To the Editor:
With respect to the proposed Meeting House Place development, there are considerations as to affordable housing and “downsize” housing. But upon closer inspection, can these goals be met elsewhere on the Island and in other, more flexible ways? To be blunt: The point of this enterprise to build this project is to make money, not to improve Martha’s Vineyard. Is that OK?
Sure, we all deserve to earn money, and apparently lots of it; it’s free enterprise. But let’s look even closer: While making a show of effort to fulfill some community requirements is a pleasant move, the problem is that both Mother Nature, according to Edgartown Great Pond Foundation executive director Emily Reddington who states this clearly in your article (MVC closes Meeting House Place public hearing,” July 3), is not in sync with this project. But it is not just the Edgartown Great Pond we must look out for, we need to make a full decision about this Island as it is and can be. Is it a place for further urbanization and development, sold to the bidder who passes the test of mollifying the boards and commissions, which as far as I can tell is what we are looking at? Or is it a place of beauty and community where families are raised, nature is cherished, and those who live here — and those who visit — can behold with the respect of value? It’s not so simple an equation as that, but the bifurcation is clear.
If this proposal were not ultimately about money being made, we wouldn’t see it in front of the MVC; the land would be put in a trust for the Land Bank, for example. I urge the MVC to reject this proposal. To the MVC: Don’t be fooled, you are in the driver’s seat until they are, and all of us here know how it works when that takes place. We can figure out what to do together for Edgartown. Fingers crossed!
Dean Rosenthal
Edgartown
