Re “City needs a new vision for its abandoned island’’ (Editorial, Nov. 5): It wasn’t just an island that was abandoned on Oct. 8, 2014; it was our principles.

When the words “expansive views of the city’’ and “there’s too much opportunity’’ appear in the same sentence about the fate of Long Island in Boston Harbor, you can be certain that political waters are being chummed for development of prime real estate.

Under Mayor Martin Walsh’s administration, the drastic closure of Long Island shelter and addiction treatment programs three years ago advanced with military precision, while a Boston bid for the 2024 Olympics was in full swing and promoters were eyeing Long Island as a venue. Medications about to be dispensed were left in pill cups on counters. The few precious possessions of shelter occupants were abandoned in garbage bags. And the ripples from that wrenching, tragic day still wash ashore in the industrial no man’s land between the South End and South Boston. You see it in the forlorn faces congregating at the intersection of Mass. Ave. and Melnea Cass Boulevard.

As he takes a victory lap in the afterglow of Tuesday’s election to a second term, Mayor Walsh may want to include in his motorcade members of the Globe editorial board for a spin down Boston’s notorious “Methadone Mile’’ — the Via Dolorosa of our city’s forsaken victims of addiction and homelessness.

Thomas F. Schiavoni

Boston