Leonard Paquette: WOW Trail expansion will not add value to surrounding neighborhoods

To The Daily Sun,

A "trail" is meant to be a wilderness path type of thing, not a conveyance through a residential or city area. The WOW Trail need not proceed through uninteresting suburbs. Prospective hikers and tourists could experience something just as special if they had remained home; the present WOW Trail is almost exclusively a rural and wilderness experience, why change the nature of it now?

The last three quarters of a mile at the Lakeport end of the present path is full of trash and graffiti. Drug users like to veer off of it to inject themselves with their peculiar libations. There was even a homeless encampment on Dutile Co. land abutting it.

Franklin Street residents chose to live there as it's a nice little street — simple but not high end. It was rebuilt in summer 2021, and the street is now actually narrower than before being upgraded. Any future plans to widen its sidewalk cannot utilize the land taken from the street, but will depend on land taken from homeowners. How will said property owners be compensated for loss of property? The present sidewalk is too narrow for the increase in traffic, and it will be forced to travel in the street.

Citizens of the area will need to make many sacrifices for the implementation of a project of questionable value to appease a few wealthy people who refuse to allow said project to be constructed in their own home areas.

Crime, particularly break-ins, will be forced upon residents due to the increased number of persons through an area meant to be purely residential. Additional police presence will be needed.

The Franklin Street diversion, as well as the entire Elm Street extension of the WOW Trail is unsuitable as an attraction and will result in both diminishing returns, wasted money spent, and an antagonized citizenry.

The point of this letter is, why should we, as tax-paying residents of this city, have to endure the prior mentioned problems of crime, garbage and graffiti liberally strewn about our homes, mobs of people strolling in the middle of a street intended for motor vehicle traffic, all for a project of dubious value? All to insure that a few greedy private individuals realize great profits while we, the people burdened by this venture, realize nothing to gain except abstract talk?

Leonard Paquette

Laconia