With respect to the proposed Meeting House Way development, there are considerations as to affordable housing and “downsize” housing. But upon closer inspection, can these goals be met elsewhere on the Island and in other, more flexible ways?

To be blunt, the point of this enterprise is to make money, not to improve Martha’s Vineyard. Is that okay? Sure, we all deserve to earn money and apparently lots of it — it is free enterprise. But let’s look closer. While making a show of effort to fulfill some community requirements is a pleasant move, Mother Nature is not in sync with this project in terms of the Edgartown Great Pond’s watershed and nitrogen and phosphorous concerns.

But we also must look out for more, and we need to make a full decision about this Island as it is and can be. Is it a place for further urbanization and development, sold to the bidder who passes the test of mollifying the boards and commissions, which as far as I can tell is what we are looking at, or is it a place of beauty and community where families are raised, nature is cherished, and those who live here (and those who visit) can behold with the respect of Martha’s Vineyard values?

If this proposal was not ultimately about money being made, we wouldn’t see it in front of the MVC. The land would be put in a trust for the Land Bank, for example.

I urge the MVC to reject this proposal. We can figure out what to do together for Edgartown.

Dean Rosenthal

Edgartown