What is at Stake? or Why Am I Doing This?

I believe we are at a pivotal point in the history of Popham Beach, during which alarming precedents are being set for future development and for the treatment of existing landowners and land uses at Popham. This web site will hopefully serve as a means to spread news on some of these issues facing us and the various government and private activities which are taking place which affect us all.This web site is an attempt to make the community aware of the particulars of some of these actions in the hopes that this knowledge will bring a wider participation in positively affecting the processes which are allowing these questionable activities. It is difficult for one person to stand and point at injustices with any hope of reform, but with the voices of many, something may be accomplished

My family has had to spend an enormous amount of money, time and energy, defending our property against illegal and threatening activities by neighbors, and in attempts to reverse actions taken by officials of the town of Phippsburg in their efforts to enable excessive development on properties abutting ours. There is much confusion over what has taken place, how it has happened and why we have been compelled to pursue these matters.

If the development of land is proper and meets criteria and conforms to existing land use ordinances, State and Federal laws, we have no problem with those uses. If however, the development threatens to contaminate, flood, destroy vegetation on, cause potential or current degradation of MY property AND the means by which the development is taking place is either blatantly outside the existing ordinances or is accomplished by manipulating "the system" in largely unethical ways or by misrepresenting facts, then the existence of that development sets precedents which will be pointed to for future development elsewhere in the community, and should not be allowed. This should not be tolerated by any individual who becomes aware of it and has the ability to try to affect it, particularly if it is a result of "official" actions (or inaction as the case may be) on the part of town or State officials in the execution of their duties. This should not be tolerated by the community at large.

Responsible development is acceptable, but irresponsible development is not.
The people of a town enact ordinances to govern development which deal with lot sizes, protected resources and rules for fair hearing of interested citizens who may be impacted by activities which are outside of the prescribed rules for those activities. We elect officials and empower them to act on the behalf of the larger community and oversee those rules for behavior. Not many members of the community at large had the distinctly unpleasant experience of seeing, first hand, the distortion of democratic mechanisms we have had to watch as non-compliance with the town's ordinances have been explained away by unfathomable revision of the criteria for those ordinances by town officials or adherence to some but not all of an ordinances's provisions (see Hill/Wyatt Variance). By invoking contradictory and biased favoritism in discretionary non-compliance with the town's ordinances for certain members of the community, the town has seemed to be ignoring the rules mandated for the rest of the town, merely for the tax revenues from allowing these development activities at Popham. To paraphrase one lamenting comment at one of the hearings on the Comprehensive Plan, "You used to be able to go to the Board of Appeals and get anything you wanted. You can't do that anymore!" My experience has been contradictory to his statement.
Because all of us have either already been or will be influenced by these various undertakings, as people point to court decisions and the grandfathering of lots at Popham for development, I feel it is imperative that as many people as possible understand the basis for our actions and positions, and that they be made aware of the extreme irregularities which we have discovered in the way the town and State has been doing (or not doing as the case may be) their business in our neighborhood, and what is being done about it. These activities by individuals, the town and the State should not be allowed to continue as they have, and where we could, we have asked the State and the courts to force the town to comply with its own ordinances and halt what should be restricted development.

So who am I? I'm Steve Norris. My family (Donnell) has had a cottage at Popham since 1889. I came to Popham at the age of two weeks for the first time. I moved to Maine permanently in 1975. My ancestors moved to Maine in 1630. At one time at Popham there was a hotel and a thriving community, though it was still, back then, a largely seasonally swelling population which came from as far away as Boston to enjoy the beach and its environs. There was, as there is now, a core of year round residents, and some of their descendents live at Popham today. Many have been active in the town's affairs and remain active in the political life of the town and the State. When the Rockledge Hotel burned in 1915, and its owners sought to find a way to capitalize on their large holdings of property there (it was a Massachusetts company), they decided to divide up the land and try to sell little pieces of Popham to some of the people who had visited in the past. They partitioned the land they owned into a grid around the existing properties (my family being one of them), put a series of roads on the maps, forming a grand and ordered development scheme (some of these roads go over deep ravines, through bogs, through the barns of the existing houses, etc.) and tried to sell off hundreds of the tiny lots (some as small as 50 sq. ft. by 75). The lots didn't sell. The 1922 plan was never realized. Unfortunately, it was never fully extinguished either. People have continued to buy and sell property relying on the lots designations of the 1922 plan. Now people are trying to revive some of its attributes, "paper" streets and such, to realize renewed development goals. It is as if the plan were a new one and owners of lots, large and small, are trying to bring it back into being. But the smaller lots are now being sold as developable too because of the town's willingness to allow for all development at Popham. To the town and perhaps many of the people of Phippsburg, Popham represents tax revenue with no costs to the town in services rendered, leaving those tax revenues as pure profit (and everyone is from "away" anyhow).
But there was a reason the original lots didn't sell. Some were in swamps, as two houses have now been permitted, one built, attest to. It is because there has been increasing pressure to develop land along the coast of Maine as property values and rental income have soared that these swamp sites are now viable once again. The costs of building in previously inhospitable areas is now worth the extra cost to execute. Where one wouldn't build their own house, they may be perfectly comfortable building for rental or sale in areas where the mosquito rules.
The State and the Town have been trying to find ways to balance existing land uses against these development pressures, in the form of property tax reform for working and commercial uses, particularly in the many fishing communities, versus the recreational uses, while coastal and non-coastal property values have soared and everywhere people are scrambling to maximize profit from any less developed areas of the State and of some of the undeveloped parcels in the town of Phippsburg. Popham Beach is now experiencing these growing pains, and there are extraordinary profits to be made by landowners and developers. What was once a sleepy backwater along the coast is now seeing a marked increase in development along with the rest of Phippsburg. Other communities in Phippsburg have had similar problems with taxation issues, where the needs and realities of working communities have had to be weighed against seasonal development and uses and the divergent valuations that have arisen. The desire for people to maximize use of and profit from their property is understandable, but has brought with it a number of alarming activities at Popham which will dramatically alter the quality of life there, activities which affect the the entire community of Popham. Because Popham is almost entirely a seasonal community, we are particularly prone activities taking place while no-one is around to defend the needs and wishes of the existing community. I believe we must take a more active level of engagement with the town as the attitude of the town is now to permit everything which comes in front of it, but to not regulate it at all with the prescribed restrictions laid out for the rest of the town in the form of zoning restrictions and environmental conservation. this is dangerous and is patently undemocratic to favor one group at the expense of another by ignoring the ordinances prescribed BY THE PEOPLE of the town. If these ordinances do not apply to everyone, they should apply to no-one.
All Access Beach Rights for Phippsburg Residents
Meetings last year which sought to get the town to acknowledge trespassing problems for private property owners at Popham were met with disturbing answers which amounted to the town selectmen basically saying that they didn't really care about the rights of property owners at Popham, and that they would not set as any sort of priority the defense of those rights by law enforcement. They went so far as to say that the townspeople of Phippsburg at large had as much right to use the private beach property at Popham, had been doing so traditionally, and that the town government would defend their right to continue to do so over the rights of the property owners Because of these types of attitudes on the part of the town government in dealing with the rights of landowners at Popham, I believe we are at a pivotal point during which precedents are being set for future development and for the treatment of existing landowners and land uses at Popham. This web site will hopefully serve as a means to spread news on some of these issues facing us and the various government and private activities which are taking place which affect us all.