Letter from Chip Northrup

Northrup: Project Should Not Be Scrapped

Even from afar, the frantic pearl-clutching of the neighbors and the tone-deafness of the designer over the Lakefront Park viewing platform has gotten to be a rancorous spectacle. I would strongly suggest that the plan be scaled back to a fishing and boating pier—which would have more utility for the village residents and tourists and I daresay would be more picturesque. 

Scrapping the project would be ill advised—both from the standpoint of precedence and the abandonment of the clear public benefit in having a dock. The village is building the dock for the anonymous person in the wheel chair, for the unknown child with a fishing pole, the boater dropping off a passenger, the anxious bride and her wedding photographer. The beneficiaries of a public dock won’t show up at a hearing clamoring for one to be built. But the neighbors will show up. With their lawyer. And they will scowl at you for doing the right thing for the public good. 

In Texas, we live on a lake with many public docks. The only complaint is the occasional deferred maintenance. Otherwise, they are used daily by fishermen, boaters and photographers to no ill effect for the neighbors. Even neighbors like me. 

Chip Northrup
Cooperstown