To the editor:
We attended the December 5, 2007, Presque Isle City Council meeting and were disappointed and discouraged by what we witnessed. The Council, led by City Manager Tom Stevens, attempted to make a substantive change to the wording of the Planning Board’s proposed Comprehensive Plan. Even after Planning Board member Jane Farrin stood to identify their impunity, they persisted. Though Tom Stevens deflected the action to another direction, the intent of the Council remains clear. They will no more listen to their own Planning Board than they will to the citizens they allegedly represent.
The wording that the Council is determined to change concerns the most far-reaching matter before them at this time: the Bypass issue.
The Planning Board has produced a document that looks forward with both the collective best interests of Presque Isle, and the will of its citizens. The proposed comprehensive plan includes the possibility of a westerly truck route that would alleviate the problematic truck traffic on Main Street. This is an option that the Council vigorously opposes.
We wonder the real reason Mr. Elish doggedly supports building another bridge across the Aroostook River in sight of the existing four-lane bridge. We would like to know who it is that tells Councilman Hovey that a westerly bypass can never occur, and why Presque Isle must accept that decision without question.
It appears MDOT had done but one study of the west, and its results are only partially obtainable by the public.
We have a segment of the elusive data on the westerly bypass (obtained from MDOT, and measured in 1992 dollars!) that indicate transportation, economic, and environmental differences between east and west routes around the city. One difference is that to the west only 54 acres of farmland will be destroyed: a mere fraction of that to be destroyed to the east. The west provides direct access to existing industrial land, and serves the existing employment base much better. And it best feature is the reduction of heavy truck traffic on Main Street.
We have thoroughly read MDOT studies for the easterly bypass routes, attended all of the local PAC meetings over the last four years, corresponded with officials on these matters, and investigated similar scenarios in other states.
We have yet to find real evidence that the north south four-lane highway will ever be constructed to utilize the “footprint” of the easterly bypass around Presque Isle.
We did find the DOT’s own study makes direct statements that an easterly bypass will not benefit Presque Isle, and in fact, will reduce it from a city to a “village.”
We have also found that the easterly bypass will do little to nothing to reduce heavy truck traffic on Main Street, the single problem the city wanted addressed so many years ago, and which the City Council continues to fail to address.
Who or what is pressuring the City Manager and the City Council to contradict its own Planning Board? The Council’s dismissal of Planning Board language is not a trivial matter. Its patronizing attitude toward the Planning Board, who heard about a half dozen times they did a “good job”, failed to mask a determination to inflict the special interests of the few on the backs of the many.
So, we wonder why it is that the governing body of Presque Isle continues to support a project that will in the short term serve a few special interests, and in the long term produce harm to the city.
It is time for the people of Presque Isle to examine what motivates this City Council and its City Manager to thwart its own Planning Board and to refuse to take action for the best interests of its citizens.
Wayne and Pamela Sweetser
Presque Isle
