I’ve come to expect that if I stop to visit with Alice Foley, one of Mystic’s oldest citizens, I probably will find her outside, tending her tidy yard and garden on Park Place.

“I want to die here, weeding,” she told me one day, with her usual wry smile, making fun of her own obsession and love of caring for a property where she has lived since 1952, raising five children there.

Foley will celebrate her 95th birthday this summer, and I say this not just to get in her good graces — which everyone might want to — but because you might guess she is at least 25 years younger.

She seems to have endless energy. I’ve never seen her hesitate to recall a date, a name or fact, the kinds of things I already feel being lost in the haze of my own aging brain.

I’m happy to report that Foley has turned all that energy and restlessness toward a laudable civic goal: making sure the public has access to the water, through a public right of way at the end of her dead-end street.

It’s became a bit of a pitched battle, given the change in neighbors around her, a little pocket neighborhood of increasingly expensive real estate, where rich newcomers are apparently not so welcoming to the public.

A house on the river, two doors down from Foley, recently sold, according to rumors — the sale hasn’t closed yet — for more than its $4.5 million asking price.

Foley told me some shocking stories about the newest neighbors and their resentment toward her public access campaign. One called her tacky for suggesting the public access be used to bring disabled people in wheelchairs to the water.

Another threatened to grow enough vegetation to block Foley’s view of the water from across the street, one she’s enjoyed for some 60 years. One swore at her with the kind of language you might expect to hear in a biker bar brawl.

Foley repeated the profanities to me without hesitation, knowing full well the shock value of such words hurled as insults.

Last fall, in a move Foley says was directed at her public access campaign, neighbors circulated a petition demanding the town not make changes without consensus.

“We respectfully request that ALL RESIDENTS of Park Place should be notified in writing,” the petition demanded, if there are plans to clear brush, add additional signs or widen the street.

I give Foley credit, along with another longtime Mystic resident who cares about public access, Richard Fitzgerald, for reclaiming the abandoned public access at the end of Park Place, securing a sign marking it as such.

Foley even claims credit for getting Groton Town Manager John Burt to install a bench there for people to sit and enjoy the view.

“Burt’s OK. He just needs a push sometimes, and I’m the one to give it to him,” Foley told me.

The public access sign and bench, however, have not fully satisfied Foley, and I have to agree the town could do more. The public access needs to be cleared of overgrown brush and weeded, to start.

There’s some march grass that might have to stay because it is protected, but the rest needs to be tended.

I paid a call on Foley the morning of July 4, and I found her out on the street, helping some visitors negotiate the narrow dead-end street, so they could unload a kayak from the top of their car.

Foley told them to go ahead and back into her wide driveway.

It’s true that Park Place is not the most accommodating facility to launch small boats. Indeed, the only way out is to back down the street or turn around in someone’s driveway.

Still, Foley is absolutely right to complain that residents of the street are clearly encroaching, not just on the right of way but the street itself. Lawns and driveway pavers have been extended into the street, making it harder to park.

In the time I have been visiting Foley, you can see where the neighbors of the right of way have been landscaping the public property and narrowing the available access.

Foley has managed to bring to Park Place not just the town manager, but also the town clerk, a state senator and many town councilors, for a look at what’s going on.

It seems obvious me, with all those official eyeballs on the situation, that one next step is to survey the property and clearly mark what’s public and what’s private.

Maps show the street and public access to be 33 feet wide, plenty of room for parking on one side and maybe even enough for a turning location. Let the facts, and the boundaries, fall where they may.

The rich neighbors must stop landscaping and encroaching on the public property.

Stake out the property lines with flags. Let that sink in and allow everyone to consider the reality of it.

Then, listen to the neighbors who circulated a petition. Hold a public hearing.

Let everyone have a say in how the public should have its access, in a way that also respects private property.

Alice Foley shouldn’t have to do all this on her own.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com