On Sun, 8 Jan 2006 14:15:00 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:

This thread reminded me of something.

For many years I had a slip (sometimes two) in the town of Scituate, MA.
The town maintains a town owned marina and there are also several private
marinas within the confines of Scituate Harbor. Each year we paid our slip
fees that included electricity, paid a non -resident excise tax yearly to
the town based on the value of your boat and a separate fee called a "water
usage fee". It never occurred to me that this was strange as it applied to
all of the marinas, town and private, but I always dutifully paid the fee
assuming it was for the use of fresh water at the dock. Well, it turns out
water was included in the slip fees at all the marinas and the "water usage"
fee was something the town had imposed to collect additional revenues. It
was justified (sort of) by claiming that it helped offset the costs of
maintaining the harbor waterways or some boloney. The proverbial s--- hit
the fan when the long time harbormaster retired and the town appointed a new
one. Seems many of the people had ignored the water usage fee for years
because they felt it was not legal. (The retired harbormaster was much more
of a people person than a town administration flunky and had never enforced
the collection of the water usage fee).

The town proceeded to send threatening letters to those that had not paid
the fee for years, demanding retro payment or the town would take them to
court. Several of my friends recieved such a letter and in many cases the
amount demanded was over 3,000.00. All of them told the town to suck a
lemon and go ahead with legal action.

I moved my boat to another marina the year this was going on. I don't know
what the outcome was, but I'll contact a couple of the people involved and
find out.

Eisboch


While you're doing that, and if you take Road and Track, see if you can find which
issue had the test of the 2005 Mustang GT. Please?

--
John H.

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."
Rene Descartes