Charting Maine’s Future

The Temple Theater in downtown Houlton (courtesy of the Temple Movie Theater)

The newly-formed Coalition to revitalize Maine’s towns and cities is a collection of non profit organizations, town and city officials, Main Street programs, business people and others dedicated to revitalizing Maine communities and fostering redevelopment of some of our most unique assets: our historic Main Streets and downtown districts.

This coalition will work all over the state to advance policies and strategies that will help revitalize our Main Streets, towns, and cities. GrowSmart Maine is proud to support downtown revitalization, which supports economic development and efficient government spending even as it protects a vital piece of the Maine “brand”.

We’re also hosting the Coalition’s web site, which you can visit for more information and to learn about upcoming initiatives:
www.growsmartmaine.org/downtowns

“Governor John E. Baldacci today announced efforts his Administration is taking to help Mainers cope with rising heating and transportation costs and to keep Maine people safe and warm this winter.” - Nov. 16 press release

One of these efforts includes free rides on Maine’s transit systems this Friday, including BAT in Bangor, METRO in Portland, ZOOM and Shuttlebus in Biddeford/Saco, and KV Transit in the Kennebec valley. The Governor’s office hopes that these free rides will introduce people to transit and generate higher ridership during the rest of the week and past the conclusion of the free rides program six weeks from now.

So if you live near any of Maine’s transit-served communities, take the Governor up on his offer this Friday and save a Hamilton or two for your participation in the shopping riots.

Here’s a response to last week’s screening of The Unforeseen from Andrew Colvin, a former editor of the Windham Independent who continues to write a weekly column for the paper (Andrew also went to Bonny Eagle High School with me - go Scots!):

Unraveling the planning-environment connection

Poor urban planning, fed by consumer values, is foundation to many environmental issues

I left the film confused, shaken, even a little scared. It was one of those movies that really rattled me, that couldn’t be shook from my head, that kept me in a dark mood long after I left the theater. No, it wasn’t the latest thriller or horror flick, but a documentary … on urban planning! (dah-dah-DAA!)

Unfortunately, history can be more disturbing than whatever fiction a screenwriter could fashion. “The Unforeseen” is a documentary about how poor planning and unrestrained development in Austin, Texas, resulted in the tainting of a beloved natural resource, a spring in the middle of the city where thousands would come to swim.

As the story goes, citizens at first came out in the hundreds to speak out against large-scale development that would harm the spring — and were victorious in getting projects turned down and in passing ordinances to raise environmental standards. But lobbyists working on behalf of developers and Texans angry about infringements on their property rights eventually pressured the Legislature to overturn such protections, arguing that the state should compensate them for lost property value.

With protections off the table, development in Austin was rampant as sprawl spread out from the city center, turning farmland into house lots, woods into superhighways, and the crystal spring into a murky, bacteria-filled drainage area.

But the film wasn’t really about this one city, but about the connection between the environment and urban (and rural) planning throughout America. It touched on the current model of planning — in place since after World War II — that discourages living in cities and promotes ever-expanding suburban development. It hit on debates that have been going on for years, like individual rights versus the common good, and economic benefit versus environmental impact. The film didn’t point the finger at a bad guy, as much as a bad practice.

In many ways, our current model of growth isn’t good for the environment. Rather than grow denser within a certain area to keep the same environmental footprint, we grow out farther and spread more impacts across the land. Rather than reuse buildings, we build new (and big) in an undeveloped area, breaking up wildlife habitat. Far from our jobs and stores, we are dependent on our cars and large road networks to get us where we might walk if we lived closer. We impact more of our environment and use more of our natural resources than we would if we only planned in a more sustainable way.

Speaking after the film, Alan Caron, executive director of GrowSmart Maine, highlighted these issues, along with others. A key to growing Maine’s economy, he said, will be developing its centers, not its hinterlands. As our population becomes less concentrated, it becomes less efficient, which you feel in your tax bill. And as Maine loses its natural character to development, so does it lose one of its best economic assets. Growth, Caron said, doesn’t always have to be outward.

Caron pointed out something else that’s hard to swallow. Poor urban planning practices aren’t the only culprit — we are all culprits. We’re good people who wouldn’t willingly contribute to problems, but our complacency and heavy consumption are feeding the problems. Developers couldn’t build houses in the middle of nowhere if people didn’t buy them. People may purchase compact fluorescents and drive fuel-efficient cars to be eco-friendly, but those benefits are offset if they live in a gargantuan palace an hour from where they work. To tackle the problem, we have to change not only where we live, but how we live.

The first issue of planning is hard enough to change, but the second is even more difficult. This personal change will have to come from within us by giving a hard look at our values and ways of thinking. We have to look hard for all the effects of our decisions. We have to realize the benefits of not taking as much as possible from the environment. We have to take our communities into consideration when we make our individual decisions.

I left the film confused, shaken, even a little scared … on the problem of how we will create these deep-seeded changes in time to protect our environment and grow sustainably into the future.

Nationally-syndicated columnist Neal Peirce recognized Maine’s passage of a $55 million economic development bond as one of several “forward-thinking votes” made in the election earlier this month:

“Maine voters took a similar pro-future stance, approving (albeit narrowly) a $50 million economic development bond issue. Instead of politically geared earmarks, the money’s to go to promising new economic clusters that the independent Maine Technology Institute rates high for job creation and potential growth.

“And rather than tired ’smokestack chasing’ or ‘another call center,’ the money should promote clusters with solid Maine potential — for example, boatbuilding, composites, forest fibers or marine sciences — says Karen Mills, the venture capitalist who put the bond-proposal package together based on a Brookings Institution analysis of Maine’s possible economic growth strategies.”

The column compares Maine’s forward-thinking electoral decision with an overwhelming approval of transit investments in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the repeal of a draconian property-rights referendum in Oregon. Read the full column here (courtesy of the Houston Chronicle).

If you’re in the Portland area for either of the next two days, drop by the SPACE gallery on Congress Street to watch “The Unforeseen,” a documentary about the conflicts between development and quality places around Barton Springs in Austin, Texas.

When I lived in Houston, on summer weekends when it was 105 degrees with 98 percent humidity, my friends and I frequently made the 4 hour trip to Austin just to go swimming in Barton Springs (right). It’s a natural swimming hole a short bike ride away from downtown where the water temperature is 68 degrees year ’round. Barton Springs is an incredible quality-of-life asset for the city of Austin: it’s like the swimming hole I visited as a kid in Steep Falls, but it’s more refreshing, there’s less broken glass, and it’s within walking distance of a vibrant urban downtown. Maine has its working waterfronts, historic Main Streets, and wild northern forests; Austin has Barton Springs.

However… the limestone geology and semi-arid climate of the Austin area makes the clear, cool waters of Barton Springs particularly susceptible to urban runoff pollution. And because Barton Springs is so close to the center of Austin, there’s been tremendous development pressure in its watershed upstream. As I understand it (I haven’t seen the movie yet), this is the conflict that “The Unforeseen” is all about.

It should be a good film. Our colleague Keith Schneider in Michigan saw it earlier this year, and he wrote that the documentary’s “strength comes from its even-handedness and its universal qualities, displaying the drama of the contentiousness about how to grow in the United States, and the real pain suffered by advocates on every side”

Both Alan Caron and I will be at tonight’s screening (it begins at 7 PM) to watch and discuss afterwards how Austin’s situation relates to our own here in Maine. I’ll also be at tomorrow afternoon’s screening (at 3 PM). Click here for the SPACE website, which includes directions and the full program for this week’s Human Rights Watch Travelling Film Festival.

Today’s Kennebec Journal published a great editorial that details the success of the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission and argues for a similar independent commission to take on the task of streamlining Maine’s state government. Here’s an excerpt:

Congress agreed that this independent commission would study defense department recommendations for base closings and consolidations, but come up with its own plan. Then Congress had one vote: accept the full plan or reject it. No amendments, no horse-trading. Either go down as voting for what was a smart, but painful, plan, or vote the other way and take your lumps.

It worked. Here in Maine, BRAC overruled the defense department and kept open the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, but closed the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, for example. Even most partisan observers agreed that made sense.

Now, to the present: In Maine, government needs to reduce itself — or have it done by the taxpayers.

… Meanwhile, signatures are being gathered for another tax-limitation referendum like the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) that failed last time around.

Instead of the mess a TABOR bill would bring us, we need an independent commission to determine what can be cut and where and the Legislature must give that list an up or down vote.

Read the full editorial here.

Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission has confirmed these hearing dates for public testimony on Plum Creek’s development plans for the Moosehead Lake region.

• Saturday, December 1 at the Greenville High School
• Sunday, December 2 at the Augusta Civic Center
• Saturday, December 15 in Portland at the Holiday Inn by the Bay
• Sunday, December 16 at the Greenville High School

This is a huge proposal of statewide significance, so we are encouraging as many people as possible to research the proposal and weigh in. We’ve created a Plum Creek web site with updates on the planning process, maps of the proposal, all of the public testimony from intervening organizations and citizens groups, as well as details on GrowSmart Maine’s position:

www.growsmartmaine.org/plumcreek

Plum Creek has also made some minor revisions to its proposal, including zoning language clarifications, provisions for snowmobile trail and public road access, a revised and increased Community Fund, and some reduction in size of development zones. The latter two changes begin to address specific recommendations made by GrowSmart Maine’s land use planner, Bruce Hyman, in his testimony to LURC. You can learn more about these revisions by following this link. Here’s a map of the proposed zone changes along Route 6/15 (click to enlarge):

The Travel section of Sunday’s Boston Globe had a great feature on the revitalization of downtown Biddeford, where inexpensive historic buildings in an well-preserved downtown area are attracting new investment, new businesses, and new residents:

“‘There’s more than a million square feet of space in Biddeford mills and literally hundreds of artists working in them,’ [Rachel] Weyand [director of Heart of Biddeford] says. The art community is so large and active that last fall Art Mart, an art supplies shop, moved from Kennebunk to Main Street. ‘It was a good move for us,’ says manager Jared Redding. ‘We have twice as much space and there are a lot of artists here, and the Art Walks always attract good crowds.’ Business has been so good that the store recently began staying open seven days a week.”

Read the full article here.

Here are two good articles that cropped up in yesterday’s Press Herald:

Ron Bancroft: “Way to economic reform may open soon” (op-ed column). An opinion piece on the need for, and growing consensus on, streamlining the state’s spending.

Associated Press: “Young adults heading north.” Young people aged 25 to 34 are moving to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, while the population of the same age group is declining in the rest of New England.

With 97% of precincts reporting, it looks almost certain that Maine voters have approved Question 2 - the $55 million research and economic development bond - and Question 4 - the $35 million quality places bond.

Thanks to everyone who voted! We still have lots of work to do this winter in the Legislature - namely, to streamline government and reduce the tax burden so that we can fund these kinds of investments consistently over the long term. Please make sure to sign up for our action alerts so that we can connect you to your representatives when important votes come up.