Charting Maine’s Future

Newly proposed bipartisan legislation in Washington would offer Maine households an escape from high gas prices by expanding funding for public transit and encouraging insurance companies and mortgage providers to provide incentives for households that drive less.

Besides increased support for transit agencies and expanded transportation choices, the bill also would encourage a number of measures that would make in-town housing, close to jobs and services, more affordable for Maine families. For instance, “location efficient mortgages” would reward homebuyers who drive less with better loan terms that take their reduced transportation expenditures into account. Similarly, “pay as you drive” auto insurance would let insurance companies reward motorists who drive less (and are less likely to be in accidents as a result).

By providing transportation choices and rewarding in-town living, this bill would provide the financial and regulatory framework to help the American Dream survive and thrive in the 21st century. And unlike offshore drilling, which will take years to get underway, this proposal would provide immediate relief.

At this point, the bill still needs more cosponsors in Washington. We’ve set up an action alert where you can send an e-mail to Rep. Allen and Rep. Michaud to encourage them to add their names to the bill’s list of supporters. A sample letter is provided, but in order to make it as effective as possible, please edit it to include personal stories about how this bill might benefit your household or your hometown.

Mark your calendars for our August 27th Smart Growth For’Em (5:30-8 pm at SPACE Gallery in Portland). GrowSmart Maine is collaborating with some of our colleagues in the smart growth development community to host a public gathering and discussion on smart growth real estate development. This will be a chance for developers, architects, planners, historic preservationists, and other enthusiasts of Maine’s built environment to gather and learn about some of the exciting new projects that are currently happening all over the state.

Here’s the event description:

‘Smart Growth’ projects are reviving Maine’s historic downtowns with workspace and housing for Maine’s creative economy. GrowSmart Maine presents this social and informational For’Em for YOU to meet the architects, developers, and designers working to bring Maine’s “good bones” back to life.

Featuring:

• Paul Boghossian of Waterville’s Hathaway Creative Center
• Kevin Mattson of Mattson Development and the Saco Island project
• a smattering of creative projects from local designers

Doors open at 5:30pm, program begins at 6:00pm

www.growsmartmaine.org

www.hathawaycreativecenter.com

www.mattsondevelopment.com

Contact:
Jesse Baines, GrowSmart Maine events coordinator

Directions to SPACE Gallery

The lead editorial in today’s Portland Press Herald gives us a shout-out for our “Governing Maine in the 21st Century” project, a new report and grassroots effort to make Maine’s governments more effective and less bureaucratic in the face of persistent and worsening budget shortfalls - what the Press Herald calls a “permanent fiscal crisis” in the public sector.

“Adjusting to the new reality will require us to take a hard look at where we spend our resources and what we get for them,” the editors write. “The GrowSmart study, which is projected to be released next spring, could provide some insight into what we would gain and what we would give up. That will give us a place to start a conversation that has been needed for a long time.”

Visit our “Governing Maine in the 21st Century” project webpage to learn more about the proposed report and grassroots implementation plan. Fundraising for the report is ongoing, and we won’t be able to begin research for the report until we have pledges for at least half of the project’s budget. If you, your business, or anyone you know can contribute, please call project manager Rich Livingston at 847-9275 ext. 306.

As you may have read recently in the Portland Press Herald or Kennebec Journal, GrowSmart Maine intends to go ahead with two “sequel” reports that follow up on themes from the 2006 Brookings report, “Charting Maine’s Future.”

The first, “Governing Maine in the 21st Century,” would take a big-picture view of Maine’s governments and seek to find ways that they can provide better public services at lower costs. Fundraising is well underway for this report and we hope to begin research and collecting feedback from Mainers all over the state by this fall. You can read more about the “Governing Maine in the 21st Century” project in this June blog post, which also profiles David Osborne of the Public Strategies Group, our projected research partner for the report. Maine Sunday Telegram editorial page editor John Porter also wrote about the project in a May column.

A second report, “Climate, Energy, and Prosperity: Challenges and Opportunity in Maine,” would examine ways in which Maine might overcome the linked challenges of climate change and energy price inflation by investing in a new, “green innovation” economy and by revitalizing our home-grown natural resource industries. We hope to select a research partner for this project over the summer and have a report ready for publication in mid-2009.

Each report is expected to cost $650,000 - as with the original Brookings report, half of the projects’ budgets will be devoted to outreach, education, and advocacy after the reports’ publication. These will be reports designed for action, and for moving Maine forward. If you’re interested in making a pledge to either project, please e-mail project manager Rich Livingston or call him at 847-9275 ext. 306.

We’ve updated our web site, www.growsmartmaine.org, with new information about these proposed reports on the home page and links to more detailed information under the “Projects” menu of the site’s webpages. Click here to visit the updated home page.

And here on the blog, we’ve added a few new sites to our blogroll. Future Freeport is a new blog about the “place, community, and economy of Freeport, Maine” written by Peter Troast, a local business owner and member of the Freeport Economic Development Corporation [and also, for the sake of full disclosure, the husband of GrowSmart Maine’s deputy director Lisa Fahay].

Also new on the blogroll is the excellent Working in Maine blog, written by the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board. Please pay both of them a visit!

The following is a post from Jared Woolston, a USM student who has been interning with us here at GrowSmart Maine these past few weeks…

Greetings!

I’m interning with GrowSmart Maine for the summer months, collecting information for a possible future report on the potential positive statewide impacts of the improved Historic Tax Credit (LD 262) passed by the legislature and the governor in the most recent budget.

If you have a rehabilitation project in the works and are planning to utilize the new and improved Historic Tax Credit (LD 262) please take a moment to complete our project survey. You can find the survey here:

Click Here to take the Historic Tax Credit (LD 262) Survey

If you are not planning to utilize the tax credit for your rehabilitation project, please tell us why. The survey must be completed by the end of the business day on Friday, July 18, 2008. Please fill out a separate survey for each project you have, if you’re working on more than one. Also, please forward the survey to other developers that you know are planning tax credit projects.

It is our hope that collecting this information will help document and publicize the benefits of this important new legislation, which, coupled with the new statewide building codes will provide new incentives and remove barriers to investing in Maine’s quality places. With that goal in mind, we hope you’ll help us with this work!

Best Regards,

Jared

In a recent article in Planning magazine, Reid Ewing, a research professor at UMD’s National Center for Smart Growth, reviews a recent study from UNC Chapel Hill that compares the statistical influence of “traditional” inputs, like technology and education, versus “creative economy” inputs, like arts and culture institutions, on economic growth.

The study found more statistical certainty in the “traditional” model of economic development, indicating that the “creative economy” may not be as important to economic growth as Richard Florida claims.

But Ewing points out that the multiple regression models used in this study may be too simplistic. In reality, technology and education also influence cultural institutions and creative vitality, and vice versa. A more accurate analysis might utilize a structural equation model, which allows for the possibility that the input variables (creative economy indicators and traditional economy indicators) might influence each other, in addition to influencing growth.

Ewing also points out that the UNC study reinforces two of Richard Florida’s “Three T’s”: talent, tolerance, and technology. “The UNC team just doesn’t want Florida and his followers to substitute lattes for worker education, business creation, and industrial diversification,” writes Ewing. “That sounds right to me.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has published the proceedings from a December conference on “Funding Municipalities in New England: Revisiting the State-Local Partnership.” The FRB’s New England Public Policy Center writes that the conference focused on a few major themes:

• The structure of local government in New England in that cities and towns play have more responsibility for local services than in most of the U.S.
• New England’s municipalities face long-term challenges in that the cost of providing services is growing faster than their ability to raise revenues.
• State-local collaboration is critical to addressing the ongoing municipal fiscal challenges.
• Potential sources of additional revenue for New England municipalities exist but possess drawbacks.

Visit the conference website for the full proceedings.

In today’s Bangor Daily News, GrowSmart Maine president Alan Caron praises the Legislature and Governor for implementing a number of initiatives outlined in the GrowSmart-Brookings report, including a statewide building code, an expanded historic preservation tax credit, and an initiative to streamline administration of the state’s prison system:

“The effort to fill this year’s budget shortfall was a commendable achievement, but legislators who served in this last session should be most remembered for their farsighted initiatives to streamline government and promote prosperous and sustainable communities for the long term. Although there is much more work to be done in Augusta, Maine can look forward to enjoying the benefits of these accomplishments for decades to come.”

There’s been a steady beat of news coverage in recent weeks about the declining values of suburban homes and suburban living, as rising energy costs make more and more bedroom communities unaffordable for the families living in them. Today, the New York Times reports on a new analysis that finds that inner-city housing prices have been more resilient than house prices in outlying suburbs. The map of the Denver metropolitan region at right shows a one-year increase in home values in a few close-in neighborhoods (in orange), while everything in blue represents neighborhoods where home values declined.

The article quotes a suburb-dweller reconsidering his car-oriented lifestyle:

“Living closer in, in a smaller space, where you don’t have that
commute,” he said. “It’s definitely something we talk about. Before it
was ‘we spend too much time driving.’ Now, it’s ‘we spend too much time
and money driving.’ ”

Last week, a Wall Street Journal article pointed out that Americans are already decreasing the amount of time they spend in cars by making different choices in their housing and transportation decisions ($ubscription required for article):

Meanwhile, people have begun migrating from far-flung
suburbs to urban centers where commuting distances are shorter and
public transit is more easily accessed. In a poll this month of more
than 900 Coldwell Banker residential-real-estate agents mainly in urban
markets, more than 70% of them said their clients increasingly are
interested in living in the city to shrink their gasoline bill.

“The McMansion in the half-finished subdivision in a distant suburb
has become the equivalent of the large SUV that people can’t unload,”
says David Goldberg, spokesman for Smart Growth America, a group that
advocates for more compact, walkable communities.

And the week before that, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article compared two adjacent neighborhoods in that city’s Southside. One, Hapeville, has a city government that focused on mixed-use, walkable streets, a vibrant Main Street and revitalized historic districts. The other, Conley, is characterized by lots of cookie-cutter subdivisions and cul-de-sacs.

Even though the two neighborhoods are demographically similar and located right next to each other, the differences it their built environment are now leading to big differences in home values:

The 30354 area in Fulton
County enjoyed a banner year primarily because Hapeville’s traditional
neighborhood development was so popular. Sales in that ZIP jumped 141
percent, the AJC’s annual Home Sales Report says.

But in unincorporated Conley, which is 30288 in DeKalb and Clayton counties, new home sales were woeful. In Clayton, they fell 91 percent and in DeKalb they were off 65 percent.

Maine is undoubtedly facing similar problems after decades of suburbanization. Now that people are interested in living in our towns and cities again, local governments will need to do more to loosen archaic zoning regulations that make in-town housing difficult and unaffordable to build.

And maybe, after years of suburban encroachment, our rural communities and natural-resource industries will be able to thrive with new demand for locally-grown farm, forest, and fisheries products, and without the pressure of rising property taxes and development.

Save the date: on July 8, GrowSmart and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute are co-hosting the July Greendrinks event at GMRI’s headquarters on Portland’s working waterfront.

Greendrinks is a monthly social-networking event for people involved in the area’s environmentally-oriented businesses and nonprofits. In addition to meeting lots of people involved in Maine’s green-innovation economy, several GrowSmart staff members will be there to tell you all about our ongoing projects. We hope to see you there, and please forward this announcement far and wide!

Use the button at right to add this event to your calendar: