Key victory for Maine beach-goers
Lawyer admits property lines on any beach are impossible to set
Labor Day ’23 has already come and gone, and we’re pleased to report the impressive march & rally that “Free Moody Beach” organized and executed on August 19 produced a very valuable dividend.
In August 2023, “Free Moody Beach” marched on the beach, in order to call attention to the fact that nobody pays property taxes on the sand over which they were marching.
Children playing at Moody Beach, 12:45 p.m., September 2, 2023. Woman approaches to kick them off.
The march led directly to a key victory. One of the corporations that routinely intimidates beach-goers is hoping a Maine Superior Court uses an unreasonably narrow definition of “fishing, fowling & navigation” to prevent citizens from using the beach. After the march, their attorney granted an interview to York County Coast Star reporter Shawn Sullivan. In that interview he confirmed what any person with common sense already knows --- you can’t draw property lines on wet sand. He admitted that “a precise low-water mark can never be known,” according to the paper. “You can’t close the line,” he said. “You can’t put pins in a low-water mark.”
EXACTLY, Counselor. Thank you for making the point. If you can’t put pins in, you can’t draw property lines. And if you can’t draw property lines, you cannot kick kids off a beach whose property lines you don’t know and never will.
Whoa. They don’t pay taxes?
And now to the property tax issue. In the same article, Wells Town Manager Michael Pardue made it clear that at Moody Beach property values are assessed “from the street to the seawall.” In other words, the town assesses no property from the seawall to the low water mark. That’s why no beachfront owner, either at Wells Beach or at Moody Beach, pay taxes on land from their seawall down to the low water mark. Property owners at “public” Wells Beach do not kick people off the beach. Unfortunately the same common sense and reasonableness do not prevail at Moody Beach, where many homeowners (but not all) are overly aggressive about preventing people from using land on which they themselves do not pay taxes.
With absolutely no ambiguity, the facts as presented by the corporation’s lawyer and Manager Pardue completely destroy the automatic argument some coastal property owners often make: that paying taxes gives them the right to kick people off the beach.
Angry that reporters have discovered they don’t pay taxes on this land, some ocean property owners have increased their confrontational tactics. After TV cameras showed up, new signes went up. This photo was taken at Moody Beach in Wells, Maine on September 4, 2023.
Documentation bolsters the point. While litigating a case now in Maine Superior Court, attorneys examined property tax records during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. One such record shows a piece of land fronting Moody Beach measures 7,261 square feet in area. Using a simple online measuring tool and a satellite photo, researchers measured the lot only from the street to the seawall, the portion of the lot above the mean high tide. They found roughly the same number, 7,233 square feet. Plainly, Moody Beach owners are not paying taxes down to the low water mark.
To be extra careful in reaching this conclusion, researchers also investigated whether the price of the land per square foot was higher because the land was situated on an erroneously claimed “private” beach. They compared the price per square foot of the Moody Beach lot with lots of a similar size on Wells Beach, a public beach. The two prices were nearly identical. Nobody at Wells Beach is paying taxes down to the low water mark. And the data reveal an embarrassing truth for the attorney’s corporate client: the same is true at Moody Beach. The same is probably true along the entire length of Maine’s coastline —- nobody’s paying taxes on Maine’s beaches.
Despite not paying taxes on the land, this gentleman wants you to stay off “his” beach. The video was captured in July, 2023 at Moody Beach in Wells, Maine.
The people who want citizens off Maine beaches, some of whom are defendants in the lawsuit and some of whom are property owners at Moody Beach, are angry that the truth is becoming known. The media are paying close attention to this story and some owners don’t like the exposure. As a result their confrontational behavior seems to be increasing, as you can see from the several examples in this blog post. That won’t stop “Free Moody Beach,” “Our Maine Beaches,” and the folks who are in Maine Superior Court trying to return full intertidal rights to Maine people. This story will be told.
Our collective effort has already succeeded. We certainly hope the judge decides in favor of the people of Maine, but regardless, this has been established: If you’re walking on a Maine beach and somebody angrily approaches to say, “We pay taxes on this beach all the way down to the low water mark,” you know one thing for sure. NO THEY DON’T.
Desperate measures
See photo below. September, 2023. Angry that reporters have discovered they don’t pay taxes on these beaches, some at Moody Beach are increasing their confrontational behavior. This sign went up Saturday morning, September 2, 2023, in front of Judy’s Moody, LLC, a corporation that is a defendant in the lawsuit now in front of a Superior Court judge.
