One of the first times I spoke to legislators in Augusta about island issues, I had the disheartening experience of having a representative who should have known better look at me incredulously and ask, “You mean people live on those islands in the winter?” That was long ago and in a different land, politically speaking. Since then islanders have begun to work together to advance common objectives that seemed impossible only a few years ago. As the legislative season draws to a close, it might be useful to review what politically active islanders have helped accomplish.
The 800-pound gorilla in Augusta this past season has been educational consolidation. However desirable this goal may have been from the tax and efficiency points of view, consolidation would have been disastrous from an island perspective. It is not hard to understand that if island schools become small parts of large administrative districts on the mainland, consolidation will inevitably undermine island school programs. But unlike the bad old days when apparently powerless islands became the unintended victims of mainland agendas, islanders quickly organized a coalition of island school leaders, developed an effective communication plan, a savvy legislative strategy and an alternative proposal that was initially acceptable to the commissioner of education and the governor. It is still too early to declare victory, as the final plan is being negotiated behind closed doors by the legislative leadership, but it is comforting to know that one island voice, House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, whose constituents include North Haven, Vinalhaven, Isle au Haut, Swan’s and Frenchboro, is part of the negotiating team.
Prior to the legislative session, the Maine Islands Coalition launched a statewide affordable housing coalition. The effort followed a successful affordable housing symposium that had been organized largely by an Island Fellow from Islesboro. One hundred participants, including representatives from 11 island housing groups, attended. With the organizational clout of the Islands Coalition and administrative support from the Institute, the Coastal Workforce Housing Coalition proposed a series of legislative reforms including a local option one-percent real estate transfer tax on properties over $500,000 to fund community affordable housing groups. The coalition publicized Maine State Housing Authority data showing that islands are, as a group, the least affordable communities in the state. The average house price is twice as high as an islander with an average island income can afford. On Islesboro alone, such a transfer tax provision would have raised $150,000 for that community’s affordable housing program last year. At the hearing on this provision, 20 islanders along with many other coalition members showed up to testify about how their communities are being “hollowed out” by escalating housing costs, far outnumbering the real estate interests that historically have fought such legislation tooth and nail. Again, it is too early to predict the outcome, but without the islanders’ activism, the issue would not even still be on the table in Augusta. In the meantime, the matter of affordability has attracted the interest of one foundation, which has made a significant grant to establish the Affordable Coast Fund (AFC) at the Island Institute to help.
Another matter of interest to islanders this session is funding for private ferries. Ferries are to islands as bridges are mainland towns — they are essential parts of their transportation and economic infrastructure. Eleven island communities are subsidized by state support — while four are on their own. In simpler times before the imposition of new Coast Guard safety regulations, new Worker’s Compensation laws, and less expensive fuel and dock maintenance, these private ferries could run a profitable enough business without bankrupting their customers. That was then. State Sen. Dennis Damon helped introduce a bill to provide some equity for those island communities with increasingly stressed private ferry systems — Isle au Haut, the Cranberry Isles, Monhegan and Chebeague. At the hearing on the bill, the entire year-round population of Isle au Haut, all 45 souls, showed up to testify in Augusta. It’s significant that Maine’s Department of Transportation, previously unsympathetic to these private systems, has expressed a willingness to consider adding funds to its budget to provide some equity for islands not served by state subsidies.
The final two island items pending in Augusta are one-off issues–the length of the lobster season on Monhegan and Peaks Island secession. Monhegan’s one-of-a-kind, six-month winter lobster fishing season (December-May) within its unique lobster conservation zone was approved by the legislature almost ten years ago. At a time when there was less effort in the lobster industry and there was more predictability in the seasonal movement of lobsters, this approach worked for Monhegan’s 12 lobster fishermen and their families, who form the economic basis for their island’s year round community. But anyone who has read anything about the lobster industry knows that lobstering is increasingly unpredictable. This past winter, the lobster fishery has almost collapsed on Monhegan, and lobster fishermen there need to adjust their season to begin in October if they are to survive. Fishermen from coastal towns like Friendship are bitterly opposed and legislators on the Marine Resources Committee will be forced to make a tough call.
Secession on Peaks Island is a similarly tough call — pitting a majority of islanders on Peaks against the weight of the leadership of the City of Portland. The Island Institute has decided against speaking either for or against secession, which needs legislative approval, because we have substantial number of members on both sides of the question. Recently the Portland Press Herald editorialized against the islanders “forcing” secession on the city, and anyone can clearly see that secession is not in the interests of Portland from a tax base perspective. It leaves us wondering what mainland voters in Portland might decide if given the opportunity to weigh in. In the meantime, whatever Portland’s voters might believe about their need to have Peaks as their suburb, the cases of Long Island and Chebeague (islands that have already seceded from mainland municipalities) make one lesson abundantly clear. Those independent island communities are full of highly motivated citizens eager to manage their own affairs.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.