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> From: Twybil <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Rural roads
> Date: Friday, March 06, 1998 3:32 PM
>
> Mr. Marcus recently searched for help with rural road preservation>
>
> Contact Seaver W. Leslie, Old Stone Farm, Wiscasset, ME; 207-882-5554.
Seaver
> was instrumental in stopping an intrusive road improvement project in
> Wiscasset a few years ago, and began a local initiative which has been
very
> effective. Good luck.
>
> Michael

That should read Seaver was the founder, along with Bruce Marcus and
several other local residents of the Maine Transportation Collation which
was instrumental...etc."  (The "intrusive road improvement", was, in fact a
bypass, and I will tell about that in response to the current bypass
thread.) Which is why these people approached me in the first place.
Unfortunately we were only up against the Maine DOT. What my friends were
fighting is a local Board of Selectmen that has assumed dictatorial powers
in the absence of any community interest in overseeing their behavior. Sort
of a local updated version of Mussolini making the trains run on time. And,
if you missed my report on the outcome of this debacle, what it was really
about was my friends' looking for some leverage to take advantage of the
Selectmen's' heavy-handed approach to road upgrading to get them to move
the road further away from their house. So, I helped provide them with
that, thanks in part to responses from the group, and now they are happy,
the Selectmen are happy, the 100 year old+ trees are cut, and what was a
rare opportunity to travel a nearly untouched 19th Cent. rural road is soon
to be lost to us.

Bruce Marcus