Tax reform
While we haven’t taken a position on the Maine Land Bank property tax reform proposal, we’ve devoted considerable space to it over the past several months. We reported on the Land Bank as proposed at last fall’s Affordable Coast Conference. Donna Damon of Chebeague Island wrote an excellent op-ed piece about the plan in December. Next, we heard from North Haven’s assessors and a Vinalhaven selectman who questioned whether the Land Bank proposal would fit their particular situations. This month we hear again from the Land Bank proponents, defending their idea and asking everyone in communities affected by distorted property taxes to weigh in with suggestions for fixing the bill they’ve submitted to the Legislature.
Meanwhile, the Legislature and governor, faced with a deep state revenue shortfall, seem to be turning a deaf ear on property tax relief. Their reluctance to embrace reform at this point shouldn’t surprise anyone, given the certainty that tax relief schemes always seem to shift the burden to someone else whose tax burden isn’t being eased. With property taxes accounting for half or more of the money available to schools statewide, any move to lower them – even with the best intentions – is bound to arouse suspicion.
Still, it’s shortsighted to ignore a real problem that affects real people in real communities all over the state simply because we fear that we won’t have the money to pay for it. The price of skipping over this particular problem – the loss of affordable, reasonably taxed housing in island, coastal and other towns and cities – is going to be higher than most of us realize. Increasingly, the islands, coastal towns and even inland towns with significant lake frontage will become unaffordable to year-round residents. The result will be more and more places that are populated only in the warm months. For more than half of the year, in other words, they will effectively be abandoned, desolate. If we feared that terrorists or nuclear fallout were about to render these places uninhabitable, you can bet we’d be doing something about it. But since it’s only taxes and real estate prices, we’re somehow able to look the other way.
Port safety
No one should be surprised by the Coast Guard’s decision to hand over responsibility for the Port Safety Forum to the Maine Port Authority. As it leaves the Transportation Department for the new Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard is assuming new tasks relating to domestic security. Some old tasks had to be transferred to others. The question everyone should be asking, of course, is whether in the future we’ll be as well protected against oil spills as we have been since the aftermath of the EXXON VALDEZ, when safety standards for tankers were upgraded to the present level. A shift in responsibility should not become a downgrading of oil spill prevention as a priority for Maine. As we reported late last year, under-keel clearance for the fewer, bigger tankers that are expected to visit Portland in the future isn’t as great as many would like; the risks are very real. Regardless of who’s in charge of port safety in the future, meaningful participation by the Coast Guard will continue to be critically important.
Parallel 44
This month we welcome a new columnist to Working Waterfront: Colin Woodard. Currently a Portland resident, Woodard is author of Ocean’s End, a wide-ranging book about the insults we humans have inflicted on the world’s oceans, and has written several articles for Island Institute publications. His look at coastal sprawl appeared in last December’s Working Waterfront. He is now at work on a new book about coastal communities. In his column, named for the parallel of latitude that bisects the Gulf of Maine, Woodard plans to write about research and other topics affecting everyone who lives and works on these shores.