Great Diamond Island, Maine, Spet 01: A rift has developed on this small coastal island over a subject that rarely stirs passions: golf carts.

There is no golf course here, but over the last decade or so the number of battery-operated carts has exploded to more than 100 among the vacationers and retirees who have flocked to an old Army fortress transformed into a pricey new development on one side of the island.

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Golf carts have become the most visible symbol of the influx, and they've spurred a backlash among some longtime residents who feel the sleepy charm of what had been a largely pedestrian island is under threat from the newcomers.

The dispute is "the most divisive thing that's happened to the island in a long time," says Roger Robinson, a year-round Great Diamond resident. He complains that newcomers are transforming the island into another outpost of suburbia.
"It's so different from where they came from, and that's the appeal of it," Robinson said. "More and more of them keep coming until systemically it becomes where they came from."

Great Diamond, just a two-mile ferry ride from Portland and one of hundreds of islands dotting Casco Bay, has only a handful of cars. In the past, most people walked or used the island taxi service. When the new development opened on the north side of the island, cars were even banned from its historic district.

But now some people complain that the proliferating golf carts cause parking problems at the ferry landing on the south side of the island, and some say they damage the island's roads.
A compromise reached in May bars people from crossing the island in their carts during the relatively busy summer, but some openly flout the rules. Others are embarrassed that a picayune dispute has turned their community into a source of amusement for outsiders.

But no one, it seems, can find a satisfactory solution.