I want to publicly thank Councilor Blaine Davis for stepping up with an effort to improve public safety in Windham. Not only did he work in a tireless manner, he also worked with a conviction seldom displayed by Windham councilors.

One would think it ought to be counter-intuitive to allow children to play on higher speed roads. However, a majority of your Windham councilors feel differently.

One would think having one of Windham’s children run over and killed while skateboarding in the road would have been enough to take protective actions. However, neither the death of a child skateboarding in the road nor counter-intuitive instincts were enough of a factor to vote in the affirmative for Councilor Davis’s proposal.

Council Chairman Carol Waig said she would support a no-skate in the road rule along a designated section of Route 202, because that is where she feels the problem is. Well, maybe Councilor Waig should check out the location where the Windham child was killed skateboarding, because, it was not along this strip.

In fact, it was not even in the same area of town. One would think if you want to protect our children along one short strip of a higher speed road, that you would want to protect our children on all of Windham’s higher speed roads.

I believe this double standard is saying “kids, we will attempt to protect you if you are skateboarding in the road near the skateboarding hub, however, if you are skateboarding in the road outside of the hub, you are left to your own safety practices.”

I believe consistency is important when educating younger people as to the difference between what is acceptable and what is not, thus, a consistent town-wide ordinance would have been preferable to the inconsistent approach of Waig.

The Windham Town Council will now move onto other town business. I just wanted to let Windham residents know that Davis’s proposed toy-vehicle ordinance was something the town council should have been much more considerate of.

I commend our town manager for informing the council that there would have been nothing wrong with consulting with Councilor Davis as he repeatedly asked for, prior to presenting his proposal. Instead, a majority of councilors did nothing but vote negative without even trying to work on this important town wide proposal.

Kaile Warren

Windham Town Councilor

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