An open letter to the mayor

For the past few months, each time I pass by the height of land on Saco Street, I think “wouldn’t it be nice if someone, somehow would save it…”

I refer to the area and to the tradition of public winter sliding in one narrow area of the old Boivin fields, now destined to be additional industrial park.

“The Way Life Should Be” is a lovely Maine state motto. Unless intended only for marketing, it is critical to take this concept to heart and to put it into practice wherever possible.

A town’s values and politics can be judged, I recently read, by the quality of its public spaces. Public health officials lament the lack of exercise that children get in our current society. The subject of this letter is one small opportunity to address issues such as these.

Many individuals and generations have enjoyed the quiet, simple winter activity of sliding there on new snow. I have seen this repeatedly over the past 23 years that I have lived on Saco Street. On December 23, I was talking to one of the clerks at City Hall about this subject and she shared her own recollections of sliding in that location. I know of no other public area where people go sliding/sledding in Westbrook. Last month and this, in spite of heavy equipment and the start of the field’s destruction. I have seen cars parked on the side of Saco Street and adults standing on the snow banks watching their children slide.

It saddened me to see the Boivin farm become first a housing development on one side of the road and then the fields on the opposite side destined to pavement. Once sited along with the rural aspects of Spring and Stroudwater Streets, there is precious little rural character remaining on Westbrook’s portion of Saco Street now.

I appeal to you the mayor, to any sympathetic city officials, and to the public to beseech the developer of the fields to somehow preserve a corridor of the hill for future generations to enjoy in winter. Preservation of the small parking turn-out along the eastern side of the road and of a residual area of grassy slope would not seem too much to ask of those set to profit from the industrial park venture. Much community good will could be generated by dedication of this one small area to the children in all of us.

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