First Cut

There were people still in the library at closing time so I was about five minutes late for the Town Board Meeting.  I planned to hand deliver the clerk my Fireworks Permit plus find out what was going on w/ the zoning fight between the county and the town.  The parking lot was full of cars.  That only happens when people are up in arms about something.  Zoning?  Nope.  During the public comment section of the meeting the owners of the Ski Hill stood and said they would like to expand their business.  Towards that goal they were petitioning the town to consider selling them 80 acres of town land next to the ski hill.  Towns in my state acquired chunks of acerage many years ago.  Sometimes no one wanted the property and it defaulted to the municipality or the people who owned the land abandoning it to move elsewhere and the town took the land for payment of back taxes.  Not that uncommon an occurence when the area was settled and again during the Depression.   The area the Ski Hill wants is a portion of 320 contiguous acres where the flat areas are boggy and the rest is pretty steep.  The Ski Hill's plans had gotten around because the rest of the audience were people with land adjacent to those 320 acres.  They each stood  to talk about the pristine beauty of the place, how the town should keep the land for the benefit of our constituency, and that it shouldn't be developed.   I would have understood if their issues w/ the sale were about lights, noise, or people skiing onto their property.  However the thing is that the whole 320 acres is 'land locked'  - there are no roads near it and no public access - only those people w/ adjoining land can get there and I suspect they like having exclusive use to this additional space in their back yard. They have the access for hunting, skiing, riding UTV's/ATVs/horses, etc.   Before the Ski Hill showed an interest, none of these people asked the town to sell it to them.  Of course, they had use of it for free.  At the moment I have no opinion if the town should consider selling the land though my opinion of some of the neighbors has altered.