Oct 16, 2002
Nearly every day, she sits in her Hopkinton living room and waves as state troopers or local police drive by. As a school bus driver for 20 years, she watched most of the local children grow up.
But as she nears her 78th birthday, Crider is learning the house she and her late husband built in 1954 might actually be in Connecticut - and that just doesn't feel like home.
"Rhode Island is my life," she says. "If I had to, I'd go move. I'll put me a tent out there; if it's in Rhode Island, I'll live in a tent."
Crider's house is one of about 12 residences caught in the middle of a dispute over the border between the towns of North Stonington, Conn., and Hopkinton, R.I.
Although a mere line on the map to some, a changed border could affect where these families pay taxes, vote or send their children to school.
And it could make Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union, even smaller.
"What you're dealing with are people's lives and people's homes," said John Majeika, assessor for Hopkinton, a town of about 7,800 people. "We're not taking it lightly."
The dispute surfaced after North Stonington, population 5,000, used new technology called Geographic Information System mapping to conduct its 2000 town revaluation. Connecticut officials say that the data established a border that matches the one ratified in 1840 - and cuts into territory that previous surveys have assigned to Rhode Island.
North Stonington First Selectman Nicholas Mullane contends the 1840 border still stands - and that means a strip of land about 60 feet wide in some areas is actually in North Stonington, not Hopkinton.
Rhode Island Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat from Hopkinton, said the state can't afford to get any smaller. If an amicable solution is not reached, he said, the issue could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which decides disputes between states.
The attorneys general of both states have discussed the issue and hope a joint commission can be formed to reach a compromise. Both plan to issue recommendations to their respective legislatures, but they won't yet disclose what position they'll take.
"I'm optimistic that we will work out a joint approach to resolving this issue," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. "We haven't resolved the details."
Border disputes like this are rare in modern times, said Paul Martinek, an attorney and editor of Lawyers Weekly USA.
In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled on a case involving a dispute between Maine and New Hampshire, where the Piscataqua River meets Portsmouth Harbor. In that case, the court relied on a 1977 consent decree that settled a lobster fishing dispute between the two states.
In this dispute, there doesn't seem to be a previous ruling to fall back on for guidance.
"The fact that both towns have sort of accepted the boundary as a boundary for a hundred and something years could very well persuade the court" to leave it as is, Martinek said.
It isn't the first border dispute between the two states - Voluntown, Conn., and West Greenwich, R.I., feuded about a decade ago. But that, too, was different because it involved one resident who changed the border marker on his property from one state to the other so he could skirt zoning and inspection laws.
Once that was discovered, officials from both towns got together, hired a surveyor, and had permanent border markers installed, according to Voluntown First Selectman Tom Wilber.
For now, Hopkinton isn't prepared to give up any of its property, or disrupt the lives of the 12 families involved.
"They live in Rhode Island for a reason," Majeika said.
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On the Net:
North Stonington: http://www.munic.state.ct.us/N-STONINGTON/n-stonington.htm
Hopkinton: http://www.hopkintonri.com/