STRONG — Board of Selectmen Chairman Jim Burrill on Tuesday asked the board to consider a motion that could involve them in a pending lawsuit.

Burrill said the issue was about something selectmen should have addressed 13 or 14 years ago. No one on the board took a leadership role, Burrill said.

“It was always, ‘We can’t get involved,'” he said. “‘Don’t get involved.'”

Burrill then referenced letters he had been given by Roger Lambert, the plaintiff in a pending case against Wendall Voter and his lessees. Voter bought land on the discontinued Dickey Road, although the Maine Superior Court ruled several years ago that the Dickey Road is the Lamberts’ property and that Voter and his family should not seek access across that property.

“The Voters failed to demonstrate that they have acquired any easement over, right of way upon or other interest in the Lamberts’ property, including certain roads that cross the Lamberts’ land,” the Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 9, 2008.

The letters, Burrill noted, were written in 2006 and signed by former selectmen Perry Ellsworth, Susan Pratt, Ruth Marden and others, saying that, to the best of their knowledge, the town did not own the road beyond the tarred section of Church Hill in front of the Lamberts’ house. The letters also indicated that the town had not spent taxpayers’ money to maintain the road. The Lamberts had granted permission to the town to turn snowplows and school buses beyond the town’s right-of-way.

“This motion has nothing to do with the lawsuit that’s pending,” Burrill said. “This motion has to do with protecting a right of way the citizens have had since 1853.”

Citizens in the town of Strong have a right to maintain their rights, he said.

Burrill’s motion to declare Dickey Road a town right of way did not receive a second and thus failed.