Wrangling Continues Over Island Land Use

     Controversy as to the use of land next to the Mashnee Island Grill, including the parking area used by both the restaurant and Bourne Community Boating Inc., continues to grow, expanding to include a look at a series of decisions town bodies have made involving the boating group’s founders.
     The issues surrounding the land at the end of the Mashnee Island causeway will be back before the conservation commission on Thursday, this time at the request of the Mashnee Island residents’ association.
     Last February, members of the association came informally before ConCom asking if the former ballfield being used as a parking lot by Mashnee Island Grill was a coastal dune that should be protected.
     Attendees of that meeting heard that many of the issues they raised, including noise and traffic, were not under ConCom’s jurisdiction.
     The controversy next came to a head in March, when Eric K. Bevans, the owner of the Mashnee Island Grill, came before selectmen to renew the restaurant’s liquor and entertainment license. That meeting, at which Mr. Bevans said he had been working to satisfy abutters’ complaints, ended with the renewal of the grill’s license.
     The struggle surfaced again in June, on another front, after Bourne Community Boating Inc. filed a request with ConCom for permission to place a protective fence, portable toilets, two temporary boat racks and two temporary storage sheds on that land.
     The boating group, a nonprofit organization created primarily to give Bourne children who might otherwise not be able to sail the opportunity to take lessons at minimal cost, subleases the property from the corporation that owns the Mashnee Island Grill. US Sailing’s Community Sailing Council, a national organization, gave the program its 2008 Outstanding New Program award.
     About 40 letters, all with almost identical wording, were received by ConCom in response to that request. One letter with 11 signatures states in part, “[W]e vigorously oppose each and every current request that Bourne Community Boating is making in regard to our island. We speak for the fragile natural habitat and environment of this area that God made and that we, as receivers, must protect.”
     Asked this week specifically about the use and condition of the parking lot, Mr. Bevans said the former baseball field, which is used by area fisherman and others as well as by the community boating group, is essential to his business.
     Without it, he said, people would be parking on the island or along the causeway, creating illegalities that could, conceivably, destroy 10 years of hard work in building up a successful business.
     That lot has not only been a baseball field and parking lot, but also appears to have been used as a dumping ground for grass clippings and brush by some residents. It is not, Mr. Bevans said, a pristine environment.
     At a previous hearing on the Bourne Community Boating request to add amenities to the site, an attorney for the Mashnee Association, William C. Henchy, alleged that it was a conflict of interest for ConCom member B. Paul Bushueff, one of the founders of the boating group, to present that organization’s request.
     Kenneth D. Legg, president of the boating group, asked that the matter be continued until an attorney could be consulted.
     After considering the matter, the boating organization decided to regroup and create more formal plans, withdrawing its request prior to ConCom’s June 24 meeting.
     On July 17, however, the Mashnee Association had filed its own Request for a Determination with ConCom, asking that the members of that board look at the activities on the Leeward Road, Mashnee Island, property in question in light of the Massachusetts Wetland Protection Act and Bourne’s Wetland Protection Bylaw.
     That filing asks ConCom to look specifically at the use of the coastal dune as a parking lot, which the association says has resulted in the destruction of vegetation and alteration to the land’s topography, “the construction and installation of sheds and bathroom facilities” the “use and expansion of trails” and “other activities by both the Mashnee Island Grill and Bourne Community Boating, Inc.”
     A temporary shed was donated to the boating group at the beginning of last year’s boating season, and portable toilets were placed on the site, something that Town Planner Coreen V. Moore said should have triggered review and permitting.
     A request for a shed by a homeowner usually results in approval of that structure, Ms. Moore said, but the boating group is using commercial and not a residential property, and the shed’s placement on the otherwise vacant land should have been heard by the appropriate board or boards in advance of its placement.
     She said the boating group had already spoken to her about remedying the situation and that a routing slip asking all involved town departments for their comments on that use was already making the rounds.
     On July 23, the day before the now-withdrawn Bourne Community Boating request had been scheduled to be heard by ConCom, the association’s attorney also filed another request relative to the boating group’s application: a request for public records, filed with the town administrator.
     That request alleges that the conservation commission, which it refers to as “Mr. Bushueff’s organization,” has taken no action to enforce town bylaws or state law with regard to the shed and two portable toilets “installed” on the land in question.
     The request notes that Mr. Legg, a partner in Bourne Community Boating, was recently granted a conservation restriction by selectmen, and that Mr. Bushueff spoke in favor of the restriction. The request goes on to ask for copies of all e-mail communications between Mr. Bushueff and the board of selectmen, any letters or other communications between Mr. Legg or Mr. Bushueff and any selectmen, all documents relating to the conservation restriction, and all documents in the town’s possession relating to Bourne Community Boating, including all minutes of any board or committee at which the nonprofit was discussed.
     Mr. Bevans, owner of the Mashnee Island Grill, said he thinks that he has had a good relationship with island residents this season. He said he has been working very hard to solve any noise issues and to address any complaints made by neighbors.
     Most of the residents’ complaints, he said, appear to stem from the increasing number of non-residents wanting to make use of the island.
     While the causeway to the island is owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, the roadway, itself, is maintained by the association. Mr. Bevans said that he could understand why the increasing traffic could make some of the residents “sour” at the idea of increasing usage.
     Asked whether his business had offered to help pay for the maintenance of the road, he said that he had been a contributing association member up until this year when, he believes, the association, itself, or its members hired an attorney in an attempt to force him to discontinue his use of the parking lot in question.
     The conservation commission will have to rule, among other issues, on the delineation of the coastal bank in order to make the determination that the Mashnee Association has requested.
     ConCom meets Thursday at 7 PM in the town hall lower conference room.