The 1922 Popham "PLAN"

Landowners are attempting to assert control over and develop 85 year old "paper" streets which no-one ever thought would be built out, were never paid any attention to in the positioning of houses and accesses, was laid over existing uses but which are are now being brought back from the dead and are causing the destruction of our landscape. Houses which were built out long before the plan have now been subjected to having a road put in right behind the windows of their house. Some of my neighbors are selling fractional shares in land which has been held in common with our family and theirs for over 50 years, under a deed which sought to limit development by blocking access to certain lands but by their action is now enabling that development. Roads from the 1922 plan were built to circumvent the existence of these private property rights while at the same time the deals were being formalized to sell and allow use of both the private (by selling the fractional shares) and the "public" (paper) streets by obtaining State and local permits to build out the "paper" street.

I did not have any information about 1987 legislation which sought to deal with these paper streets, and it has cost my family great sums of money to become educated through hiring lawyers to be able to understand them. Some of our neighbors have tried with their costly (to us and others) legal maneuvering, to change the history of some areas of Popham to suit their need to keep development options open. Some of this information has taken the form of Affidavits, or has involved informing local government of past uses which might influence the current ability to get permits. Unless you know the history of my family and the reasons for various properties which were bought, what provisions were attached to the deeds and why, it would be difficult to be able to understand what is going on with these types of "deals", maneuverings, and legal and quasi-legal positioning, yet these activities will, I believe, affect the larger landscape. I am trying to preserve that landscape. It will be my hope to shed some light on the true nature of these transactions, permitting, and lawsuits and their consequences, most of which have to do with the desire of certain parties to work some portion of the implementation of the 1922 plan. My family has lost control over property which we have owned and maintained for many over fifty years in the name of rental incomes or profit at our expense of tens of thousands of dollars spent in their defense. The spin put on some of this has been that my family is doing some sort of harm to the community, by not caving in to demands of the use of our private property for access to development that is taking place next to our house. We have filled no wetlands, bulldozed no sand dunes (except to save our house in 1977 from destruction), cut down no trees, violated no federal laws, put no septic system leach fields into seasonally flooding areas, as my neighbors have. One of our neighbors is suing us to try to gain control over property which they have never used nor previously made any claims to, all in order to protect their ability to develop land without incurring any hardship to the existing land uses of their own or inconvenience to themselves. It is fine to do to others but not themselves.

Map (soon)