By Nate Jones

Staff Writer

 Nearly six months after the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) received an anonymous letter later discovered to have been drafted by members of the Scarborough Conservation Commission alerting them to the status of an ineffective retention pond located on the Eastern Village Condominiums development, the  town council presented the commission with a new set of guidelines that has Chairman Paul Austin and other members of the commission concerned for the future of the group.

“There has been a lot of ‘he said, she said’ [about the letter to DEP],” Town Council Chairman Jeff Messer said. “There is a lot of emotion around this, and it largely boils down to ‘what do we as a community need [from a Conservation Commission]? The question is what should [the Conservation Commission] be focused on?”

Councilors Michael Wood and Sylvia Most said shortly after the council discovered the “anonymous” letter to the DEP was found to have ties to the Conservation Commission, they partnered to review and revise the current bounds of the organization. Among some language changes, they suggested restricting the Conservation Commission’s involvement in any development without explicit instructions from the town council or planning board, Conservation Commission member Jeannine Uzzi said.  

“It was important here to not remove oversight you may be concerned with,” Wood said. “It doesn’t prohibit the Conservation Commission from getting involved in more passionate issues, and they could always request to be involved in a unique manner.”

Austin said he saw the new restrictions as a punitive measure by the council and “challenged and encouraged” the council to reconsider limiting the commissions rights, as he believed the letter sent to DEP, although “stepping out of their bounds” – as Councilor Carol Rancourt said – was perhaps the only thing that prevented the Eastern Village development from polluting the nearby environment. 

“Nothing else would have changed unless we brought it to light,” he said.

Uzzi and other members of the commission said it was “high time” the council thank Austin and authors of the letter for preventing further environmental damage from the retention pond on the Eastern Village development, rather than limiting their scope of operation. Uzzi said the commission should be allowed access to and make recommendations on traffic patterns – an addition to their duties – rather than limiting the commission’s scope.

“Scarborough does not have a natural resources planner, yet two people are paid full time to look into economic development, and those are big salaries,” she said. “I feel like this is a done deal, it’s a real slap in the face.”

Wood said he and Most took “every measure” to ensure the new parameters for the organization were not as punitive as some other councilors would have liked. 

“Many times I felt deceived if not outright lied to by all five people on the commission including the chairman,” he said. “If I had my way, I would disband the commission altogether. We all knew this was coming and I think you did as well.”