Dear Editor:

I think the Boothbay Harbor town dock should be extended or another dock should be added. The dock is always full. The people in our town pay taxes to take care of issues like this, and another town dock means more business.

There is not enough room. My family and I have been in this situation - we were coming in to tie up after fireworks for dinner at Herringbone’s, but there was no room so we left and went somewhere else. In the summer people from other towns come and tie up at the town dock leaving no room for locals.

Residents pay taxes for things in town to be clean, safe and up-to-date. Sometimes the dock isn’t safe because there are too many people tied up to it and because there aren’t any cleats and some people do not know how to tie a clove hitch so their boat could float out into the harbor, crash into other objects, or other boats could hit it. In addition, sometimes there are loose boards that stick up and people trip on them. A way to fix things like that is to have somebody check to make sure the dock is up-to-date because the residents of Boothbay Harbor pay taxes to fix these issues.

Lastly, there are different ways we could make more room on the dock without adding another dock. The existing dock could be expanded into a U shape so people could tie up inside and outside. Another thing we could do is add slips so people could tie up on both sides. If another dock was added we could use one dock for inflatables and smaller boats and use the other for bigger boats - with larger cleats to make it easier to tie up.

I hope you take my ideas into consideration: make more space for people to tie up at the existing dock and fix it or add another dock.

Margret Sledge

Boothbay Harbor