Charting Maine’s Future

The new Governor’s Council on Maine’s Quality of Place recently convened for the first time. The Council, partly a response to the GrowSmart-Brookings report’s focus on and regard for Maine’s quality of place, has been asked to “identify the assets that make Maine a truly distinctive place, so that we can sustain them and build upon them.”

That quote comes from a letter that Governor Baldacci sent to the Council for its first meeting. Here’s another excerpt:

Today, I am asking you to help us better understand the elements of our quality of place; to clarify their relationship to our economic well-being; and to recommend ways and means to secure their benefits for a sustainable prosperity. I recognize that this is no easy task; but if you are successful, and I believe you will be, this generation of Mainers and those of the future will be truly indebted to you for your work.

Best of luck to the Council - we look forward to the work they’ll do to protect and enhance Maine’s great places. We’ve posted the full text of the Governor’s letter on our website: you can read it here.

We’re coming to Rockland on Monday evening to hear from our friends in the Midcoast and to discuss what the Legislature is doing to enact the GrowSmart-Brookings “Action Plan for Sustainable Prosperity.”

This Town Meeting will be held in the former MBNA building on Rockland’s waterfront. At 6 PM, an hour before the meeting starts, the new owners will be offering a tour of the facility to talk about their innovative plans for redeveloping and revitalizing the building.

Village Soup was kind enough to help us publicize the event. You can also learn more and get directions at our events web page.

New York City recently completed its PlaNYC 2030 report, which aims to address some of the bigger problems that the city faces in the next twenty years while making New York a much more livable city. In many ways, “The Plan” is like our own GrowSmart-Brookings report: New York City is already very prosperous, but Mayor Bloomberg recognizes that his city’s quality of place is crucial to that prosperity.

The report focuses on six broad areas: land use, water, transportation, energy, air, and climate change. Many of the proposed initiatives are environmental (reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, cleaning up old power plants and expanding renewable generation, and cleaning up waterways for recreation, for example).

Other initiatives directly address New York’s expected growth: the plan calls for enough housing for one million new New Yorkers, both to accommodate in-migration and to try to keep housing affordable to the middle class. The Plan also calls for additional open space to ensure that every New Yorker lives within a 10 minute walk of a park.

The proposal that has been gaining the most attention is a “congestion charge” similar to those in effect in London, Stockholm, and Singapore. By charging $8 to automobiles that pass below 86th St. in Manhattan, the Mayor hopes to reduce traffic congestion and all of its associated problems while raising enough money to maintain and expand America’s most-used transit network.

The Plan also enjoys better odds of succeeding from a fairly intensive public outreach process. So, even if intense opposition exists in some quarters (some powerful outer-borough motorists are already objecting strongly to the congestion charge idea), broad grassroots support could still pull the Plan through to success.

Read more about PlaNYC 2030 at the city’s website.

We’re visiting two of the state’s biggest cities plus the capitol in the coming week. Tonight at 7 we’re holding our Regional Town Meeting for Portland and Westbrook in the East End School (follow this link for event details and a map). We’re hoping for a big turnout, so we hope you join us if you live or work in the area.

Coming up next week, we’ll be in Rockland on Monday, Augusta on Tuesday (rescheduled due to the snowstorm a couple of weeks ago), and Bangor next Wednesday.

Here’s the latest news from the State House from our advocacy director, Maggie Drummond:

The Senate today passed a joint order (vote was 21-13) to create a Joint Select Committee on Prosperity, which will meet over the Summer and Fall to help develop a long term vision and plan for Maine to achieve sustainable prosperity. The Committee represents an attempt by the Legislature to follow the Brookings Institution’s advice in ‘Charting Maine’s Future,’ by identifying our unique niche and knowing who we are, placing a few big bets, and sticking with them over time. The Committee will develop their recommendations for long term, structural change, to be presented in the next session, starting in January 2008.

This is great news for Maine, but we at GrowSmart still hope to accomplish positive structural change on a faster schedule: namely, in the next few months. Towards that end, our Quality Places bill, which would permanently fund the Land for Maine’s Future program and also create a new “Communities for Maine’s Future” program, has been printed as LD #1872. This link leads to the full text of the bill.

We sent out the latest edition of the GroundWork Update electronic newsletter to our subscribers earlier today. This latest newsletter includes updates of what’s going on in the Legislature, links to some of our more recent press coverage, an update from our field staff, the announcement of our latest Educational Brief, and several other items.

If you didn’t receive one in your inbox, we’ve posted a copy on our web site. Get your own first edition of the next GroundWork Update by subscribing to our grassroots advocacy network.

The State Planning Office still has room for a “Passenger Rail Economic Development Workshop” to talk about expanding passenger rail service north of Portland next Tuesday (April 24) in Hallowell. The agenda includes these items:

Passenger Rail Service in Maine
Greg Nadeau, Deputy Commissioner, Maine Department of Transportation
Patricia Quinn, Executive Director, Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority

Trains, Community Revitalization, and Job Attraction
Scott Bernstein, President, Center for Neighborhood Technology

Transportation Alternatives and Business Attraction
Matt Jacobson, President, Maine & Company

Joint Development Potentials as Passenger Rail Stations
Alex Metcalf, President, TEMS

The Perspective of Androscoggin County
Charles Morrison, President, Androscoggin Chamber of Commerce

Brunswick Maine Street Station Project
Senator Beth Edmonds, President of the Senate
Mathew Eddy, Economic Development Director, Town of Brunswick

Community Group Discussions, Panel Discussions, Concluding Remarks and Recommendations

Visit the SPO web page to register or learn more about the event.

While we’ve been focusing nearly all of our advocacy on the State House in Augusta, Senator Susan Collins recently gave a boost to efforts to preserve our “quality places” with a bill that would extend federal support to local land preservation efforts.

The Suburban and Community Forestry and Open Space Program Act would establish a $50 million grant program that would match local funds to conserve working farms and forests in regions threatened by sprawl. It’s kind of like a “Land for Maine’s Future” program for the entire nation - and although $50 million shared among the 50 states may not seem like much, the money will leverage local and state funds to complete conservation projects worth several times that amount.

As Collins writes in an op-ed published in Millinocket’s Magic City Morning Star,

There is great work being done on the local level to protect working landscapes for the next generation. By enacting the Suburban and Community Forestry and Open Space Act, Congress can provide an additional avenue of support for these conservation initiatives, help prevent sprawl, and help sustain the vitality of natural resource-based industries.

The ninth GrowSmart Regional Town Meeting was held at the Frontier Cafe in Brunswick Wednesday evening. Legislators and their constituents from the Brunswick/Bath/Topsham/Freeport area cozied into the Frontier Cinema with coffee and scones in hand to listen to Alan Caron present the Brookings recommendations and how they are affecting current legislation.  Alan’s suggestion of “RUN” when hearing the words “I’m from Augusta and I’m here to help” received uproarious laughter from both legislators and constituents, but the message was clear.  With great respect for the public servents in Augusta, GrowSmart’s efforts with the Brookings recommendations have to be grassroots, people supported initiatives to survive long-term.

Upon opening up the meeting for discussion, attendees were quick to ask questions and voice ideas and concerns regarding the next steps in implementing the Brookings Report.  Important issues such as taxation were posed and Rep. Thom Watson of the Taxation Committee was there to provide explanation and insight to the crowd of 50 concerned Mainers. 

Senate President Beth Edmonds, who is sponsoring LD 1848-An Act to Promote Sustainable Prosperity, explained with great enthusiasm how the legislature will be looking at the bill drafted from the Brookings recommendations.  Senator Edmonds highlighted the issue of administrative overspending and the difficulties that lay ahead in streamlining, as well as the faith she has in new legislators, such as Rep. Kerri Prescott who was in attendance, to work for sustainable prosperity in Maine. 

Rep. Charles Priest stood to respect the long-standing tradition local control has in Maine, and voiced concern over how this might be affected by administrative streamlining.  This encouraged more discussion within the audience about the importance of town and city centers and local schools and how the Brookings recommendations promote these ideas.

The meeting ended, as all good things do, but conversation continued in the cafe and hallways of the Andross Mill.  All in all, the session provided a great opportunity for GrowSmart, the region, and regional legislators to sit down with a cup of hot coffee (or tea be it your preference) and chat.  The conversation continues at the next Regional Town Meeting in Machias.

The recommendations of the Brookings Report have been drafted into a bill, LD 1848, which is beginning to make its way through the Legislature. Read the full text here.

This is going to be a big focus for all of us GrowSmart Maine in the next few weeks. Your help in encouraging the Legislature to enact this bill will be crucial. If you haven’t already, please join our grassroots network to receive periodic newsletters and action alerts from us.