letter to the editor

Roundabout: final words

Wed, 11/16/2016 - 1:00pm

Dear Editor:

Like everyone else, the Committee Against the Roundabout is relieved that a hard fought local referendum has come to an end, though it wishes the results had been different. Almost one thousand people voted against each of the three articles. A swing of about one hundred and fifty votes would have changed the outcome.

It also wishes that the referendum had been conducted in a more civil way. Our selectmen were complicit, either by silence or approval. And the level of discourse, especially in comments in the Register, was testimony to how nasty some of our fellow townspeople allowed themselves to be.

PGC5’s increasing economic dominance of Boothbay and the entire peninsula does not speak well for our future. The tentacles will keep spreading. Money and power are difficult to resist. Many have no desire to resist.

Now that the majority have spoken, it’s up to all of us to do our best to make the changes that are coming as little damaging as possible. That will be difficult. Control will now be almost entirely in the hands of PGC5, the DOT, and our selectmen. It’s hard to have confidence in them. For example, how can any rational person think a roundabout with four pedestrian and bicycle crossings can be safe?

Our selectmen now bear a heavy responsibility to make this change as palatable as possible to everyone. I doubt that there will be any alleviation possible in the details. We will have two years of road disruption, no necessary improvement in traffic, serious safety issues to be concerned about, and there will never be any consideration of alternate plans or the use of TIF money to bring water and sewer to the industrial park, which might be a source of year-round jobs. There are likely to be unintended consequences, which are usually unpleasant. There almost always are. I hope some good things will result. But it’s hard not to be skeptical.

Fred Kaplan

Boothbay