If the values that Mainers feel best about seem threatened, those same values also represent the very strengths that can recharge community and economic life and send sprawl into remission, according to experts from the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution. A major study by Brookings, sponsored by GrowSmart Maine and due for release in September, will offer a candid report on Maine’s strengths and weaknesses and a “Blueprint for Action.”
GrowSmart Maine and Brookings staff hit the roadways and towns of Maine in April for a week of “listening sessions” to hear comments and concerns from hundreds of citizens statewide.
A stop in Camden on April 26 attracted about 70 people to the Camden Opera House. “The emphasis was different between towns. Each place was focused on its own battle, said Caron. “In Eastport it was all about LNG. In the Midcoast they talked about Big Boxes. In Farmington it was wind [power]; Dover-Foxcroft it was Plum Creek. At the last stop in Alfred, they worried about the masses coming over the ramparts” from southern New England.
GrowSmart’s listening sessions capped off 40 more-focused meetings with municipal, environment, business, foundation and development groups. The September release of the Brookings report is well timed to influence the debate in advance of this fall’s gubernatorial and legislative elections. “But that’s only one election. The real question is in the next four years, how to build a network to debate the findings, and then go do something about it,” says Caron.
The Camden session was a two-way conversation blending questions, comments and responses from Bruce Katz and Mark Muro, of Brookings, and Caron. Each of the 20 comments or questions offered received a reply placing the issue in statewide or national context.
Greenfields and Property Taxes
Maine needs to find a way to make sprawl harder and redevelopment easier, and remove the barriers to revitalization of downtowns or mixed-use developments, said Brookings’s Katz. “I was told by one developer, `You do one redevelopment project in Maine and you’re done, because it’s impossible.'”
Belfast Mayor Michael D. Hurley lamented the lack of a statewide plan or resources for managing growth. Instead of redeveloping vacant or abandoned sites, or brownfields, in cities and towns, developers choose open fields and forests, or greenfields, to site new development. “The market encourages the worst [types of development], but they are the most economically viable. `Smart Growth’ options are very difficult and expensive,'” said Hurley.
“Developing greenfields is quick and easy. Partly the problem is regulatory barriers — well intended, one slice at a time” ordinances that pose a disincentive to urban redevelopment, replied GrowSmart’s Caron. “With those in place, developers tend to do things `cheap and easy’. Couple that with town leaders who want any revenue source other than from property taxes, and quick and dirty development is the result.”
Maine’s dependence on property taxes is seen as a driving force behind poor planning and development. Brookings’s Mark Muro said Maine property taxes are the highest in the nation while ranking 43rd in other revenue sources. Maine is “ruinously dependent on property taxes,” said Muro. The proliferation of 495 local governments, each with its own burden of services and schools, leads to sprawl, dispersal of people and jobs because of what Muro called “hyper-competition between jurisdictions.”
Maine – Not What We Think It Is
Muro debunked the conventional wisdom that Maine is a rural state. He said 70 percent of the state now lives within urban areas. Since the 1990s, Maine has seen growth dynamics that match the nation’s in some areas, like southern and coastal towns. But Maine’s population has dispersed at New Jersey rates, with suburbs growing at triple the rate of cities. Sprawl is not the same as growth; Maine has slow growth, but fast sprawl. “When that happens in a sea of little governments,” said Muro, “it is damaging — fiscally, environmentally and competitively.”
While the population of most major Maine cities has been on the decline, they are left holding the tab for services they provide to both residents as well as people who don’t live there but visit the city to work, shop, or recreate. Urban budgets are strained because property taxes alone do not cover the cost of maintaining services like parking, public arenas, or police, fire and rescue for the entire surrounding region. Belfast Mayor Hurley described the frustrated attempts of a Maine cities coalition to get a local option sales tax approved in the legislature. While only property owners pay property tax, both residents and visitors pay sales tax. Brookings’s Bruce Katz said Maine’s comparatively low sales tax makes Maine a cheap date. “There is room for Maine to go up in some taxes…we are definitely looking at the state’s tax structure” in preparing the report, said Katz.
Several in Camden spoke of their frustration trying to limit sprawl forms of development and developing comprehensive plans only to come up short implementing the recommendations. Camden architect and developer John Morris, a self-described “planning board refugee” after serving over 20 years on Waldoboro’s planning board, said, “Any time we denied a use anywhere, all hell broke loose. The way we govern ourselves is flawed if we’re looking towards do-able planning and limiting people’s property rights.” Morris ended his comment with a question. “Have we outgrown town government, the ability to make decisions town by town?”
“While there is a lot of value to local government, we don’t live in towns anymore,” Caron replied. “Few of us live, work, shop, educate, and worship in one town.”
Maine’s 495 municipal boundaries may have been designed around the parameters of late-18th century rural Maine, when the distance a person could walk or ride in a day defined the limits of his town. Times have changed as the following description of Camden in the 1880s shows. There was hardly any need for residents to venture beyond town:
“The town has sixteen public schoolhouses…There are five considerable streams and twenty-one water-powers…The manufactures at Camden village consist of foundry products, railroad cars, woolens and paper-mill felting, anchors, wedges, plugs and tree nails, planking, powder-kegs, excelsior, mattresses, powder, barrel-head machines, tin-ware, oakum, wool-rolls, carriages, boots and shoes, leather, flour and meal, ships and boats.” (from an 1881 “Gazetteer of Maine”)
Today transportation focuses heavily on the automobile, and with cheap gas, the spread of population away from town centers was predictable. “Certain things happen if you have dollar-a-gallon gas: a willingness to accommodate the automobile, and policies that tilt to greenfield development,” says Caron. “The problem with that is that it only works as long as gas is under a $1/gallon.”
A consistent thread ran through all nine listening sessions, according to Caron. He said people are not asking for a “silver bullet” large-scale quick fix to meet Maine’s economic and community challenges, and they are not waiting for state government to come up with solutions. Small local businesses with three to five employees are using homegrown ingenuity and resources to carve their niche in the global marketplace.
“Economists tell us we’re moving to an `innovation economy’ that is highly mobile and creative,” Caron said. “Not limited to the arts though — it’s creative innovation. People don’t stay and live here unless they’re extremely resourceful. Nothing is more indicative of that than a guy working a small boat on coast of Maine. We have to tap into that heritage as much as we do the quality of place we have.”
The Brookings Institution report will offer an outsider’s unvarnished portrayal of Maine’s economy and communities, and about 75 of what Katz described as “robust, aggressive recommendations for policies and investments that are rooted in the real changes we are experiencing.”
As the Camden listening session concluded, Bruce Katz suggested what some of those might be. “Few places have the quality of life brand of environment and dynamism of communities,” said Katz. “If you continue to ruin yourselves, the stakes are very high. This is your calling card. The way things are set up now this kind of development is inevitable. I want to be clear: your environment, fiscal, and competitive future are at stake here, now.”
For more information on GrowSmart Maine’s other statewide listening sessions and the Brookings Institution study, visit www.growsmartmaine.org. For more information about Gateway 1 go to: www.gateway1.org. For more information about Friends of Midcoast Maine go to: www.friendsmidcoast.org.