I want to first thank you for your work on this issue, I know it hasn’t been easy. In June, I was one of the people who had hoped to see a Public Hearing, and we had one. You enabled many of us to address you and to give our thoughts on the Land Swap. I thank you for your deliberation, I appreciate your work, and although I disagreed with your conclusion, I do understand the process, and understand that not everyone is going to agree on every issue, but as elected officials, it’s our job to come to a final decision.

So I am not speaking in favor of reconsideration because I disagree with the vote, in fact, I told at least three councilors that I didn’t plan to be here tonight and I truly hoped that the town would move forward in the process of improving access to the beach. When I said that, I meant it, and so my report to you tonight is a follow up and expansion to my comments that I presented to you in an E-mail earlier. More importantly, it is not my intent to derail the Land Swap entirely but ensure that the decision the town is making will not be subject to lengthy and complicated legal issues in the future. I wouldn’t be providing this information or speaking tonight if I didn’t think I’m doing what is best for the Town of Scarborough moving forward.

I apologize for the lateness of the information that I am about to pass onto you, but, as you can imagine, every rabbit hole I jumped into, led to another, AND it was out of respect for the council that I backed away from any involvement in this issue after the July Council Meeting, and it has only been in the last week, at the request of many of my constituents, that I began to do some research on their behalf. I believe it is an important part of my job, to aide any of my constituents, in the pursuit of information. And so I began to delve more deeply into State Resources, Statutes, and Laws, and working with State Agencies, Commissioners, their staff, and other outside groups in an effort to help constituents find answers to the many questions they had.

It was my hope, during my research, that each trail of fact finding that I was led down, would turn out that the town had, in fact, dotted all of their I’s and crossed all of their T’s. In many cases, the remedies that citizen’s sought, and I researched through one agency or another, were, in fact, dead ends. But it was Monday when I became increasingly more concerned, which is why I am here tonight to share this information with you.

When I began working with the Commissioner of the Department of Transportation and his appropriate staff members, I found a major issue.

Firstly, we could not find documentation that Depot Street had ever been transferred, deeded, or even eased from the State to the Town. Despite any evidence of a deed, easement, or transfer, DOT, nevertheless, believes that Depot Street is, in fact, controlled by the town of Scarborough. However, I will add, that their comments showed little evidence and seemed to indicate that they’d prefer not to get into the matter any further. Through their research, they told me, that Scarborough controls, “the section of Pine Point Road the town is considering discontinuing (King Street to the dunes).”

When I read that, I immediately contacted DOT once again, to determine who owned the land from the Dunes to the low tide mark. DOT told me expressly that in any type of transfer, the only property that DOT would give up on behalf of the State of Maine would be “to the end of the pavement.”

As we all know, this Land Swap, as approved by the Council, includes transfer of lands beyond the end of the pavement, namely the Coastal Wetland Areas, or dunes as well as the inter-tidal zones.

This last area of concern only came to my knowledge yesterday afternoon. After spending much of the day in Augusta, it’s become clear, that there are remaining disputes that I either need more time to facilitate, if, or course, the council is interested, which I hope you are.

Yesterday, I left messages with the Army Corp of Engineers and also with Casco Bay Estuary Partnership. Both of these groups were suggested to me by the DOT as groups that will be helpful in determining who actually owns the area beyond the pavement at the end of Pine Point Road.

Although I have yet to hear back from the Army Corp of Engineers, I did have a good conversation with the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership, who then led me back to the Maine State Planning Office … who then passed me off to the Attorney Generals Office. The Office of the State Attorney General provided me with limited information that I wont get into, but may prove to be helpful later on; namely a decision by the Maine Law Court from the late 1980’s knows as the Moody Breach Case. This was a dispute case that involved inter-tidal zones and public beach access in the town of Wells.

But what the Maine State Planning Office did note is that they provide for what is called State Planning Office Right of Way Discovery Grants. This program is a competitive small grant program that provides funds to towns to do legal research about disputed ownership of parcels that provide water access. It’s not a regulatory program, but rather provides funds to help towns investigate title to property and potentially reclaim the right to use the property for public access. This would obviously be a perfect fit for the Town of Scarborough and questions that have risen recently. After checking with Jim Connors at the Maine State Planning Office, I learned Scarborough has not yet applied for or received an award to look at the Pine Point area. It would be my further recommendation that we utilize this State Resource sooner rather than later. I am ready to help advocate that we receive a rushed application and funds so we can complete this process once and for all.

The point I am trying to make, is that, there is evidence, or at least strong doubts as to whether the Town of Scarborough currently owns much of the proposed area in the land swap. As a result, if the Council does not reconsider their actions, and then table the motion to allow for further study … to ensure that all I’s are indeed dotted …. and all the T’s crossed …. We may be opening the town up for legal challenges that, in the end, will cost more time, more money, and more hassle.

Therefore, I have come to believe that it is in the Council’s, the Town’s, the taxpayers’, and the Truman’s best interest to complete the research that I and others have just begun using the Right of Way Discovery Grant offered by the Maine State Planning Office. This will come at a very small expense to the taxpayers of Scarborough. I would think that the little bit of information that I was able to dig up in a few short e-mails and phone calls over a few days, may only be only the tip of a potential iceberg that any good lawyer would be able to dig up much more easily and quickly that I did. Certainly the application and implementation of the grant would be far less expensive and much less messy than any legal challenges that may result from this land swap.