Undated remarks by Samuel Atkins Eliot at a Northeast Harbor meeting in 1939 concerning plans for improving the town and relating primarily to the harbor. Transcribed from SAE's penciled notes by his grandson Michael McGiffert, August 2006. Pages are unnumbered; page divisions are marked /. SAE's alterations are not noted. We certainly appreciate & applaud the spirit & purpose of the C of C & its committee. Its good to have people thinking about & planning for the benefit of the community as a whole. Its a thoroughly healthy movement & this committee has produced a number of interesting suggestions for the improvement of the neighborhood. They are, however, as yet just suggestions, and no estimates of cost are submitted. To adopt them all, even if we approve them all, is obviously impossible, for to do all these things would carry the town way beyond the legal / debt limit & the increase in taxes would become burdensome for all our residents both permanent and summer. It becomes then a matter of weighing the comparative importance of these projects. We cannot do them all--which of them can we do within the limits of our resources[?] Which are best worth attempting & carrying forward[?] Must we not base our conclusions upon a consideration of comparative values in cost & in resulting benefit to the community[?] / With most of the suggestions & recommendations of the Report we are in cordial agreement & we all desire to promote the business prosperity of the town and enhance its charms. We share in every desire to make it a desirable place in which to live. I am sure that we are in hearty accord with the suggestion that Sea St & the dock there should be made into a more attractive approach & entrance into the village, and with the plans for improving zoning laws & for the elimination & prevention of unsightly billboards and advertising signs and night camps -- & especially we support the recommendation of the C of C in regard to the elimination of the telegraph poles & the burying of the wires. The suggested provision of / three athletic fields equipped for baseball football etc is all to the good but I think the Committee appointed to look into that project has no easy task. The discovery of three fairly level pieces of open land big enough for those purposes, reasonably near to the villages & within the resources of the town for purchase, construction, & maintenance will, I fear, prove difficult. Athletic fields & swimming pools can't just be made & left--they have to be kept in order & policed & [one word illegible]--will you see what that project might involve to the taxpayers[?] The Project --the planting of maple trees along the roads--seems also of doubtful value. The natural borders are usually better than formal treatment / of the roadsides and stiff rows of maples are not so good as the growth that nature provides. But all these projects--some very good[,] some less desirable[,] some practical & possible & some rather obviously impracticable--are just sugar coating for the main proposal of the