freezing rents.
At the three parks, which together have more than 100 lots, new out-of-state owners had raised rents, most for the second time this year and, in some cases, by more than any increase residents had seen in their years living there. The increases were generally $50 a month.
Ben Adrian, whose Florida company owns the three parks, said last week he would call back to explain the rent increases. He did not call back.
Nearly 30 people attended Monday night’s meeting, almost all of them residents of the mobile home parks.
