Labor Day Ruminations on Ruination

Just as summer was tentatively getting under way with balmy summer days, it's over. That's if you're like most people, including me, who consider Labor Day to be the pre-solstice official start of Fall.

When I was a kid, Labor Day was the day we got our town back. The fife and drum corps would march up and down the streets merrily fifing and drumming, then go out on a boat with a stout keg of beer and fife and drum their way around the islands, most likely in celebration of the departure of the "islanders."

The "islanders" were "summer people," who were all from nearby inland cities or Manhattan, and they would invade us "townies," beginning every Memorial Day to "camp out" on the islands they bought just off-shore.

The husbands would commute to Manhattan on the local train for the week while their wives and children stayed out on the islands. Their gaudy Cadillacs with enormous fins took up two parking spaces in the already cramped town, and their expensive inboard and outboard boats made an annoying racket all day.

On the islands, they had no running water, no electricity, and their outhouses dumped directly into the water, causing unpleasant tidbits to wash ashore at most inopportune times. The dog crap just went directly into the water without the pretense of an outhouse. They would take all of their bottles and cans out in a boat, fill them, and sink them in the water just off-shore.

In the 1960's, the "islanders" started putting ear-splitting generators on the islands so they could have electricity. The only good part of all this "progress" was that they started putting in septic tanks in the grass lawns where they could (most of the islands were solid granite).

So it was with a great sigh of relief that we celebrated Labor Day each year. The income from the "foreigners" kept the town going through the bitterly cold winter months, but we always wondered if it was worth it.

And you know what? It wasn't.

Now the town is owned by the children, grandchildren and friends of those "islanders." The original island houses, once built by Victorian craftsmen who built them in the winter by going out there over the ice on ox-carts, are mostly all gone. In their place are modern glass and steel structures. Islands that cost $20K to $50K in the 1950's now go for from $3 to $20 million.

The invaders also bought up the homes of the fishermen and oystermen, tore them down, and without a care in the world for their neighbors, put up three-story 5,000 square foot view-hoggers. They bought up the small stores and tore them down, too, and built more multi-level monstrosities in their place. (Is this starting to sound familiar, Astoria?)

The little town club-restaurant, on a granite shelf overlooking the harbor, and with a jaw-dropping view of the islands and sunsets, was where the few "locals" who were left used to meet and greet each other. The business fell on some hard times, and the locals were working together to get financing to buy it.

A New York couple with money to burn came in and way over-bid the asking price. They got it, tore down the clubhouse, and built an enormous private residence with an 8' high fence around it. They just had to make sure they had that view all to themselves. (By now, this should really be starting to ring a bell, people.)

The marshes have been filled in so palaces on stilts could be built on them. The woods, once privately owned, but open for all to use, have been sold and sub-divided, and the whole woods are off-limits now to all but the very privileged few who coughed up millions to build there.

Property taxes, even as short at time ago as 1998 were reasonable. But once the town hall realized that all the new residents had pockets even deeper than the seemingly bottomless granite quarries, they decided to tax by the waterfront foot.

An example: Taxes that were $1,200 a year in 1998 for a 2,000 square foot house on the shoreline jumped to $9K a year in 1999. And there is a lot of waterfront footage there, as the place is full of peninsulas. I would not even dare speculate what the taxes on that same house must be now, but last I heard, in about 2002, that same chunk of property generated $12K a year in tax revenue for the local stiffs at town hall.

The point of the property tax increases now isn't even greed any more. It never was to provide services, as the town has none to speak of. It is to keep people OUT. And just take a wild guess at who all those town hall folks are now? Hint: They aren't locals. I don't know of one single family that lived there when I was a child that has a relative living there now. They have all been bought out or driven out by the punishing cost of property taxes.

The town is gone. In its place is a travesty of what once was.

This is a true story, and should be taken as a cautionary tale for what's going to become of Astoria. The proposed condos are the beginning of the end. Take it from someone who's seen their home town shamelessly destroyed by greed.

Wake up, Astoria. Stop it while you can.