Charting Maine’s Future

The fifteenth anniversary issue of Mainebiz, for whom we write a monthly column, had a feature story about what Maine might look like in 2024, fifteen years into the future. The Standish Model Town project featured prominently as a project focused on renewing and revitalizing a small town’s village center, along with a neat illustration by Portland artist Patrick Corrigan (at right).

From the article:

Since GrowSmart was founded in 2002, it has been preoccupied with altering state policy to stem sprawl, its most visible success to date being the “Charting Maine’s Future” report it commissioned that helped launch the discussion on quality of place’s role in the Maine economy. But GrowSmart wanted to descend from its theoretical heights to prove its anti-sprawl concepts work on the ground level. In 2007, it solicited applications for a “model town” whose growth — past, present and future — it could analyze. Standish, fresh from endorsing a comp plan revision that dwelt heavily on focusing development in the downtown, was chosen. In May, Standish held the last of three public workshops on what residents think Standish Corner should look like. Residents were given handheld electronic voting devices and asked to rank proposed uses of Standish Corner. To help them visualize their options, GrowSmart created aerial and street-level mockups of Standish Corner as it could be in 20 years — they included a view if current zoning remains unchanged, with a downtown dominated by large parking lots and commercial buildings, and another if zoning was altered according to the residents’ feedback, with dense residential and commercial development and a network of narrow linking roads.

Right now, the town of Standish is working on implementing these plans into new ordinances, which would place fewer restrictions on development to allow for more traditional, village-style development (current zoning codes make such development is illegal, in Standish and in most other towns statewide). GrowSmart will continue to work with Standish to see the project through to implementation, but we’re also looking to take the lessons learned from Standish on the road to other towns and cities throughout the state.

The Maine 2024 feature also included some neat stories from some of GrowSmart’s allies: the University of Southern Maine’s Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Trust for Public Land’s regional conservation planning effort in Penobscot County.

From an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal:

At last, there’s a place in America where tax cutting to promote growth and attract jobs is back in fashion. Who would have thought it would be Maine?

This month the Democratic legislature and Governor John Baldacci broke with Obamanomics and enacted a sweeping tax reform that is almost, but not quite, a flat tax. The new law junks the state’s graduated income tax structure with a top rate of 8.5% and replaces it with a simple 6.5% flat rate tax on almost everyone. Those with earnings above $250,000 will pay a surtax rate of 0.35%, for a 6.85% rate. Maine’s tax rate will fall to 20th from seventh highest among the states. To offset the lower rates and a larger family deduction, the plan cuts the state budget by some $300 million to $5.8 billion, closes tax loopholes and expands the 5% state sales tax to services that have been exempt, such as ski lift tickets.

To be clear, Maine more or less had a flat tax before tax reform, too: the 8.5% rate applied to everyone earning more than $18,250 a year, which means that it applied to most working families. And the tax reform plan was separate from the Legislature’s efforts to trim spending by $300 million.

Still, getting kudos from the WSJ demonstrates one of the big advantages of the Legislature’s tax reform effort: Maine will be regarded as a more business-friendly state, and hopefully we can look forward to new businesses and job growth as a result.

Our buddy Johann Sabbath has been working hard these past few months to plan a big celebration of entrepreneurship in southern Maine. The first-ever Entreverge awards party is happening next Thursday, June 25th, at Portland’s Port City Music Hall. “We’ll be announcing the five winning entrepreneurs from the huge pool of nominees at the party. The food, music, and crowd will be top flight and tons of fun,” writes Johann. Local bands Adam and the Waxmen and the Jason Spooner Trio will also be performing.

Entreverge is being organized by an energetic group of young leaders from the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce: the award-winning small businesses will be rewarded with a suite of donated business and consulting services, plus face time with the state’s leading business figures.

More at www.entreverge.com.

In the eleventh hour of the recently-concluded legislative session, Maine’s State House approved a bond package that includes a $5 million for the newly-created “Communities for Maine’s Future” program, a major component of GrowSmart Maine’s work in Augusta this year.

Voters will now have a chance to approve a $5 million Communities for Maine’s Future fund on the June, 2010 ballot. The fund would match funds from local governments and private sources to provide major new investments toward strengthening the state’s Main Streets, downtown areas, and local economies.

The bond package passed this weekend also includes funding for other “quality places” programs like Land for Maine’s Future and the working waterfront preservation program. Several million dollars will also be allocated to research and development for renewable energy technology.

GrowSmart advocates sent hundreds of e-mails and phone calls to the State House in the past three months in support of the Communities for Maine’s Future bill. Great work, everyone!

If you subscribe to our e-mail newsletters, you probably received the distress call we sent out yesterday, which has since been reported on in the Forecaster and Mainebiz.

GrowSmart Maine is a nonprofit organization that relies exclusively on private donors and foundation grants to do our work. Those funding sources have been considerably constrained through this recession, to the point where GrowSmart Maine must now seriously consider ceasing its operations. In the past few months, we’ve cut our staffing and other spending in half, to become a more lean, efficient organization.

The good news is that we have strong prospects for funding later this summer and during the fall, but we must raise $60,000 over the next few weeks to ensure that the organization is still in place when those funds become available.

So we’re asking our supporters to pitch in a few dollars - whether it’s $10 or $1,000 - to get us through this financial emergency. If you’ve been following our work but have never made a contribution, now is your chance to make a real difference in GrowSmart’s future.

Follow this link to make a contribution.

As always, thanks for your support.

After a favorable vote in the taxation committee, the full House and Senate are expected to vote on the proposal later this week. We’re sending out this press release today to support the bill:

GrowSmart Congratulates Tax Committee On A Positive Step Towards Tax Reform

The Taxation Committee of the Maine Legislature has endorsed a tax reform proposal that embraces several important recommendations of the 2006 “Charting Maine’s Future” report, sponsored by GrowSmart Maine and the Brookings Institution.

In that report, experts from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program advised that Maine’s state government is indeed too reliant on the income tax. They found that Maine’s top income tax rate is high relative to other states’, and because it kicks in at lower income levels, it burdens large swathes of the state’s middle class with a regressive tax structure.

The legislature’s tax reform bill, LD 1088, would implement several recommendations from the “Charting Maine’s Future” report: it would reduce the top income tax rate by two percentage points, from 8.5% to 6.5%, and it would export more taxes to tourists and visitors. As a result, GrowSmart Maine supports this year’s tax reform legislation as an important step in the right direction.

“The Legislature’s current tax reform plan would set our state government on a more sustainable course, with a more reliable tax base and a friendlier climate for businesses and workers,” says GrowSmart Maine’s President, Alan Caron. “This proposal deserves to succeed.”

If LD 1088 succeeds, Maine’s income tax rate will go from one of the nation’s highest to the middle of the pack. To compensate for the income tax reduction, more revenue would come from sales taxes, which are more stable through economic booms and busts.

The plan would also “export” more taxes by raising the meals and lodging tax rate, the car rental tax rate, and taxes on real estate sales that are worth more than $500,000. By exporting more taxes to non-residents, Maine’s overall tax burden on residents will decline by over $75 million a year - which is money that Mainers can pump back into the economy.

GrowSmart Maine brings Maine people together to envision and create a more sustainable, prosperous future for our state. Learn more at www.growsmartmaine.org

The State House has finally voted on a budget, which means that lawmakers will decide within the next few days on a final bond package to send to voters.

That gives us just a few more days to make sure that that bond package includes major investments in strengthening our local economies, Main Streets, and downtown areas with a new Communities for Maine’s Future fund.

We need your help through one last push. Make sure that the Communities for Maine’s Future bond is still fresh in lawmakers’ minds as they determine a final bond package this week. Call these toll-free numbers to leave a message for your lawmakers, and let them know how strongly you support Communities for Maine’s Future (LD 775).

House of Representatives: (800) 423-2900
Senate: (800) 423-6900

Some talking points:

• LD 775, The Communities for Maine’s Future Fund, should be included in the final bond package because it will provide a needed economic stimulus for Maine downtowns, village centers and Main Streets all over the state.
• Investments in downtown & village center infrastructure, through a competitive grant process, will boost short and long term economic value using an existing resource- our historic community centers.
• This is virtually the only bond available this year for municipal infrastructure.
• The proposal in LD 775 expands and improves an existing program to ensure that communities of all sizes can apply and compete for grant awards.
• Also included is a new Revolving Fund for Endangered Historic Buildings to ensure that these critical historical resources are rehabilitated and returned to use - particularly in cases when these historic buildings are anchors for downtowns or village centers and local economies.

Thanks for all of your support! Stay tuned to this blog for updates in the coming days.

George Smith’s latest column in the Kennebec Journal does its best to light a fire under State House lawmakers:

“It wasn’t exactly an earthquake, but when GrowSmart Maine released its Brookings Institution Report, “Charting Maine’s Future,” in October 2006, it took the state by storm….

“Real accomplishments followed, including a bond of $55 million for research and development and our “innovation” economy and two bonds for ‘quality of place’ land and river conservation and community revitalization… I got so excited about all of this that I joined the GrowSmart Board of Directors last year, eager to make sure this dynamic organization advocated strongly for the rural Maine attributes and values that Brookings recognized as our strength.

But Smith laments the lack of action on important initiatives that the Brookings report had recommended, and the bungling of others:

Example number one: consolidation of schools. Here’s what Brookings said: “Maine could realize between $10 million and $35 million in annual K-12 education-costs savings without closing or consolidating a single school by reducing administrative costs to various national or Maine consolidated-district standards.”

That’s right, we could have reduced administrative costs substantially “without closing or consolidating a single school.”

But we made a mess of it, didn’t we?

…

And then there’s one of my favorite Brookings’ recommendations: a Maine government efficiency commission “to methodically review the structure and operations of state government and propose specific reforms to eliminate duplication and inefficiency.”

This didn’t happen because the Legislature choked on the suggestion that the commission’s recommendations “be subject to a single up-or-down vote by the Legislature.”

Few legislators are willing to give up their right to defend favorite state programs and jobs in an up-or-down single vote.

Just to be clear, GrowSmart Maine’s official position may differ somewhat from Smith’s - as flawed as some people think it is, Maine’s budget and schools are better off with the school administrative consolidation plan in place than they would have been without it. We worked in Augusta to make sure that the plan was enacted two years ago, and we continue to work to keep the state on task to dedicate more of our limited resources into classrooms, instead of administration.

On Smith’s second point, the desperate condition of this year’s budget may actually be able to convince lawmakers to give up their privilege to micromanage favored state programs - a privilege that’s become a heavy burden in the dire fiscal conditions of the past few months. In his budget proposal, Governor Baldacci proposed an independent efficiency commission similar to the concept endorsed in the Brookings report. We’ll see if it survives the State House next week, when legislators vote on the budget.

This looks like a neat movie - thanks to Jon Labonte of the Androscoggin Land Trust for passing along the announcement.

The Lewiston Public Library will host a free screening of the acclaimed environmental film “Division Street” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 2.

An official selection by the national Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, the one-hour documentary takes viewers from pristine forests to concrete jungles as filmmaker Eric Bendick explores terrain throughout North America, dodging grizzles in Yellowstone and taxicabs in Miami in his quest to find sustainable road projects and wildlife corridors to serve as standard-bearers for the 21st century.

“Roads are the largest human artifact on the planet; they have fragmented wild landscapes, ushered in suburban sprawl, and challenged our bedrock sense of community,” says Bendick. “But as the transportation crisis appears to be spiraling out of control, a new generation of ecologists, engineers, city-planners, and everyday citizens are transforming the future of the American road.”

“Division Street” has been described as a portrait of both ancient wilderness and new technologies as well as a call for connectivity, innovation, and solutions to shape the emerging green transportation movement. A preview of the film is available on-line at www.divisionstreetmovie.com

The presentation of the film at LPL is jointly sponsored by Maine Audubon, the Stanton Bird Club and the Androscoggin Land Trust. Following the showing, the audience will be invited to join in a discussion, led by Maine Audubon wildlife program assistant Jessie Mae MacDougall, on the the impact that roads have on wildlife in Maine. MacDougall will also provide details on a bill involving this issue which is currently pending in the Maine Legislature, “Maine Climate and Energy Planning Act,” LD 1333.

More information on the June 2 event is available by contacting Jessie Mae MacDougall at (207) 781-2330, ext. 235, or the Lewiston Public Library at 513-3135.

Thanks to John Richardson’s article in this morning’s Portland Press Herald, we’re looking forward to a good turnout at tomorrow evening’s third and final public workshop on the future of Standish Corner (here are the details).

The article references some of the high-tech visualizations we’re using to present different choices for growth, and we’ve uploaded a few of them to our Standish webpages: www.growsmartmaine.org/standish.

There, you’ll also find links to presentations that summarize the results of the two previous public workshops, including a slideshow of images from the three growth concepts presented to the town, and a slideshow of images that show the “preferred” concept in greater detail.

At right are birds-eye-views of two alternatives for future growth in the village center, at the junction of Routes 25 and 35. The top image shows what Standish Corner might look like 20 years from now if existing zoning regulations are kept in place. The bottom image shows residents’ preferred growth concept, based on public workshops and the work of the Standish Corner Village Implementation Committee. Tomorrow’s workshop will focus on strategies for helping the town get closer to that bottom image in the future.