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06/13/2018 08:00 AMOn Monday, June 18 at 7 p.m., the Westbrook selectman are asking for approval on a long list of expenditures, some of which have value and others are questionable. For instance, it’s proposed we spend $200,000 for a new police boat—interesting, since the latest budget saved almost that amount of money by discharging one of the town’s state troopers .
We’re seeing a pattern of using our tax money for unneeded services—armed patrols of islands to which few ever go, this to protect bird eggs from being stepped on—and being cajoled into paying for unneeded expenditures for fire and police boats, equipment, and patrolmen.
The claim is also made that the patrols provide welfare checks on boaters—except there are fewer and fewer boats sailing the Sound. Boat registration is down by more than 10 percent and while the marinas seem full, the boats don’t sail, they sit, apparently as rocking summer cottages. The Duck Island anchorage used to have 50-plus yachts staying over weekend nights; now there are only five or fewer. Where we used to have dozens of boats going back and forth on the Sound, now there are maybe 5 or 10. Where there used to be boats stem to stern coming home at five on weekends, now there’s no parade. Gas is expensive.
Yes, we have the occasional call for search and rescue help, but we also have other towns with the same equipment and reduced needs, all within a couple of miles.
Perhaps there’s a better way. We could reduce the cost by working with our neighbors to provide the needed specialized equipment, service, and storage as a group—one a fire boat, another a crash boat for search and rescue, and another a more substantial vessel for rescue.
Jeffrey Kriete
Westbrook