Leave parking alone
The latest bathtub on Main Street in Hanover means that the replacement of utility lines is well overdue, with one caveat. It can’t begin until Crosby Street by the football stadium is reopened or chaos will result every afternoon when school gets out. But how did the damaging idea of removing parking places get glommed onto that, a proposal that should be dead on arrival, as should the ever-challenged Bike-Walk committee that was behind it.
If you remember those cockamamie pylons in front of the post office last spring you know what I mean. Like any committee needing to justify its existence, the group has been searching for years for a problem for which it has a solution. This time worker trucks sticking out from the curb requires spending millions while compromising a hundred businesses from restaurants to therapist offices. In fact, what those very occasional parking annoyances do is just what we want, it slows traffic.
The first question in a survey that went out a few months ago gave away the vision, sort of Main Street as a Cotswold village suitable for seniors’ morning out. “Do you live within fours blocks of Main?” My answer: I did for 15 years, now I’m five blocks away, which apparently means the plan is not for me, only for those who live on the west side of town. Like most committee work everywhere, how self-regarding this is, and just plain selfish. But that’s what you get in mono-cultural communities.
In Lake Wobegon all students are above average, in Hanover all ideas are of equivalent value, even silly ones. The Selectboard member on the committee, Jeanie Chamberlain, is a recent arrival who apparently sees Hanover as being perfected thanks to her. How about a petting zoo instead? That’s the sensibility that’s going on here.