To the Editor:

The Water Street neighborhood is seriously concerned about the town’s strong interest in putting the school bus garage where the Times Record building was recently razed. This would create a school bus hub of 26-plus large vehicles making two round trips per day — more than 100 passes up and down dead-end Water Street every weekday.

Let me share a brief word of history. A plaque at the base of the flagpole at the Daniel Stone Inn reminds us that on that spot, in 1628, Thomas Purchase was the first white Brunswick settler, salmon fishing and trading with the Abenaki Indians. Water Street, thereby, may have been Brunswick’s first street.

Since it was central to the development of a new community, everything was put here including, early on, a poor farm and cemetery and a town dump. Today, 384 years later everything is still being put here — or being proposed to be put here, usually involving big, loud trucks.

We have a fleet of public works trucks, school busses now and then gassing up, snow removal equipment, citizens from far and wide bringing their leaves to dump and their waste to recycle, all on what may be the most intensely populated street in Brunswick.

Remember, we have the Brunswick Housing Authority’s Tower and Terraces of 150 elderly or disabled citizens, plus close-together old and new houses, plus a hotel, a church, several businesses and, probably most important related to pedestrian safety, a booming public day care center located at the very spot where the buses would stop, turn and idle.

Happily, today’s Water Street, thanks to the Androscoggin River being significantly cleaned, has become the town’s outdoor recreational center, with a 2- / mile bike and walking path along the river, soccer fields, a rowing club, boat launch and soon a dog park.

Please don’t sacrifice this highly successful, healthful venture of the town’s and countless individuals’ time and money for even more toxic traffic on our dead-end street.

Do not flood Water Street with buses.

Dick Moll
Brunswick