The Narrative: Your Own Land Use Category

On 19 November 2009, the Dennis Town Planner convened a meeting of his Economic Development Committee to hear input from owners of cottages and RVs along Old Wharf Road in Dennisport. This is a partial (but literal) transcript and excerpt [1:06:11 - 1:08:35] from the archived Town video of that meeting.

“Before you [Atty David S. Reid] walk away from the microphone, I uh uh uh I do hope that Salt Air [Village] will authorize you to continue to represent them as we work on this. Also, I am hoping that we can get a few people from uh Chase’s Ocean Grove, Camper’s Haven, and uh Curtis Pines.

“One of the things that uh I think is going to be a real challenge is in trying to come up with a regulation that perhaps does incorporate -- and I’m using the term “campground” simply because . . . We’re going to have other properties that are ‘cottage colonies’ in other parts of town, and if we develop a bylaw for this part of town we’re probably going to need to give you guys your own land use category to fit into. Uh, so, I’m, right now my working term is “campground” and but one of the things that’s going to be real tough to try to wrestle with and uh is going to be trying to come up with something that gives you a level of conformity based upon what’s there -- and so that someone like Attorney Reid hopefully will be able to help us and obviously Salt Air the structures are a little more spaced than they are at uh Chase’s Ocean Grove, but that’s going to have to be one of the things we’re going to have to wrestle with is they have some structures that are two feet apart and you could step from one deck to another at Chase’s Ocean Grove and y’know we want to give it some level of conformity so that uh y’know as I like to say ‘People have to ask permission to sneeze when you’re non-conforming,’ and we’d like to be able to get us to a point where you might be able to do something or most of you might be able to do something with your cottages without even necessarily having to go to the Town. Uh that y’know so uh Somewhere in there we can probably find something that will allow some reinvestment by the cottage owners, as well as get us to a point that also y’know ensures that uh there’s a long term out there as well, just in case. So, long term for you, but also long term vision in case uh y’know the economy changes and there’s just no way that these things exist any more.

“So, I do hope you’ll stay involved, because uh there’s some questions there that probably are going to need strong input from the cottage colonies.”