Chebeague Island did it.
On April 5 the Maine Legislature approved L.D. 1735, the bill allowing the island community to secede from Cumberland and become its own town.
The vote was 136 to 1 in favor in the House of Representatives and 31 to 3 in the Senate. Gov. John Baldacci signed the secession bill into law at the end of the day.
With this vote, Chebeague Island becomes the first Maine community to secede from a town since Frye Island left Standish in 1998. A coastal island has not become its own town since Long Island seceded from Portland in 1993.
Following the Senate vote a group of 15 Chebeague Island residents gathered in the hall outside Senate chambers, hugged each other and called friends with the news.
After a year of work, it seemed hard to believe that independence had been achieved. Mabel Doughty, one of five secession representatives for Chebeague, said it was impossible to describe how she felt. “It’s been such a long, long haul,” she said. “But it’s been very, very worthwhile, and it’s going to be more so.”
Late that day, at a celebration lunch in Hallowell, David Stevens, another secession representative, said he was surprised. “The whole thing happened very fast. I had a great sense of relief and a great sense that we had done something very good.”
The bill had a second reading in the Senate the morning of April 5, went over to the House at 11:30 a.m. for the third and final vote in that body, then was back for a final vote in the Senate after noon. During both votes, island residents sat expectantly, watching the large boards that hang on the wall of each chamber that record the votes of legislators. “There’s nothing to describe the feeling of sitting in the House gallery and watching all the green lights go on, it was just amazing,” said Herb Maine, president of the Chebeague Island Community Association.
The key to the bill’s passage was having residents at the Legislature, Maine said. Since the Joint Standing Committee on State and Local Government held a hearing on the bill on March 3, there were at least four or five islanders in Augusta every day the Legislature was in session. Stevens led that effort, Maine said. Stevens also held meetings with individual legislators and Stevens and Maine spoke to the Republican and Democratic caucuses. “Throughout this whole thing, this group has had a lot of positive energy and that’s, I think, what carried it through,” Maine said.
At the celebration in Hallowell, Stevens was asked what was most exciting about the secession vote. He said for him, it was that people who were born and brought up on Chebeague could stay on the island. “To continue their lives and do what they do. To fish, to work on the island, to be part of the community — all of that. All of the people who have worked so hard to make our community what it is. To think that we have done something that will allow them to continue and to see it through and to enjoy it.”
Mabel Doughty, a Chebeague Island secession representative, is David Tyler’s grandmother-in-law.