Town Is Asking the Wrong Question

Letters to the Editor momentary rest stop and a peak at the natural beauty Town is asking the of our landscape. Who is gaining from all this? The assertion at a recent Kennebunk Planning Session wrong question that “any business is a good business and should not to To the editor: be denied a permit if it follows the letter of the law” is utterly wrong and a marker of how far Town officials The Ode to Lower Village by Elizabeth Post is brilliant and Planning Board members have deviated from any even if poignantly sad about the Lower Village’s respect for those of us who live in this community. It obsession to build parking lots, for “gone was the was also stated that an investor for a proposed major quaint, peaceful village called Lower”. development along the river announced that he would When my wife and I purchased our home here many not proceed unless the Town guaranteed parking! Such years ago, we exclaimed with E.B. White: “What a proposal should be laughed out of the room by the happens to me when I cross the Piscataqua and plunge Planning Board and every town official involved in the rapidly into Maine at the cost of seventy-five cents in process. tolls? I cannot describe it. I do not ordinarily spy a There once was a time when the slogan: There's More partridge in a pear tree, or three French hens, but I do to Maine was experienced by residents and tourists have the sensation of having received a gift from a true alike. None of the options presented for additional love.” parking for an already saturated commercial district are Now that Lower Village has been surrendered to the by any measure suitable or desirable. The Town is developers who greedily destroy where once “Peace, asking the wrong question. The question asked should tranquility and natural beauty did abound”, the Town be: Do the residents of Kennebunk Lower Village want expects us to embrace further acquisitions of limited additional land to be taken for parking of short term land resources to accommodate parking for short term visitors? Does anyone in Town government or official visitors. positions have the vision and leadership to put that referendum on the ballot? There’s more to Lower These large scale businesses do nothing to enhance the Village than a proliferation of eating and drinking quality of life for taxpaying residents. Many residents establishments and parking lots—if you can find it! abandon Lower Village for months and give their trade to establishments far away. The environmental Robert F. Lyons Lower congestion is too great a cost to accommodate Village Kennebunk hundreds of day hoppers who primarily seek only a