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Locals Stirred by
Condominium Possibilities
The 22 acres at secluded Goose Cove have been proposed for
development. |
The town of Deer
Isle doesn’t have an ordinance addressing condominium developments. So when a
local landowner proposed a condominium project on 22 acres at Goose
Cove, the planning board wasn’t sure what action to take. Moreover,
many residents in the town raised objections.
Dominick Parisi’s
plan to build housing for 36 families hit locals hard as recently as
last week. Terrell and Ginger Lester, who lived through condominium
development in Florida about 30 years ago, took the most aggressive
action. They organized the Friends of Deer Isle and passed around a
petition.
Three weeks
earlier, Terrell Lester had expressed his views on the consequences
of condominium growth in a guest column in the local weekly Island
Ad-Vantages.
“We are the
stewards of this special place, and it is up to us to keep it from
slipping through our fingers, as has happened to a large percentage
of small, coastal communities in this country,” he wrote. “We need
to talk about this and not feel powerless. We are the community,
that is us.”
The petition the
Lesters circulated asked the Deer Isle Planning Board to enact an
ordinance, suggested as the Multiple Unit Development Moratorium
Ordinance. That would impose a 180-day moratorium to suspend “the
review, issuance by the town of any development permit, subdivision
approval, zoning permit or other land use approval authorizing a
multiple unit development.
They needed at
least 87 signatures, or 10 percent of the number of votes cast in
the last gubernatorial election, on the petition to force a
referendum on the proposed ordinance.
They succeeded.
Having just seven hours to gather the signatures in advance of the
planning board’s meeting on June 20, they came up with more than 270
signatures.
Now, the town in
full will vote on the referendum, once it is scheduled for either a
special town vote or else the general election in November. |
