To the editor:

Several points from last week's cover story on a neighborhood divided deserve clarification.

The article described the efforts by Ms. Jayne, a Cranston resident, to develop a vacant waterfront property in Barrington. In connection with these efforts she filed a zoning application that was mistaken at best.

Ms. Jayne's zoning application and the engineering drawings that accompany it, indicate that she is the owner of one lot approximately 38,000 square feet. This is simply not true. The parcel of land on which Ms. Jayne seeks to build is approximately 10,000 square feet in a zone where the minimum lot size is 25,000 square feet. She did not seek relief from this requirement in her zoning application because she mischaracterized her lot as being 38,000 square feet. In fact, Ms. Jayne owns two separate lots separated from one another by a piece of publicly owned waterfront property acquired by the Town of Barrington in 1953. Despite this, in her zoning application Ms. Jayne simply treated this public waterfront property as her own.

The image shown was pulled from the town's GIS map located at http://www.mainstreetmaps.com/RI/Barrington/. This is available to anyone via the town's website and the process of viewing the town property via the "paper streets" option in the menu takes less than a minute.

Had these facts been properly disclosed to the zoning board, they may have ruled differently, and Ms. Jayne would not be in this situation. Make no mistake about it, this is a self-inflicted wound as the facts were hidden from the zoning board. Only through Ms. Jayne's actions towards her neighbors did this come to light.

Skip Mattos

Barrington