Letter to the editor: 73 residents

Tue, 04/02/2019 - 18:54

73 residents

We are grateful the Rockport Select Board, at its April 8, 2019 meeting, will consider reducing the number of planned parking spaces in the lot along Limerock Street.

We continue to be very concerned that the current plans include a library building three times larger than the prior one. We learned last month that the planned building assumed a new Limerock Street and it will be only five feet from the current Limerock Street. We are told it is too late to consider other options.

Limerock must be pushed away from the planned building and into the park. Limerock must cut through the lower park, across the park where the largest monument and one of the largest and healthiest trees now stand. In fact, the current plan moves both monuments and destroys every tree in the park.

An additional $370,000 beyond the voter approved $3.5 million is required to implement the planned 14 parking spaces, the street work and the park destruction. And the new amount of $3.87 million does not provide money for re-landscaping the park. We are spending money on asphalt rather than plants and trees. More money will be needed to provide more than grass on the library grounds and park.

It is time to make a real change, rather than a tweak, to the parking lot plan. It is time to find ways to minimize black and maximize green within the constraints presented by this late public awareness.

The 14 perpendicular parking spaces planned should be reduced to six. These six spaces plus those planned for Russell Avenue and Union Street yield 16 parking spaces:

6 perpendicular spaces on Limerock
1 perpendicular handicap space on Limerock
2 parallel drop-off spaces on Limerock
3 parallel spaces on Russell
4 parallel spaces on Union
16 parking spaces within 75 steps of the new library (many more close-by)

The library staff gathered parking data over the last six months of 2018. Their data shows, assuming library visits average 15 minutes, that an average of three cars were parked at the library during the day. Clearly, the two drop-off and six perpendicular spaces will provide adequate space even if the traffic to the new library doubles to an average of six cars parked during the day. Parking for programs averaged 11 cars per program in the last six months of 2018. The 16 parking spaces within 75 steps of the new library would meet this need. The 16 spaces would meet the need 92 percent of the days. And for those 24 or so days a year when the need for program parking exceeds 16 spaces, there is abundant close-by parking, just as there is for Rockport Opera House events (see table below).

Please contact our Select Board members now and ask them to approve six perpendicular parking spaces on Limerock Street at their April 8, 2019 meeting. Six perpendicular parking spaces on Limerock would preserve the maximum amount of green space given the current building plan and accommodate the parking needs of those visiting the new library.

Urge the Select Board to solve the matter of parking with six perpendicular parking spaces on Limerock Street so we can focus on building a library. Ask them to limit the destruction, keep off the grass.

Here is the contact information for our Select Board members:

Doug Cole: dcole@town.rockport.me.us

Debra Hall: dhall@town.rockport.me.us

Jeff Hamilton: Jhamilton@town.rockport.me.us

Mark Kelley: mgkelley@town.rockport.me.us

Ken McKinley: kmckinley@town.rockport.me.us

Respectfully: Bjorn Lee

Tracy Wheeler

Nina Lynn Wheeler

Maureen Egan

Tim Seymour

Linda Lewis