Windham voters who want to weigh in on constructing a second access road to Windham High School, currently under construction, and a proposed conservation easement in the town forest area should attend a deliberative session on Tuesday, Aug. 12, at 7 p.m., at the Town Hall.

The two articles on the warrant will be included as part of the vote in the Sept. 9 primaries.

Article 1 asks voters to authorize the town to secure a $1.25 million bond to build a new town road over the existing London Bridge Road for the purpose of providing a second access to the high school.

The proposed plan includes extending the road to Castle Hill Road, allowing emergency vehicles to more easily access the western side of town, cutting down on emergency response time.

Earlier this month, the Board of Selectmen unanimously approved the plans for the 24-foot wide paved road after much debate on whether the road needed to be a standard sized paved road or a smaller gravel one. A similar ballot question was included on the school district ballot in March, but failed to get the 60 percent majority vote needed to pass.

Many residents at a public hearing on the parameters of the access road on Monday, July 21, said building a paved town road was going overboard.

Both the state Board of Education and Windham Fire Chief Tom McPherson have said the school needs a secondary access road before it can open in September 2009.

The Windham Fire Department has been a proponent of paving the road and making it full size to allow for emergency vehicles to pass easily and to ensure the road is properly maintained. Potholes would be prevalent on a gravel road, said Assistant Fire Chief Robert Leuci at the public hearing, making it difficult to plow and likely more expensive to maintain.

If voters approve the bond, the first payment would be made in September 2009 in the amount of $175,000, including the principal payment and interest. The amount of the payments would decrease by $5,000 yearly up until the end of the bond payment schedule in 2018.

Selectman Roger Hohenberger, charged with looking into the costs of a paved road versus a gravel one, said at the hearing a paved 24-foot road would only cost $150,000 more than a gravel road, adding the gravel would be much more expensive to maintain over the years due to erosion.

At the weekly meeting on Monday, Aug. 4, the board heard comments from the public on the second article on the ballot, regarding putting two parcels of land off of Goodhue road into a third-party conservation easement, which would be held by the Exeter-based Southeast Land Trust.

The Windham Conservation Commission currently owns the land, but if the land is placed with a third-party group it becomes eligible for a reimbursement for most of the purchase cost because of the land’s proximity to Salem’s water supply.

The parcels are separated by other town-owned pieces of land in the town forest, one of them about 53 acres and the other about 20 acres.

The question of whether to put the land in trust sparked debate among the selectmen, a couple of whom felt the parameters of the easement were too strict.

A conservation easement would limit the use of the land and prevent building residential or commercial/industrial structures on it, and getting out of the easement would be impossible without going through the eminent domain process.

The town would also have to reimburse Southeast Land Trust for part of the cost of the land in that event, something Hohenberger said was unfair despite his support of conservation.

“I think that restriction is going to potentially make a lot of people possibly vote the wrong way,” said Hohenberger.

Selectman Galen Stearns agreed, saying putting the land in a third-party trust would tie the hands of future town officials and voters.

“I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what the town’s needs are going to be,” he said.

Ellen Snyder, a representative of Southeast Land Trust, said the whole point of a conservation easement was to preserve it forever.

Resident Margaret Case said the town can do a good enough job of preserving the land without putting it in the hands of a third party.

“Why can’t we trust the people in this town to do the right thing?” she asked, reiterating Stearns’ point that no one could be sure of the town’s needs in the future. “We don’t know what we are going to need perhaps to survive in the next 30 or 40 years. My final word on this is, I hope the people vote ‘no.’”

Selectman Bruce McMahon, who helped get the article on the ballot, said the easement should have been part of the Conservation Commission’s purchase to begin with.

He added the easement was needed to get the state funding reimbursement, which would amount to about $177,000, in order to purchase other pieces of land for conservation. Typically, conservation land is purchased through money collected from current use penalties.

“What’s the purpose? It’s funds, because we’re running out of current use penalty land,” McMahon said.