What Is Happening and Where Are We Going?
By Melissa Waterman
Camden Free Press: May 2006
Alan Caron of GrowSmart Maine introduces Bruce Katz last Wednesday night
at the Camden Opera House.
How is the economy and use of land in Maine changing? What do we, the citizens, want to do about it? Those were the topics of discussion last Wednesday night at the Camden Opera House when Bruce Katz, vice-president of the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, and director of its Metropolitan Policy division, solicited the thoughts of local residents on growth happening in their communities.
Katz was in Maine on a brisk nine-town visit as part of the Institute’s study on ways the state can grow in economically sound, fiscally responsible, and sustainable ways. The study is funded by GrowSmart Maine, a nonprofit organization founded in 2002 by Alan Caron. Approximately 75 people from throughout the midcoast attended the meeting with Katz, Caron, and Bruce Muro, senior policy analyst at the Institute’s Center for Urban and Metropolitan Policy.
Caron started the evening off by painting a picture of what developmental sprawl currently is doing in the state. “Sprawl,” he said, “is the population spreading out across the landscape. We have slow growth and fast sprawl happening now. When I was growing up in Lewiston, 400,000 people lived in rural Maine and worked the land as farmers and lumbermen. Now we have 700,000 people living in rural Maine but they are commuters.”
He explained that the Brookings Institution was hired to do three things: produce a snapshot of where Maine is at the moment, hold public meetings to solicit from residents what is needed to maintain the qualities that are characteristic of Maine, and to draft “a blueprint for change for public policy makers.” The resulting report will be published this September.
Katz elaborated on the goal of the Institute’s study. “We are looking at the demographic, economic, and development changes taking place in the state and analyzing the fiscal, economic, and social ramifications of those changes. Then we will look at the extent state policy has helped or hindered Maine to move forward toward sustainable development. In a competitive economy, what are a few actions that the state could do that would have a transformative impact?” he asked.
Katz quickly dispelled the conventional wisdom that Maine is a rural state which is losing population and jobs. “In the midcoast and two southern counties the population is growing at or faster than the national average. There have been very significant changes in a very short time in demographics,” he explained, drawing on updated national census numbers. While natural resource-based industries in the state are losing jobs, the entire state is going through a “brutal” transition into a new type of economy. “Health service, tourism, business services and what we call knowledge-based jobs are experiencing growth,” Katz said. “In fact, they’re performing pretty well.”
Maine is decidedly not a rural state, according to Katz. “70% of your population is clustered around cities and micro-towns like Brunswick,” Katz argued. “And that population is sprawling. Outside of urban centers it’s hard to tell you’re in Maine and not Everytown suburbia. Growth is occurring three times faster outside of urban areas than within. Sprawl is undermining the Maine ‘brand’ and the state’s attractiveness.”
Caron then opened the meeting to the audience to comment on how the state is changing and what policy changes are needed to foster sustainable development.
Belfast Mayor Mike Hurley took the microphone to comment on the state’s school funding policy, which encourages new schools built outside of the town center rather than renovation of older schools within town centers. He then went on to mourn the overall lack of leadership at the state level.
“There are no hard and fast blueprints for a statewide approach to anything,” Hurley said. “The economic market encourages all the worst things. Those are the only things that seem economically viable.”
“There are just a few places that have a quality of life ‘brand.’ In Maine your future is wrapped up in that quality of life, it’s the state’s calling card.…”
Architect Meg Barclay of Camden highlighted regulations demanding a set number of parking spaces for new construction or change of use as an impediment to thriving downtowns. “In Camden the second floor of many buildings could be used if parking regulations are loosened,” she pointed out. In response, Murrow said, “These are some of the barriers to reinvesting in downtowns. We are looking at how to make it easier to grow in downtown urban centers [rather that outside the center].”
Developer and architect John Morris of Waldoboro commented on the belief still held by many Mainers that they have the right to do anything they want with land they own. “How do we do any planning when it conflicts with people’s sense of their property rights?” he wondered. Given the powers held by Maine’s 495 municipalities and the volunteer nature of many town positions, Morris wondered if towns have outgrown the town meeting form of government. “We don’t live in towns anymore,” agreed Caron, “we live in regions. Certain things just don’t operate within town borders.”
Steve Hand, owner of Know Technology, spoke about the “two Maines” operating in the state. “Research is being done up in Bangor and Orono. But new businesses are in southern Maine. There’s a major disconnect between the two parts of the state,” he said. In addition, there’s not enough room to move in the state’s job market. “In IT [information technology] most people don’t stay at the same job for more than two years. Here, when people want to jump [to a more challenging or higher-paying job] they have to go out of state,” Hand continued. “It should be that people can move among jobs in the same field easily.”
“You need a thick labor market,” answered Katz. “The university is key to this — allowing people to move around in their field.”
Richard Aroneau, owner of Planet stores in Rockland and Camden, said that “unless the state can convince people of Maine that traditional planning and smart growth is viable and economically good for them, sprawl will continue.”
Eric Aronson of Union wondered if development might already be happening too fast for towns or the state to control it. “In Connecticut, growth happened so fast no one noticed what was happening until it was too late. Here, the towns don’t have the zoning in place [to control what happens] despite their complaints about what’s happening.” In addition, he said, the town’s reliance on property tax revenues skews decisions toward the short- rather than long-term impacts.
Muro and Katz both had firm opinions on the property-tax issue. “Maine is first or second, I can’t remember exactly, in dependence on property taxes and around 40th in terms of using other sources of revenue. You are ruinously dependent on property taxes,” Muro said.
“Fragmentation of local governments leads to more sprawl, less concentration of businesses in centers, and competition for tax revenues,” Katz explained. “Having all these towns, all these municipal powers almost inevitably leads to sprawl.”
Caron added, “There are powerful effects of this reliance on property taxes. All the energy goes into trying to get any additions to the tax base. Quality is irrelevant, location is irrelevant.”
In terms of drawing revenue from other taxable sources, Katz said, “Maine is a cheap date in terms of taxes, particularly for tourists just coming for the summer.” He argued that the state could and should find other ways to generate tax revenue, put that revenue into capital pools and return it to the towns.
Scott Dickerson, executive director of the Coastal Mountains Land Trust, cautioned Katz and Muro to consider the tremendous differences among communities in Maine when drafting their policy recommendations. “The communities on the east side of Penobscot Bay are very different than those on the west side,” he said. “You need to be aware of this great variety among communities.”
Ginny Jones of Hope spoke about the tension between home-rule towns and the state’s desire for regionalization. “In education and regionalization of services the government is pushing for centralization and the towns are fighting it. How will your policy recommendations be done so as not to set up a power struggle between Augusta and the towns?” she asked.
Caron was quick to respond. “Give the towns the tools and resources to let towns work things out and stop this one-size-fits-all perspective. The top-down approach has failed,” he emphasized.
“I was surprised by the lack of tools, the lack of capital for things like downtown revitalization or brownfields rehabilitation [at the state level],” Katz commented. “There seems to be lots of money for land preservation though.”
Due to the number of comments from audience members, the meeting stretched on well past its anticipated one-and-a-half-hour length. Toward the end of the evening, Katz spoke again about the qualities that make Maine special. “Sprawl is ubiquitous in the United States,” he concluded. “There are just a few places that have a quality of life ‘brand.’ In Maine your future is wrapped up in that quality of life, it’s the state’s calling card. If you ruin it, there will be serious ramifications. At the end of the day, it comes down to political will.”
What Is Sprawl?
Bruce Katz, Brookings Institution, says: “Sprawl is the almost chaotic dispersal of people and jobs across the landscape. The question is one of balance, not stopping growth entirely.”
GrowSmart Maine says: Sprawl occurs when homes, offices, shopping are separated from each other so walking between uses is difficult; different groups of people (young, elderly, wealthy, middle class) are segregated; public buildings such as schools, post offices, and town halls are isolated from other land uses; large open spaces are divided into smaller parcels and no longer serve their traditional agricultural or wildlife uses.
Residential sprawl means single-family homes, built at one or two units per acre of land or less, beyond walking distance of goods and services, and occupied by people who commute to work by car.
Commercial sprawl is car-oriented development with many square feet of parking for every square foot of actual building space, usually located in strips along major routes or in business parks and usually separate from other land uses.
Maine Reverses Loss of Residents
Maine now gains more new residents than it loses according to a report recently released by the US Census Bureau.
From 2000 to 2004, the average number of people moving into Maine each year exceeded the number of Maine residents leaving. This is a reversal of the 1990s, when the number of Mainers leaving exceeded the number of people entering.
Maine is one of only four states to turn an annual loss of residents during the 1990s into an annual gain in more recent years (the others are Rhode Island, Maryland, and Wyoming).
The annual rate of migration into Maine during 2000-2004 exceeded that of all other New England states. From 2000 to 2004, Maine gained on average 6.3 net new residents per year for every 1,000 established residents (equivalent to 8,159 new residents annually).
New England as a whole lost residents during 2000-2004 and the 1990s. Most of the migration was out of Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Who Grew the Most?
Population Growth, Maine towns, 1990-2000
Source: Maine Census Data Center, State Planning Office
Town Net Addition % change
Cushing 334 33.8%
Hope 293 28.8%
Searsmont 236 25.2%
Belmont 169 25.9%
Swanville 227 20.1%
Morrill 130 20.2%
Appleton 202 18.9%
Warren 602 18.9%
Alna 104 18.2%
Whitefield 342 17.7%
S. Thomaston 189 15.4%
St. George 319 14.1%
Thomaston 442 13.4%
Bristol 318 13.7%
Newcastle 210 13.7%
Brooks 122 13.6%
Washington 160 13.5%
Lincolnville 233 12.9%
Damariscotta 230 12.7%
Nobleboro 171 11.8%
Union 220 11.1%
Camden 194 3.8%
Owls Head 27 1.7%
Searsport 38 1.5%
Belfast 26 0.4%
Rockland -363 -4.6%
Projected Average Annual Population Growth 2004-2020, Top Seven Maine Counties
Source: Maine Census Data Center, State Planning Office data based on U.S. Census Bureau State level projections, April 2005
York 1.2%
Waldo 1.0%
Lincoln 0.9%
Sagadahoc 0.9%
Hancock 0.7%
Knox 0.6%
Cumberland 0.6%
Maine’s projected average growth rate: 0.5%
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