Letter to the Editor

A dead end road

Thu, 08/25/2016 - 8:45am

Dear Editor:

It is time for people to realize that Route 27 is a “dead end” road and we live on a dead end peninsula. We have little other than lobsters to send up Route 27 as income producing products. Yes, there are other businesses producing products, however, they bear the costs of bringing in raw materials, finishing them, and shipping them back up Route 27.

No “village square,” no fancy golf course, no roundabout, no Park ’n Ride is going to make much, if any, difference in the local economy. No million dollar-plus fancy road will increase our tax base or improve the economy.

The Boothbay region has become little more than a tourist stop and most of the jobs are service jobs. Even our healthcare facilities are little more than service jobs, though the pay is better.

The cost of housing on the peninsula is very high and rents for modest apartments are $900+ per month. Don’t even think of the summertime rents charged! You don’t need a solar calculator to figure out that at $9.00 per hour, a worker would need to gross $1,350+ to cover rent alone. That’s 150 hours, three and three quarter weeks to just make rent. Even at $15 per hour, it’s still over two weeks to pay rent.

Help is scarce, as one hotel and a once popular restaurant/bar have already closed early this year. Changes in foreign worker rules are making it less inviting for them to come here to work. We don’t have the population to supply the needed seasonal workers and never will have.

To survive here, you either need a fat retirement account, a job out of town, i.e., airline pilot, merchant mariner, etc., or a trust fund. Yes, there are successful businesses and owners who live here, but they will tell you it takes long hours to make your own business successful.

As part of a private person’s “grand scheme,” we, as taxpayers, are going to vote on spending $1.5 million on funding a state highway project. For what? Four months of traffic a year?

Cyrus C. Lauriat

Boothbay