While Christmas Tourists Flocked To George Bush’s Maine Mansion, Taxpayers Were Illegally Billed For Traffic Cops

Nothing ever brought Kennebunkport, Maine more international attention than the presence of a presidential retreat.

But with the money that all the Bush-loving tourists brought with them to buy trinkets, pay for hotel rooms and drop tip money into waitresses’ aprons came a just-discovered downside.

Town officials are now admitting that a local law forbids tax money be used pay for hiring extra police to handle the traffic jams of the annual Christmas Prelude celebration.

The annual Prelude tradition is organized and promoted by Kennebunkport businesses who benefit from its public attractions.

But for 30 years selectmen have been charging property taxpayers to help finance the overtime hours for hiring extra cops to handle the crowds.

Enter a concerned town resident who just found a municipal ordinance forbidding public funding of the Christmas tradition’s expenses.

The resident discovered the rule amid complaints from townspeople to the municipal Select Board about the traffic problems with tourist-driven events.

Unless town officials change the mass-gathering ordinance, the Kennebunkport Business Association will have to foot all the extra expenses of the holiday event.

The Christmas Prelude gathering each year attracts thousands of visitors who like to see where the Bush family lives the high Life along the ocean.

The Bushes have owned property off Ocean Avenue for more than a hundred years.

The first President Bush used the seaside mansion known as Walker’s Point as his so-called summer White House from 1989 – 1993.

Tourists first began flocking to the town in bigger numbers than they ever had shortly after Bush was elected in November 1988.

The picturesque village still attracts Bush gawkers anxious to get a glimpse of his property even this many years later.

While Bush-related tourism has been a boon to the local businesses it has cost taxpayers roughly $1.5 million in extra, unreimbursed police coverage over the years.

The federal government reimbursed the town with some of the expenses while Bush was in office but not for the Christmas celebrations since then.