Windham school superintendent and School Board member Michael Hatem told the town’s Board of Selectmen they need a few more weeks to come up with a viable plan for a second access road for the new high school. The Board of Selectmen held an informational meeting on the issue during their regular weekly selectmen’s meeting on Monday, Sept. 29.

Fire Chief Tom McPherson led the board and the public through a PowerPoint presentation outlining the fire codes that justify intalling the second access before the school can open in September 2009 and showing aerial photos to support his case for the road.

McPherson said he is urging the School Board to act quickly on planning the access road, as there is less than a year left before the school’s opening to get all the planning, engineering, and construction completed. Superintendent Frank Bass said in a letter to the Board of Selectmen that the School Board would like until Oct. 29 to come up with a final plan.

“Certainly the board will work its very best to come to a timely decision as quickly as they can,” Bass said. “They just wanted extra time to get it right and explore every option.”

Hatem, speaking as a citizen and not a School Board member, said the board will come to the right solution soon, but needs some time to sort out the options.

“I think we just need a little time to turn down the heat. We’re going to solve this,” Hatem said.

During a special vote at the primary election on Sept. 9, Windham voters turned down a $1.25 million bond proposal for a paved town road that would cover the unpaved portion of London Bridge Road, extending it from Route 111 to Castle Hill Road. At the vote in March, a similar proposal on the school district ballot was also voted down.

The fire and police officials in town supported that proposal because it complied with fire and safety codes and would also function as a means of accessing the western side of town more quickly, McPherson said.

“The issue with this is it was the only presentation that we saw,” said McPherson. “That was the proposal put before us, and we, as public safety officials, supported that because of reasons other than the high school.”

Selectman Charles McMahon called for the meeting, inviting the School Board, the state fire marshal, and a representative from the state’s Department of Education.

“It’s real, it’s palpable and there’s real anxiety,” McMahon said of the community’s worry over the access road issue, adding he’s gotten calls from residents asking whether they should explore other high school options for their children in case the school doesn’t open as planned.

The state fire marshal’s office and the Department of Education both sent letters to the town saying they would not attend the meeting because the access road is a town issue.

According to the National Fire Protection Association’s universal fire code, which McPherson explained during the presentation, “more than one fire department access road shall be provided when it is determined by the (authority having jurisdiction) that access by a single road could be impaired by vehicle congestion, condition of terrain, climatic conditions or other factors that could limit the access.”

The code further states that any access road should be at least 20 feet wide with a vertical clearance of no less than 13 feet 6 inches, and should be able to carry emergency vehicles and be properly maintained.

During the presentation, McPherson showed several aerial photos of the school taken by state police in helicopter flyovers, and also photos of some maintenance roads coming off of London Bridge Road that service the athletic fields.

Those two maintenance roads are only about 14 feet wide, said McPherson, and do not meet the requirements for a second access according to the fire code.

Police Chief Gerald Lewis said the second access is important in case of an accident or other catastrophic event that could block London Bridge Road, which has some blind curves and steep grades off the edges of the road in some spots.

Lewis pointed out that everything from buses, propane delivery trucks and cars containing new student drivers will be traveling along that road either to or from the school.

“It takes one incident anywhere along here for us to have difficulty getting in and getting out,” Lewis said.

McPherson also used photos to point out the heavily wooded areas surrounding the school, saying there was no safe place to evacuate students without the access road being present.

Lewis said any incident of school violence would pose a problem in trying to evacuate and account for students in the woods, saying he and the chief would be the ones on the hook for any mishaps in the evacuation procedure.