Hi Eric-
I do ecological restoration as part of my job, which
usually involves acquiring land and/or getting
conservation easements for long term habitat use
(often with recreational use, also). Your post is a
very elonquent description of what life is like for
the landowner who has desires to keep land
undeveloped, and who is trying to do that to the
extent possible without going broke while doing it. I
wish everyone who has the urge to take extreme
positions such as calling someone on the other side a
"nasty, greedy lout" (often understandable due to
frustration, previous bad experiences, etc., but often
totally unjustified in any sense), would slow down and
think about what might be going on for the person who
will get kicked by their knee-jerk reflex. Calling
people names (so that they change their minds and
decide that preserving land and access is a thankless
task) is only going to prove the axiom that "No Good
Deed Goes Unpunished." What often happens is that
either a) the people just sell their land to a
developer and get the hell out, or b) go over to "the
other side" and develop with a vengence because they
have been so wounded by their supposed friends and
supporters.

good luck keeping your land open- I hope you and your
family can keep your strength and resolve in the face
of the arrogant selfishness of the few.

Chris Cline
SLC, UT

--- Eric Shmo Chandler wrote:
What is especially appalling is that, in the
article I posted, he tries to
weasel out of his past statements about preserving
the land by blaming the
town for not building the municipal sewer earlier,
and claiming that, because
he couldn't get the timeshares up sooner, he "had
to" engage in the new $15
million project. What a nasty, greedy lout he has
become.

That's kind of harsh. My family is part of a land
partnership in
Maine. That partnership finds itself doing things it
would rather not
in order to keep the larger portion of the land
undeveloped. In
essence, a gravel pit operation allows us to pay the
taxes on the rest
of the land. We do not post the land. In fact we
post signs
encouraging people to hike, hunt, snowmachine, and
ice-climb on our
land, among other things. The thanks we get is that
people leave
truckloads of trash on our property, even while they
are recreating on
it.

It is very possible...possible, I said... that this
15 million dollar
project on the Trapps part will keep the greater
operation alive. I
suspect that selling trail tickets to people like us
in Subarus is not
that profitable. But calling someone a "nasty greedy
lout" for running
a ski operation and doing what he wants with HIS
money on HIS land
within the law...that's uncalled for. If everybody
who ****es and
moans about what developers do to "our" land would
pony up and make it
worth developers while to leave things undeveloped,
the argument would
be solved. But that will never happen. The Nature
Conservancy is about
the only outfit that puts their money where their
mouth is.

But I'm sure I'll hear why I'm wrong.

Shmo







__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com