It was signed by five nearby landowners, all, to the best of my knowledge, members of a local homeowners' group or association to which Town Government seems peculiarly beholden. (They're the ones with those unfriendly, legally questionable signs at the Monument end of Keziah's Lane):


Key assertions the petitioners made were that:



We believe there are, annually, 45,000 vistors [sic] each year – and likely tens of thousands more. Many do not respect the area for the special asset that it is.

Young children—even infants—have been jumped on by pets.

The first assertion, about lack of respect, lacks evidence and is somewhat “othering.” The second assertion is closer to what I call “red meat.” This is the type of thing you win with when you’re trying to sway a crowd or a community. There was only one problem, though: Soon after the petition appeared, I had coffee with Devon P., one of the petition's signers, and then followed up by texting him. In one of my messages, I asked if he could give me details about the incident he had testified at before the Select Board, in which a dog had – according to him – pawed at his baby while his wife had been carrying their son in a forward-facing carrier.

Surprisingly, Devon couldn’t remember one single detail: not the time, approximate location, appearance of dog, appearance of owners – nothing. I have a screen shot of our conversation, and I have provided it to the Select Board. When I brought this up to the Conservation Commission, they shut down conversation in a bizarre way which led to the Chair officially admitting to an Open Meeting Law violation. When I mentioned it to a Select Board member, they shrugged it off, commenting that “we take these things with a grain of salt.” My perspective is that I want Orleans boards and committees to be as impeccable as possible about using true data, and I would personally send someone home (with permission to come back and start over) if I discovered that a key piece of evidence was probably unreliable. Therefore, I find this casual enablement of such “sloppiness” (I’m being kind) disturbing. It’s also disturbing to me that the petition is on the Town website, such that the Town is actually publishing these inflammatory assertions.

Anyway, there was a $15,000 environmental assessment which was delivered in February, 2025, and I thought that would be the end of things, because it did not support any of the petitioners assertions about “overuse,” and the need for access restrictions. It was explicitly stated, when proceedings began in March, 2024, that the Conservation Commission was going to determine whether Kent's is "overused" as claimed. Well, the proceedings up to and including February, 2025 established that they weren't, when multiple witnesses urged access restrictions and the expert did not recommend them. However, the Conservation Commission and at least some of the members of the Select Board are gamely soldiering on. Perhaps they're hoping townspeople won’t notice that vague environmental issues are just a smokescreen, covering a semi-private "grab" of public land by the Keziah's Lane homeowners and their friends. 

By the way, let me share some logic a Select Board member assertively offered me to justify these restrictions:

Given that crowding problems at town landings are alleviated by stickers, we can see a principle there, from which we can predict that problems at Kent's will be alleviated if we impose a sticker requirement there.

Well, the obvious problem there is that the locations and problems are different. Erosion from runoff, for instance, which is the huge environmental problem there, has nothing in common with crowding, and won't be solved at all by stickers, as I demonstrate here: 

https://www.orleanswatchdog.org/kent-s-point-scapegoating

In other words, Town Government isn't even trying to be logical. They're just hoping people don't look into this and think about it too much.

Town Government has also failed completely to consider, either behind the scenes or in the open as they should, the economic consequences of the proposed restrictions. How much business comes into town along with the tens of thousands of visitors to Kent's? Given that downtown isn't quite thriving, is it really a great idea to withdraw this economic support just to make the Keziah's homeowners happy? All of the decision-making here has been careless and off-the-cuff, because the desire to do this has existed for ten years or more, and someone miscalculated – probably when their "star witness" about the "horrors" of Kent's Point showed up – that the right moment had arrived. We need real decision-making process in Orleans, not staged hearings to justify the enactment of selfish, private goals.

Finally, let me share a disingenuous argument recently posted on Facebook by Anne Sigsbee, immediate abutter to Kent's Point, wife of a former Select Board member, and contact person on the petition posted at Kent's Point back in January of 2024 (see the Lawlessness page). I'm posting this so you'll understand how the people most in line to benefit from this proposal cynically want to manipulate public understanding of it:

"Orleans has chosen to restrict parking to stickers...just like they do for many other sites. You are welcome to buy a sticker, walk or bicycle in or hop in a car with a friend who has a sticker."

Here's my Facebook response, annotated a bit:

First of all, they haven't "chosen" anything yet. They're still on step four (ConsCom recommendation) of a six-step process. So this is false. (Unless maybe it's a slip – inadvertently pointing out how the decision has already been made, and the hearings are just for show)
 

Second, under the Leydon case, this sort of "you can hop in with a friend argument" was specifically shot down:
 

"Under the challenged ordinance, however, a nonresident who is unable to find a town resident to accompany him or her to Greenwich Point will be unable to engage in any such protected activity. The ordinance, therefore, cannot withstand the plaintiff's state constitutional overbreadth challenge." (There is much more on this on the Lawlessness page.)
 

And who is going to walk in from Truro? They'll have to park outside the parking lot and walk in. But when they get back to their car, they will find it ticketed, because you or some other resident of your private road will have called the police. (Bear in mind that Ms. Sigsbee is one of those private road owners who won't hesitate to have a car towed if it's parked near her house. Also realize that the nearest parking lot is only available in the off-season, and is a 17-minute walk away. So, Anne is cheerfully telling the 75-year-old woman who might be a typical visitor, or the young mom with kids, "don't worry, in the winter you can walk an extra half hour with no sidewalks in cold, wet and/or icy condition to use my park, so everything is just fine." Honestly, I find that argument a bit sociopathic.)
 

Finally, it's not "just like" other sites, because there's a provision for year-round enforcement which is UNIQUE for parking lots in Town.
 

So, it seems like you're spreading disinformation here, just as you did in your petition, when you claimed that dogs were jumping on infants. Brazenly shameless BS, in my judgment, for which you should absolutely not be rewarded with a regulation which will trigger a lawsuit all of Orleans residents will have to pay for, not just the handful of you who are trying to push this for your own benefit.

Okay, now you’re up to date.

Let’s move on to explore Town Government’s deceptions about the environmental expert’s report …