YACK on: Paving Paradise
Grant Sanders
The Planning Board voted on Monday evening, five to nil, to do the unthinkable - to pave Eel Point Road from the end of the current pavement all the way to 40th pole. I blame myself. I had to be off island for business and could not be at the meeting. Had I been there I would have stood up and sung that Joni Mitchell song about paving paradise during public comment, and I would have stopped only after they promised, while swearing on a stack of bibles and copies of the zoning code of Nantucket, to not pave Eel Point Road. I would have sung the song all night and into the morning if need be. At the end they would be begging me to stop. Pleading. After 397 choruses with me singing the high parts where Joni goes "Whee-he-hee-hee…!" they would have relented. And Eel Point Road would have been saved.

But alas, as I said, I could not be there. Instead, I have been working long hours in a painfully perfect suburb of Hartford Connecticut and at night I've been holed up in a cabin in the woods by a lake. I am staying in a pre-WWII cottage that my father bought in 1969 with $6,000 cash. The structure - a simple two bedroom with a screen porch - is on two small waterfront lots and there is a third lot as well which lies on the other side of a dirt road. The road has been dirt since I first started coming here at the age of seven and hopefully it will remain dirt for as long as I'm alive. If the Planning Board of Leicester, Mass. ever tries to pave this road, you can bet I will go and sing to them. Loudly. I might even bring my guitar.

Or worse. My trombone. It may interest the casual reader to know that the Chairman of the Planning Board was recently overheard at his place of business saying that, if he could, he would pave the entire island "because that is progress." I guess it does not matter that everyone who spoke at Monday's Planning Board meeting, except the legal counsel for the four-lot subdivision going in on Eel Point Road spoke against paving. I guess it does not matter that many of these ways are historic and have been unpaved for hundreds of years. I guess it does not matter that there have been no traffic studies done on that road and no recommendation to pave from our resident traffic planner. I guess it does not matter that four out of the five Planning Board members are old enough to retire to Florida next week and leave us with the mess they have created. None of that matters because paving, to some, is progress.

To others, paving Eel Point Road is like painting a blacktop mustache on the Mona Lisa. It's like watching Michael Jordan play hockey. It's like accompanying Joni Mitchell on the trombone.

In other words, it's just wrong.

Worse than that, it's a threat to our way of life. Many of us moved here a while back because we liked the island the way it is. We liked that washboard rumble while driving over the sands of Eel Point Road. We liked the thin layer of dust on our crumby old SUVs. We liked the fact that on many roads, people had to go slow, and throttle down and ease back or else risk hitting their heads on the dome light in their monster trucks with big tires.

I've been critical of the Planning Board in the past because it appeared to me that they didn't really have a plan. But I was wrong. Their plan, it now appears, is quite clear. To do as much damage as possible to this island before they die or are voted out of office by angry citizens wielding scallop rakes. Personally I wish the process of removing elected officials was as easy as a 5-0 vote to pave a perfectly good dirt road. I would get that process going right now.

If you agree with me, I think there's only one option left for people like us who would like the Planning Board to leave the island alone and stop greasing the skids for island developers. A class action lawsuit. Let's sue the Planning Board and the town of Nantucket back into the stone age. Let's sue them for a violation of their contract to uphold the public trust. Let's sue them for malpractice and malfeasance. Let's sue them for not doing their homework and not putting a master plan on the table. Let's sue them for lousy fashion sense and poor diction. Whatever will stick. (I know a few lawyers who have been before them and would not mind taking on the work on a pro-bono basis just to get a little payback.)

I know what you're thinking: "That's just not nice, Grant! Why don't you run for Planning Board instead and change the board from within?"

My answer: In order to be a Planning Board member, one needs to have certain qualities that I lack. Like an aptitude for codes and a high tolerance for discussions and deliberations that are so excruciatingly boring they would make the average human kneel down and pray for a brain aneurism.

No, I think a lawsuit is the only way to go. If you'd like to join me in an act of causing serious litigious pain to the Planning Board, you can find me at the back of the next Planning Board public hearing.

I'll be easy to spot. Look for the big guy with the

trombone. I

Grant Sanders is the Host of YACK, the Nantucket Online Community at yackon.com as well as a certified "dirt road hugger." His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Nantucket Independent. Or his wife. And like you, he just can't seem to get that Joni Mitchell song out of his head.