My Two Cents Worth emailed to the Mayor and Council
Mr. Mayor and Town Council:
I just received information that you and the town council have made a decision to close the pier at 10 pm and I felt a need do something that I very seldom do with issues like this, voice my opinion. I am a resident of PG County and I enjoyed (past tense) coming to the pier for a form of relaxation and to converse with people with the same interest. It saddens me to think that you and your council would let something like this happen without observing what happens on the pier for yourself or to do some kind of study or a personal visit to the pier. I have not seen nor heard of any representatives from your council visiting the pier, talking to the fishermen and seeing just how some of your spoiled and unruly neighborhood children act. The fishermen are at least 100 yards away from the pier and to assume that it’s the fishermen keeping people up at night is false. If the people who were awakened looked out their windows and listened, they would hear and see their neighbor’s children walking the streets in groups, making load noises and often trashing out the place. They would hear the motorcycles, with their unusually load engines, roaring up and down the streets. They would hear and those same motorcycles and some cars drag racing up and down their streets. I would think that these issues would be of more interest than any fisherman would be. The fisherman produce some form of revenue for your city, we pay to fish in a bay that is everyone’s to use. You have to be Jamie Summers and use your bionic ear to hear someone on that pier, but a def person could feel the vibrations from the noise that the locals/motorcycle groups that travel up and down your streets make now and with your decision will continue to make. After talking to a few residents of the area, I came to realize that the people of your town are prejudice. At once I thought of this in a racial way, but no longer; your citizens are prejudice again the fisherman who travel from miles around to use your pier, you are unappreciative of their willingness to make your pier one of the places that they could call home away from home. The pier was used to escape the very noise that you say we create. It is my understanding that you pushed for emergency legislation? I work in government and if I am correct, emergency legislation is only good for 90 days or so, and then it comes up for another vote. Emergency legislation is normally used to pass a resolution that you don’t want the public to be able to converse about. It’s usually done in a secretive manner so that constituent comments are not really heard and are not part of the decision process. Either way, from this point on, I know one fisherman who will not use your pier, boating slips, or stores; I refuse to give someone my money who doesn’t want me there and I will also tell anyone who ask that it is not worth the trip. Even at $5 a day, 4 times per month, equals $20 per month, multiply that times the amount of months that a person can fish and that’s what you just lost from me, and several others. My family will no longer visit your splash park when I fish during the day, Subway will no longer get my money for their cold cut combo and the city will no longer receive the tax dollars from the purchases. Thank you Mr. Mayor for truly making your fishing pier one of the few places that I, along with a whole cast of others will not visit.