The following letter was sent to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission via e-mail:

My name is James. I am 15 and I live and attend school on the Island. I attended your meeting regarding big houses on Monday and was rather disappointed with what I saw. This issue is very important to me. But maybe not to you. You skimmed maybe two of the items on the DRI checklist, and the subsequent talks were unproductive and lacked enthusiasm. With that being said, there are a couple of things I would like to point out. First, nobody needs a house bigger than 7,000 square feet. A family of seven people can very comfortably live in a 3,000-square-foot house and still have extra room for their grandparents, uncles and cousins to visit for Thanksgiving. I am horrified that there was even talk of allowing a house bigger than 10,000 square feet to be built. Secondly, the baby boomer generation has done an awful job as stewards of the planet. You have left my generation with a disgusting and embarrassing mess to clean up, and I think that the least you could do is to start the cleanup now so that we have a prayer of actually saving this one planet we have. Please don’t disregard the earth as the rest of your generation has. Don’t allow our planet’s remaining resources to be depleted so people can build excessively large homes that will only be lived in for eight weeks of the year. Please reconsider this issue in a serious way with the best interests of this Island in mind.

James Roddy
Chilmark