How town meetings now favor the loudest, smallest bands of self interest

TREMONT - The last time voters had their say on whether to partner with Southwest Harbor on police services was in October 2019, and that proposal was defeated by 51 residents - or less than 4 percent of the registered voters in town. Only 29 votes were in favor.

Now comes the question again on May 14, only this time with a price tag almost triple what voters rejected in 2019 - $402,000 versus $143,000. This time the proposal is for 24/7 coverage and not just 30 hours of patrol.

It’s an odd juxtaposition. Members of the select board say they continue to hear from constituents that the town needs its own police force, instead of relying on the very part-time coverage from the county sheriff’s department in Ellsworth.

Yet, come town meeting time, a strident, small percentage of the electorate always seems to get its way.

Are the select members misinterpreting the true intention of residents? Or is the town meeting a poor vehicle for honest representation?

Mount Desert faces a similar test of will at its annual meeting May 7.

The very last item on the agenda is the linchpin to how some say the town will define itself over the next generation - either as an year-round community or as a seasonal enclave for tourists.

It’s a proposed ordinance to regulate short-term vacation rentals, similar to one proposed in Tremont, except that there will be a moratorium on future permits once all permits are issued by 2025. After that, no more permits will be issued until STRs fall below 10 percent of the town’s housing stock.

“We are sitting ducks for individuals and businesses whose sole mission is to buy properties and make them vacation rentals,” Planning Board member Gail Marshall wrote in the Islander.

“Those individuals and businesses can always outbid someone who wants to make a house their home. For example, they can show a bank that because of the large rental income the property will generate, their capacity to carry a mortgage is far greater than someone who wants to live and work here. That, in turn, jacks up prices all around. Those purchases are happening here and now. And they will continue without limitations in place.”

Marshall was responding to the pushback from the usual sources - real estate agents, absentee landlords, out-of-town investors - most of whom did not disclose their pecuniary interest in public.

But this is a loud and highly motivated minority and on May 7 they may make up the majority who show up to vote in a town where the bar for public participation is low and getting lower.

During the pandemic in 2021, when Mount Desert residents attended the town meeting by car in the high school parking lot, the moderator had to beseech residents not to drive away before the final vote lest the town fell blow its required 50-voter quorum.

If 150 residents show up May 7 at the Mount Desert elementary school, Town Manager Durlin Lunt would be a happy man. But that would mean only 7.4 percent of the registered voters decided on everything from sewer hookups, to zoning changes to the FY25 budget.

In a time of instant media which goes viral, the New England town meeting, which historian Michael Zuckerman called a “Mirage of Democracy,” is a woefully anachronistic instrument to govern a community polity.

In Maine, the town meeting still requires a physical appearance by the voter, in a state which has the highest percentage of ownership of second homes in the nation.

Its biggest taxpayers are much more likely to make their mark in places like Florida, New York, Pennsylvania or Washington, D.C.

Which leaves towns like Mount Desert with the tiniest cohort of eligible voters during the off season.

In a letter last week in the Islander, John. B. Macauley, chair of the Mount Desert select board, wrote,

“I've been on the Mount Desert Select board for 13 years and have always accepted the fact that a few folks simply do not know when or where annual town meeting takes place or how it all works.

“This year, it has become clear that a lot of residents seem to suffer from this problem. Given the impact many of the warrant articles will have on our town going forward, this is very dismaying.

“I won't belabor how important the democratic process is, nor will I quote Benjamin Franklin (again). I will say, however, that by failing to participate in the democratic process, you are essentially giving away your town. There is no enlightened autocracy to make the best decision in your absence. It is up to you.”

Macauley did not mention any specific warrant article in his letter, but on March 18, he uncharacteristically spoke in dramatic fashion at a select board meeting to urge passage of the vacation rental regulation, in front of a room full real estate agents, landlords and business people who cater to the vacation renters.

“I've been watching this for 30 years and I don't often open my mouth up here because sometimes I can't stop. I am either on or off.

“I've seen the whole town just getting darker and darker and that's the bottom line that's self evident,” Macauley said in reference of the loss of year-round homes.

“We are not going to know what's going on, unless we look into it. This is the first step, okay.

“There's some pretty draconian steps which could come after this if we keep getting pushback on this because I won't be here by then.

“But if this town keeps getting pushbacks, and there are enough us here, then we're going to start seeing changes in the way we actually zone things. Things that are zoned residential may become commercial.”

“And that's gonna be a whole different can of worms.”

“The self evident part? You walk up to anybody in this room that can look me in the face and say this town is not changed in the last 15 years? Ten years? C’mon.”

Macauley and Geoff Wood were re-elected last year with 65 votes each when they ran uncontested which seemed to support his point that not enough eligible residents are voting.

I plan to attend the town meetings in Southwest Harbor May 6, Mount Desert May 7 and Tremont May 14 and take full measure of what’s left of our small town democracies as they continue to dwindle.

In his essay, “What We Can Learn From Town Meetngs, Matt Leighninger of the National Civil League quotes author William Keith as stating, “Non-democratic systems of political rule do not require community, and may even thrive in its absence. Yet to imagine a form of democracy is also to imagine a form of community…”

So if town meetings are on the wane, does that mean so are our communities?

Leighninger added.

“The process fixes we engagement practitioners have dreamed up are necessary, but insufficient for helping people recapture their sense of personal consequence. In order to finish the job, we need to be creative about supporting and connecting the ways that people interact in the community, not just city hall.”

“We have quite lost the capacity to combine the demos and the kratos – the people and the rule – of democracy,” worried Zuckerman.

“The New England town meeting provides us with a testbed for trying out new combinations. We should take advantage of the opportunity before it is too late,” Leighninger concluded.

Bethany Leavitt joins MRC board

ORONO - Bar Harbor Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt attended her first meeting Wednesday as a member of the board of the Municipal Review Committee, the consortium of 115 towns which has a collective agreement to manage municipal solid waste in the region.

She is the second MDI representative, joining Tony Smith, retired public works director from Mount Desert who has served since 2013.

Let’s hope she represents our interest better than Smith, who was part of the governance team which severed MRC ties with the incinerator in Orrington and bought into the promise of the Fiberight Corp., whose primary owner Ultra Capital was said to have spent $90 million to build a plant in Hampden which lasted seven months of full operation and shuttered in June 2020.

Since then, most of our trash has ended up in landfills. It was ironic that the MRC relied on the Orrington incinerator to bail out its towns after the Hampden plant closed.

The MRC’s latest partner Innovative Resource Recovery, funded by White Oak Global Advisors, has dismantled much of the Fiberight’s effort to turn pulp into biomass and is now working to turn waste into biogas, for sale to Bangor Natural Gas.

The above video showed Leavitt being introduced at Minute 24, and the IRR executives giving their update starting at 1:06 into the meeting.

IRR is the fourth company given the opportunity to run the plant. The most egregious failure by the MRC board was its partnership with Delta Thermo Energy, despite investigative reporting by the Bangor Daily News and the QSJ on DTE’s claims.

As you may see from the above video, the board’s “oversight” is non existent. Members showed little curiosity for IRR’s operations.

Leavitt did not reply to my questions by email on how much of Bar Harbor’s trash is going to landfills. I hope she understands her job is to take care of Mother Earth first and not just to appease a California-based asset management firm.

Grohoski joins COA staff

BAR HARBOR - State Sen. Nicole Grohoski, D-Ellsworth, who represents all of MDI and surrounding islands, has accepted a full-time position with College of the Atlantic as Energy Project Manager and will be working to help implement a free energy audits and assistance program on Great Cranberry Island this summer.

Her appointment follows the award of a $200,000 Buildings Upgrade Prize (Buildings UP) to the College of the Atlantic Community Energy Center from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Students trained in energy work will meet with willing residents to suggest energy improvements to their homes and will connect residents with rebate programs and resources to make these improvements at an affordable cost, COA stated.

The students will live on Great Cranberry Island over the summer to do the energy assessments, and immediately following, will bring contractors out to the islands to do the work that homeowners have opted for.

Grohoski has taught GIS at Middlebury College and Maine Maritime Academy.

She serves as State Senator for District 7, which includes the towns of Bar Harbor, Blue Hill, Brooklin, Brooksville, Castine, Cranberry Isles, Deer Isle, Ellsworth, Frenchboro, Isle au Haut, Lamoine, Mount Desert, Orland, Penobscot, Sedgwick, Southwest Harbor, Stonington, Surry, Swan’s Island, Tremont, Trenton, and Verona Island. She is serving her third term on the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee and is the Senate chair of the Legislature’s Taxation Committee.

Grohoski is full time with COA and will work part time when the legislature is in session. Her position is funded through grants and philanthropy for three years.

Apr 25, 2024, 4:20 PM (3 days ag

to me, Nicole

Nicole is in fact working at COA, her title is Energy Project Manager. She is working with the Community Energy Center to lead programs in the community, including our Energy Upgrade Program (information attached) on Great Cranberry Island this summer.

Nicole has experience teaching GIS at Middlebury College and Maine Maritime Academy, is a leader of Maine's clean energy transition, and brings a wealth of experience to the Community Energy Center. She serves as State Senator for District 7, which includes the towns of Bar Harbor, Blue Hill, Brooklin, Brooksville, Castine, Cranberry Isles, Deer Isle, Ellsworth, Frenchboro, Isle au Haut, Lamoine, Mount Desert, Orland, Penobscot, Sedgwick, Southwest Harbor, Stonington, Surry, Swan’s Island, Tremont, Trenton, and Verona Island. She is serving her third term on the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee and is the Senate chair of the Legislature’s Taxation Committee.

Nicole is full time with COA and will work part time when the legislature is in session. Her position is funded through grants and philanthropy for a period of three years at this time.  

She began with COA on April 18.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fT84myLavkeA4PoVAxoZppfcJpcyqScV/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107061827254036912405&rtpof=true&sd=true