Charting Maine’s Future

Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008, 6:00 – 9:30pm
Town Council Chamber, in the Standish Municipal Building

Standish Corner: Looking south over the intersection of Routes 25 and 35.

We’re working to transform the Vision of the 2006 Comprehensive Plan and Standish Corner Village Master Plan into reality. We need your help and input!

Please come and share your ideas for Standish Corner:

• Review three Village Development Concepts based on the Village Master Plan and the June ’08 Workshop
• Open House: 6-7pm; Workshop: 7-9:30pm.

For More Information: 642-2538.

Light refreshments will be served. Learn more at www.growsmartmaine.org/standish

Here’s another great example of locally-lead planning: Bremen’s new conservation plan, which was released a couple of months ago. From the release annoucement:

The Conservation Plan focuses on retaining open space in Bremen to meet four primary goals: maintaining rural character, preserving wildlife habitat, protecting water resources, and providing recreational opportunities. The plan suggests numerous strategies to meet those goals. The Commission wants to focus immediately on several strategies and is looking for Bremen residents to help them.

To download the plan, visit www.tidewater.net/~bremen, and if you’re interested in getting involved in the plan’s implementation, please e-mail bcc [at] tidewater.net, or call the Town Office, 529-5945.

GrowSmart Maine’s educational committee has produced a number of “educational briefs,” which contain tools and ideas geared towards helping towns grow their economies and improve their quality of life. William Pierce of Kittery contacted us a few weeks ago to ask if he could share our brief on “Accessory Apartments: An Affordable Housing Strategy.” Here’s his update after the election:

Christian,
A few weeks ago I asked permission to use some of your Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) material for an article.  It ended up in some letters to the editor.  My ballot petition for an ADU ordinance was successful. We got about 70% of the vote…

Kittery is a community where there the effects of restrictive zoning are startlingly apparent. Portsmouth, New Hampshire is internationally recognized as a beautiful, well-preserved historic town.  Their “Main Street” is bustling with businesses.  That same road runs straight into Kittery’s “Main Street”, after a short, pleasant walk over a bridge.

Kittery’s main street is home to big piles of dirt being processed into road underlayment, a overgrown vacant lot, the water department’s sand piles, a well regarded produce store and some other small businesses. The produce store is a shack that rests on 2×4 wooden planks on a parking lot… Our situation might serve a good example of the ill effects of restrictive zoning.
Will Peirce

Thanks to Will, and others like him elsewhere in Maine, for working to change local zoning codes to encourage more of the productive economic development we all want for Maine.

GrowSmart Maine and our partners are currently working to produce three different scenarios of future growth in Standish Village. These scenarios, and their visualizations, will help Standish residents choose what kind of streets to build and what kind of zoning to enact as their town grows:

Standish Corner Village: October 30th Meeting Presentation

A map of Two Echo Cohousing in Brunswick

Cohousing is a unique form of housing development in which residents join together to design and build their own neighborhoods, whether it’s in a city or on a farm. Maine has one completed cohousing community, Two Echo in Brunswick, and another, Greensward Hamlet, is currently in development in suburban Buxton.

In the midcoast area, a new cohousing community is now being planned on the site of Belfast’s Keene Farm. Belfast Area Cohousing would like to cluster 30 new homes on five acres, and preserve the rest of the 150-acre farm for agriculture, recreation, and open space.

For anyone interested in learning more about the cohousing concept, the Belfast group is hosting Chuck Durrett, a renowned cohousing pioneer, this Friday at Belfast’s University of Maine Hutchinson Center:

Chuck Durrett, nationally renowned cohousing pioneer, architect, and founder of Spaces for Children, will give a slide presentation, “Cohousing & Sustainability: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves,” on Friday, November 14, 7:30-9:00pm, at the University of Maine Hutchinson Center in Belfast. Childcare for all ages will be available. A $5 donation is appreciated (and waived for young families).

Space is limited. To reserve a seat, or for more information, call 338-9200 or visit www.mainecohousing.org.

GrowSmart Maine’s monthly “Charting the Course” column in Mainebiz is now available online.

This month’s column discusses some of the opportunities of building a new energy economy in Maine, a central theme of last month’s Summit.

The Boston Globe ran a story this past weekend about the culture of commuters who work in Boston but live in Maine, thanks to the Downeaster passenger rail service. The article makes clear the trains’ role in linking the economic powerhouse of Boston to Maine’s “quality places.”

Thanks to the trains’ wi-fi capabilities and electrical outlets, commuters have the option of working while they ride. But many commuters use the train as a social outlet as well: “America’s fastest-growing intercity train route,” writes the Globe’s Noah Bierman, “is part neighborhood bar, part rolling office park.”

Hat tip to the DowneastRiders.us blog for the link.

Messages from the 52% to the 48%. Stay classy, America.

Chalk up another win for Maine’s “quality places” - in this case, a new city neighborhood and a historic diner. Press Herald columnist Bill Nemitz has a story today about the re-opening of the Miss Portland Diner, in the city’s redeveloping Bayside neighborhood. Owner Tom Manning, a Portland native who has worked in New York City as an executive at Newsweek for over 30 years, decided to move back to his home state in order to preserve a piece of local history:

“Look at the Portland Observatory,” he said. “When I was a kid, you could never go up there — with all the broken stairs and stuff. I’ve always had a good feeling about how (the city) saved that thing and brought it back. And I kind of felt this might be a little similar. I knew the city was looking for someone to step up.”

Even before its official grand opening, the restored Diner is becoming a neighborhood focal point. It’s the city’s hope that the Diner will be an economic development tool as well, by generating more interest and investment in Bayside.

More town-level results are coming in. Here are some highlights:

Voters in Scarborough opted not to tax people who are bad at math.

And 2007’s school administrative consolidation plan continues to move towards reality, as a number of Maine towns voted to merge 1950s-era districts into new, more regional school departments:

• Voters in Freeport, Durham, and Pownal voted to merge their three school administrations into one [read pre-election commentary on Future Freeport];
• Schools in Saco, Old Orchard Beach, and Dayton will also share a single administration (Saco and Dayton have long run an innovative system by contracting to send high school students to the private Thornton Academy);
• Voters in the Kennebunks voted to merge their district, SAD 71, with the school district in neighboring Arundel. 
• In Oxford County, voters in SADs 21, 39, and 43 decided to merge their districts into a new “Western Foothills School District,” which would be based in Rumford and include the towns of Buckfield, Hanover, Sumner, Hartford, Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Byron, Roxbury, Mexico, and Peru. 
• The communities of Mount Desert Island will share a school district with Trenton and surrounding islands Frenchboro, Swans Island, and the Cranberry Isles.
• And voters in Mechanic Falls, Minot, and Poland voted overwhelmingly to consolidate into a single district.

In other news, continued declines in state revenue led Governor Baldacci to ask state agencies for another $150 million in budget cuts.

UPDATE: The Bangor Daily News printed an article on Thursday that gives the status of all of the state’s school consolidation referenda. Voters approved 12 plans and rejected 5 (most of which were for districts in Aroostook County). Read the article for a complete list of the new school districts.