This morning I'm writing up notes on additional topics I thought were interesting.
- Non-resident land owner Bob Guerrera asked to speak about problems he is having with beach visitors causing issues on his property. The Town owns a fair amount of beachfront property between the State Beach and Mr. Guerrera's extremely narrow strip of beach access (map 9, lot 53, 0.04 acres). The Town lots are map 9, lots 54 through 57. (Map here. Ownership search tool here.) Either the Town or some individuals have been promoting that Town property as an additional beach that can be used and even putting up traffic cones to mark the location. But that beach has no supervision or lifeguards. This use has resulted in vandalism of the snow fence on Mr. Guerrera's land and considerable littering. In Mr. Guerrera's rambling speech it also seemed that he was complaining about people using the beach in front of his less-than-10-foot strip of land. Of course some of that is legally available for public access. Mr. Guerrera seemed to be arguing that people could only walk, and not sit down, on the public beach. He also misstated how the public access area is determined but perhaps that was an innocent mistake. We will be investigating the Town plans for this additional beach on Progressive Charlestown.
- Mary Taylor spoke to ask why there is no signage for Blue Shutters Beach while there are signs for Charlestown Town Beach. You may recall that Progressive Charlestown reported on this here. One answer from the Town Council was that the beach is crowded so people must be able to find it and signs aren't needed. That didn't seem to be completely satisfactory so the town will investigate and we should hear more about this topic at future TC meetings.
- The Town Council will be holding a Citizens' Forum on August 15 at 7 pm. This initiative from Dan Slattery is like a Public Comments section of the monthly meetings on steroids.
- The Council is still trying to figure out what to do about the generally routine requests for money for lawyers from current and past Council members and employees being charged by Lisa DiBello. The State Ethics Commission is pondering what can be done since we don't have 3 uninvolved Council members to vote on anything to do with it. They say they may get an answer back by August, or September. Maybe.
We will update this to provide some video links when the recording is available.
Author: Tom Ferrio