Eastbayri.com

To the editor:

This is in response to the February 9 letter to the editor “Put East Beach Road back where it belongs.” I find it disturbing that the author represents the Westport Beach Committee yet at the same time this letter is a Chicken Little-esque plea for “someone to do something” about East Beach Road — seemingly an arm-flailing call for “any ideas at all.”

He offers his solution — “put the road back here it was.” Apparently the author doesn’t realize that the land where the road once used to be is now gone. It shouldn’t take a civil engineer to see that you cannot overlay a new asphalt street over sand and ocean waves.

The author also claims that the Beach Committee wants to move the road north by 100 feet. Should the Beach Committee double as the urban planning department? Aren’t they in charge of parking passes?

This public throwing-up-of-hands out of frustration through a hysterical letter is an embarrassment to the town, the selectmen, to the other Beach Committee members and to the voters of this town. How can a letter like this come from an elected official? It’s a loud admission of the sad reality that too many town officials are ill-equipped to serve. Voters need to start electing people who have relevant expertise, not amateurs of local retires looking to fill up their evenings.

In response to the Beach Committee’s cry for ideas, here’s one: Ask the state to take over the area and it becomes East Horseneck Beach. Despite the misinformation spread by those who would like to believe the land was “stolen” from the town in the 1950s, the voters of Westport asked the state, by a landslide vote, to take over Horseneck Beach.

And it appears that this was the right thing to do. The state is apparently a much better custodian. Last summer, we had a Westport man indecently exposing himself at Cherry & Webb town beach, while over at Horseneck the state was improving services and facilities for beachgoers’ safety.

By the Beach Committee’s own admission at the last town meeting, the only thing they have achieved in decades is to ensure that parking revenues only go to funding the beach expenses. Yet they think they are qualified to reroute roads and in so doing set the town up for costly lawsuits, which would certainly come from any eminent domain actions against the East Beach Road property owners.

Let the state handle this. It appears the town officials will continue to do what they do best — posture and yell. We need real solutions, not arm flailing or, at the very least, sense enough not to broadcast our town officials’ inability to solve Westport’s problems.

Cindy Vieira

Westport