Dear Editor:

The Boothbay Comprehensive Planning Committee has produced a useful report. Its statistical appendices are its most important contribution. They make irrelevant some of the report's "vision," including the selectmen's focus on attracting year-round jobs for our shrinking number of Boothbay Region High School graduates and the development of low cost housing units around the common.

The appendices provide the stark facts: "From 1990 to 2010, the community’s 20-39 year-old population dropped by over 200 people, while the 50-69 year-old population increased by almost 600 people (mostly retirees who have moved into the area)," and the school age and under population has been shrinking sharply. Our overall population (and probably aggregate wealth) has remained stable only because of the retirees.

This is not a reversible trend. It is nationwide, except for areas which are employment magnets because of location, transportation resources, concentration of work opportunities, economic history, and human assets, especially a highly skilled, well-educated workforce. The Boothbay peninsula has none of these. That is the demographic, geographical and statistical reality.

Boothbay's future resides in attracting more retirees and businesses associated with serving them; with expanding the tourist and recreational industry; with innovative ways to support the artistic and cultural community; and with efforts to put the Boothbay area on the national map as one of the must-visit sites for its outstanding botanical garden, its natural beauty, its Maine authenticity, and its quality of life. It also means accepting that demography is destiny.

For example, the selectman's enthusiasm for creating a night-lit Little League baseball field in a transformed Clifford Park makes no sense. There will be fewer and fewer children to play on them, and the school system here will continue to shrink. Our selectmen and all of us should be thinking creatively about the reality of Boothbay's future and the planning and investment to manage that effectively. I may be missing it, but I don't see enough of that going on.

Fred Kaplan

Boothbay