Letter: Vote ‘no’ on 8, ‘yes’ on 9 (June 6, 2008)
Editor:
Another, among many, reason for repealing contract zoning (CZ) is that, if the Tides conversion and the tourist bus parking fiascos are any indication of the future, CZ is likely to be abused by way of selectmen aggressively advancing uncontrolled tourism and thus assaulting the residential nature of our residential neighborhoods. What makes the selectmen think we need any more tourism than we now have? Do they not realize that by advancing uncontrolled summer condominium development near the Goose Rocks Beach area, and especially in the free enterprise zone just above Goose Rocks Beach, they are in effect slowly destroying Goose Rocks Beach by sending more and more tourists to a fragile beach that cannot sustain any more crowding during the peak summer season?
Although the town owns only a 60-foot oceanfront lot, it apparently believes it has the right to flood the Goose Rocks Beach area with summer tourists without so much as consulting this residential neighborhood. Ditto for the residents in the Village East Zone.
Kennebunkport is a series of private neighborhoods that tourists visit because they enjoy its quiet, uncrowded residential neighborhoods. It is not a tourist destination.
Of course the good citizens of Kennebunkport rejected the proposed Tides Inn conversion. They wonder what made the town think it had the right to drop a permanent toilet for tourists (or a bus park) in the middle of a residential neighborhood without consulting the neighborhood, and at the same time encourage crowding of Goose Rocks Beach through the development of nearby condominiums operating as “hotels” during the summer. The beach has two temporary toilets for summer usage.
Nobody, of course, objects to dropping people off at the public beach in the area reserved for public recreational use, as long as they stay on the public beach and are not given permission by the town to recreate on private property in the neighborhoods and on the private parts of the beach itself. But to seek, as current rumor has it, a municipal parking lot under contract zoning away from the beach for publicly transporting people by shuttle from clusters of condominiums away from the beach to the beach and dumping them on an already overcrowded beach in a residential neighborhood, will be to seriously change the residential nature of the Goose Rocks zone and court serious disaster. There is, or should be a limit to tourism in this small town, and it is reached as soon as the town’s selectmen decide that in the best interest of the town we can change the residential nature of the town and the neighborhoods for the economic interest of a few. Enough is enough!
Vote “No” on Question 8 and “Yes” on Question 9.
Christopher Celi
Kennebunkport
Another, among many, reason for repealing contract zoning (CZ) is that, if the Tides conversion and the tourist bus parking fiascos are any indication of the future, CZ is likely to be abused by way of selectmen aggressively advancing uncontrolled tourism and thus assaulting the residential nature of our residential neighborhoods. What makes the selectmen think we need any more tourism than we now have? Do they not realize that by advancing uncontrolled summer condominium development near the Goose Rocks Beach area, and especially in the free enterprise zone just above Goose Rocks Beach, they are in effect slowly destroying Goose Rocks Beach by sending more and more tourists to a fragile beach that cannot sustain any more crowding during the peak summer season?
Although the town owns only a 60-foot oceanfront lot, it apparently believes it has the right to flood the Goose Rocks Beach area with summer tourists without so much as consulting this residential neighborhood. Ditto for the residents in the Village East Zone.
Kennebunkport is a series of private neighborhoods that tourists visit because they enjoy its quiet, uncrowded residential neighborhoods. It is not a tourist destination.
Of course the good citizens of Kennebunkport rejected the proposed Tides Inn conversion. They wonder what made the town think it had the right to drop a permanent toilet for tourists (or a bus park) in the middle of a residential neighborhood without consulting the neighborhood, and at the same time encourage crowding of Goose Rocks Beach through the development of nearby condominiums operating as “hotels” during the summer. The beach has two temporary toilets for summer usage.
Nobody, of course, objects to dropping people off at the public beach in the area reserved for public recreational use, as long as they stay on the public beach and are not given permission by the town to recreate on private property in the neighborhoods and on the private parts of the beach itself. But to seek, as current rumor has it, a municipal parking lot under contract zoning away from the beach for publicly transporting people by shuttle from clusters of condominiums away from the beach to the beach and dumping them on an already overcrowded beach in a residential neighborhood, will be to seriously change the residential nature of the Goose Rocks zone and court serious disaster. There is, or should be a limit to tourism in this small town, and it is reached as soon as the town’s selectmen decide that in the best interest of the town we can change the residential nature of the town and the neighborhoods for the economic interest of a few. Enough is enough!
Vote “No” on Question 8 and “Yes” on Question 9.
Christopher Celi
Kennebunkport
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