Dear Editor:

My name is Mary Lou Teel. My property, like the Anthonys, abuts the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. My home has a view to the Back River over a corner of CMBG property.

Until a year and a half ago, I felt lucky to have CMBG as a neighbor. I was a member. I recommended it to friends.

And then they sued me, citing a flaw in the view easement in my 1985 deed that one of their team of lawyers had discovered.

What followed was a long and expensive legal wrangle which was settled last spring. The cost was high, over $140,000 in legal fees on my side, and many sleepless nights, wondering if I would be forced to give up my home and leave the town I love.

Which, I am convinced, was the purpose of the lawsuit.

I didn't give up. Today, I still have my beloved home. And my view. And an agreement with CMBG that I can live with.

I'm glad I stood up to them. I hope the town of Boothbay will too.

I haven’t gone public with this before. But it makes me heartsick to see the Anthony family, and this town, being bullied by CMBG's lawyers, bags of money, and threats that we'll all be paying for it if we don't bow down to their demands.

How can it be that a Botanical Garden that professes itself to be friend to butterflies and growing things is jeopardizing our drinking water, cutting down forests, and insisting that parking lots are better for the environment than trees?

How can a non-profit entity tell us they were forced to do this, on an accelerated timeline, to maximize their profits? How can an entity that professes to be good for our community threaten to bankrupt it, and malign every local official or neighbor who dares to disagree? Because they believe it will work.

We can’t let it. CMBG could be the asset to this town and this peninsula that it has the potential to be. And that it once was. And we, as taxpayers and citizens of a town we all love, have the right, and the obligation, to insist on it.

Mary Lou Teel

Boothbay