(Remarks delivered on Chebeague Island, July 16, 2002)
I am honored to be asked to speak to you tonight about the future of island communities as you confront the stark circumstances of Chebeague’s future in the face of the recent revaluation. I believe you are right to be concerned for your future.
Every islander knows in his or her bones how susceptible island communities are to permanent and damaging changes. At the end of the 19th century, there were 300 island communities off the coast of Maine; today there are 15. If that kind of decline had been experienced by a species of wildlife, there would be elaborate government programs to reverse those changes.
As far as islands go, we seem to have gotten it all backwards: islands are in general environmentally robust. After all they need to be adapted to periodic catastrophic natural forces to which they are subject year in, year out. But island communities are socially fragile – the smaller the community, the more fragile is its present and future. Even the smallest changes – such as the removal of a single family from the delicate interconnected nature of community life – leave holes and tears in community life that take years, decades, sometimes forever to heal. Island communities are the real endangered resource of the coast of Maine.
So now you are confronted by a potentially catastrophic change in the nature of your community by the upward spiral of real estate values and inexorably rising property values and tax burdens. You are not alone – the entire shorefront of the coast of Maine and all its lakesides and river’s edges are similarly afflicted. Ecologically speaking we are a littoral species, that is, given a choice the preferred human habitat is always at the water’s edge – the littoral zone. In the decade of the 1990s well over 40,000 new seasonal residences were built along the coast a Maine. Only 4,000 a year, you may think. But each of these homes and the land under them put incremental pressure on local property taxes. And it will get worse, because that parcel of shorefront of your neighbors that just sold for the unheard of price of $450,000 is a bargain compared to real estate prices along the rest of the Atlantic coastline.
So what are you to do? The answer is at once simple and complex: Organize! Organize! Organize! There’s strength in numbers – even a relatively small handful of committed people can change the world, as Margaret Mead once said – “indeed that is the only thing that ever has.”
Let me share with you a few island stories that I hope will lend hope to your cause. One is the story of Monhegan, threatened by irreversible changes in its lobster fishery; the other from Frenchboro, threatened by the sale of over half the island to developers. Monhegan’s dozen island fishermen, surrounded on all sides by more highly capitalized fishermen based on the mainland, awoke one morning not so many years ago to find that part of the island’s traditional waters were filled with traps from mainland fishermen. A potentially violent trap war loomed in which they would be hopelessly outnumbered. Their solution was to appeal to the Legislature to get statutory protection, the force of law, protecting the traditional unprotected waters to their south. Although their numbers were small, their political power minuscule, the whole community rose as one because the community’s future was at stake. The entire year-round population went to Augusta – half the town actually moved into motels – and they lobbied for their cause throughout the legislative session. Although apparently badly outnumbered again by legislators who represented constituents who would benefit from opening Monhegan’s traditional waters, nevertheless, they prevailed. They won overwhelmingly because the Legislature understood Monhegan’s petition was about fairness and equity and community conservation-all of which are themes that resonate in Maine’s political culture.
Frenchboro’s story has similarities. Over 900 acres of this 1,500 acre island with a year-round community of 40 was put up for sale a few years back. Faced with the crisis of seeing the island transformed from a traditional fishing community to a seasonal caretaking economy, the islanders united and asked for help from a few mainland based organizations including the Island Institute. Following the lead of the islanders who had a compelling vision of their future, they successfully raised the enormous sum of $3 million to protect their future as they saw it.
What these island stories have in common are two themes. First, a compelling vision of an island’s future, carefully articulated and powerfully presented, plays well on the mainland and in the Legislature even when (or perhaps because) islanders are so badly outnumbered. Never forget Maine is a state comprised of small towns – 496 towns and only three among them are cities. Our political culture understands and supports small town (and potentially small island) life. Second, a unified voice and effective leadership is everything in the kind of campaign you may decide to undertake as you contemplate your future. Organizing yourselves to speak with one voice is always the greatest challenge of island life. But if you believe the life of your community is at stake, you must do it or all is lost.
Finally, you should know, you have friends on the mainland ready to listen to you and we at the Island Institute are proud to count ourselves as first among many. We are here tonight to support you in spirit as you consider your options and we will be with you as you decide your course of action. Let us know how we can help and we will do our level best to pull an our.
Thank you.
Philip W. Conkling is president of the Island Institute.