Kudos to the West Paris Planning Board and the people of the town for all the positive consideration of the ordinance about property maintenance that was brought before residents at the recent town meeting. I hope the issue will come again next year. Maybe then, the people will reconsider and give the ordinance a positive vote.

For some reason, some people think that they are the ones targeted by the ordinance, but that is not how it would work.

Yes, the state has an ordinance for every town, but it is not enforced. It will take years to make something happen, with a lot of additional cost to the town that the defeated ordinance would have overseen long before a serious situation grew to problem size.

It is the townspeople’s responsibility to give the select board the power of town law to protect all the people in the town.

People only need to look around our town to see that such an ordinance is needed to help protect everyone.

Ted Jones, West Paris