The election is over, but as I write this it’s the day before – such is the reality of deadlines for columnists. Did we pass a retroactive ordinance change? Would (Will) this nullify any action taken by Zoning Board, Planning Board or Town Council since the retroactive date? Do we have a legal staff to decipher the snarl and red tape?

We have an expression for such an action: Closing the barn door after the horse has been stolen. Is anyone old enough or native enough to recognize that phrase and understand what it means?

I’d love to see my hometown look like it did, say, 50 years ago. That means there’d be about 10,000 fewer people. Plenty of fields, dirt roads (and potholes) and no jobs. I mean nothing. Talk about an exodus of young people from the area – and I was one of them. Selective memory is a wonderful thing and some of us are better at it than others.

NIMBY (Not in my back yard) reigns in Windham and it always has been that way and it will never change. It’s just the way things are.

Not long ago residents in an area toward the southern part of Windham were complaining about the expected barking of dogs if a proposed business expansion “went through.” The business that was expanding happened to be a research facility and dogs (and other animals over the years) were part of the process. The complainers drew on their own interpretation of a rural, farm type area. I guess dogs didn’t enter into it. Some of them waxed poetic about watching fields with horses and cows and how nice it looked. But barking dogs wouldn’t fit in. There was actual discussion about altering the dogs’ ability to bark. These folks hadn’t considered the noise a bunch of cows can make as they line up at the barn door to be milked.

I don’t know whatever happened to that expansion or the nearby residents who threatened to move if their idyllic neighborhood was changed. There were a lot of concerns voiced then (and recently) about noise beyond the lot boundary. Well, I hear kids beyond a lot boundary all the time and some of what I hear is offensive to me. Barking dogs would be better.

Quite a few years ago (more than 20) a group of residents was so anti-mobile homes and so organized in their effort, that a proposed mobile home development withdrew their plans and for a few months, a big beautiful empty field provided an unparalleled vista in my old neighborhood. But the property owner sold the land, as was his right, and in place of a well designed, tidy little group of similar dwellings, there now are big, little and in-between sized houses with little or no yard space, no trees to speak of and lots of kids and a lot more traffic on an over-burdened road that evolved from a path more than 100 years ago.

The good thing is, residents and their efforts, really can effect change. It’s the retroactive part that bothers me the most. If such a retroactive ordinance can happen legally, what’s to prevent a group of people changing things to suit their personal wants – not necessarily needs.

Few of us, and that includes most of us who were born and raised here in Windham 50 years ago, embrace the change the town has gone through. But the truth of the matter is that change happens. People keep having kids. Folks live longer. Everyone needs a place to live and work and they need services. The amount of available space doesn’t change. We change. We cannot keep things the way they used to be. Planning for the inevitable future change is the key. Not closing the barn door after the horse is gone.

See you next week.