Anais Tomezsko, executive director of Mano en Mano, looked stunned as she stood near the Milbridge town office.
Just moments before, Milbridge residents voted 68 to 49 to impose a 180-day moratorium on multifamily housing construction. The moratorium vote halted a Mano en Mano project to build six affordable housing units for farm and aquaculture workers.
Some critics have contended in public meetings, published reports and in a petition that the affordable housing would encourage more Latinos to come to Milbridge, while Tomezsko and the project’s proponents contend the apartment complex would be open to any legal resident or citizen who works in agriculture or aquaculture.
Mano en Mano’s lawyers have filed suit in federal court to block the moratorium.
Latino migrant workers have come Downeast for decades. But in the past 10 years, Milbridge and other Downeast communities have seen a rapid influx of year-round Latino residents. Overall, some 100 Latino families have settled in the town of 1,300.
The project had been advancing through Milbridge’s Planning Board, but now there was no guarantee the housing proposal would pass new ordinances that might emerge after the moratorium.
“We’re playing by the rules; the rules are being changed on us,” Tomezsko said.
As she stood, Lewis Pinkham, Milbridge town manager, gave a slight nod as he drove past. Pinkham long had been a supporter of Mano en Mano, but he’s become a critic of the project, going so far in an interview with this reporter as to deny he had any knowledge of its existence until three months ago. When asked about this in the interview, Pinkham then modified his stance to say that he hadn’t seen any plans until three months ago.
The denial makes no sense to Tomezsko, especially since Mano en Mano had to go through the town for one of the project’s United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants. Pinkham is also the chief of police and the town’s civil rights officer, but he says he had no working knowledge of the grant, in the same interview.
“Two years ago, when we started it, he was the first person to go to,” Tomezsko said. “He thought it was a great idea and encouraged us.” When asked to respond to this, Pinkham said he could not comment due to the pending suit.
Arguments have shifted like allies during this fight, making it hard to pin down why some residents are against this project. Opponents cite inadequate ordinances, dangerous traffic-everything but the white elephant in the room, said Tomezsko.
“This is not an issue of town politics, this is about discrimination,” Tomezsko said. Pinkham again declined to comment on Tomezsko’s assertion because of the pending suit.
It’s been a stunning turnaround for a town that seemed to be poised to become a melting pot. In recent years, Mano en Mano, Pinkham and townspeople banded together to welcome new Latino residents, holding diversity training and language classes.
Town Manager Pinkham expressed pride at how Milbridge residents embraced diversity in a September 2008 Working Waterfront story [“Latinos putting down roots Down East”], but he did warn that any gains might be short-lived if the economy soured. “Everybody is fighting for jobs,” Pinkham said in the 2008 article. “There will be people who feel this group is taking jobs away.”
As it turns out, there were already signs of discontent last summer. In June 2008 abutting neighbors presented the town with a petition against the affordable housing project. Petitioners worried the project would encourage outsiders to take jobs needed for locals if the lobster industry collapsed.
“We wish to protect any jobs [lobster fishermen] may need in the future, not to be given [sic] out to minorities who may move into these units,” the petition states. (The housing would be open to all farm and aquaculture workers with legal status in the United States according to the USDA’s grant regulations and binding laws under the federal fair housing act.)
The petition stunned Mano en Mano’s supporters and the local Latino community. Sylvia Guzman has lived in the area for five years and worked for Cherry Point Products. It took her three months to find her most recent house rental for her family, in Harrington. She said she was surprised by the petition’s hostile tone to minorites.
“People are misinformed [about the project],” Guzman said in her native Spanish. “We are all humans.”
Guzman said she never understood the argument that Latinos were taking away jobs from locals. “People that want to do this work can do so,” she said.
Washington County aquaculture and farm employers long have contended that most locals don’t want the work, and that’s why immigrant labor is used.
“We went to seasonal workers only because we couldn’t find enough local workers that would stay with us the entire season,” said Nat Lindquist, vice-president of operations for Jasper Wyman & Son, the second-largest wild blueberry producer in the world.
Last year, Wyman & Son built a 110-unit dormitory for seasonal workers in nearby Deblois. Lindquist said the dormitory was necessary to combat Washington County’s chronic housing shortage. According to 2007 Maine State Housing Authority figures, some 70 percent of Washington County year-round households cannot afford the average rent for a two-bedroom home, and conditions for seasonal labor are even worse, he said.
“If people cannot find housing with local employers, they will live in conditions I find deplorable,” Lindquist said.
The petition didn’t surprise Tomezsko, but the town’s reaction did. Selectmen organized a meeting with residents and a USDA official, but neglected to invite Mano en Mano. The meeting’s tone was hostile, and afterwards Pinkham pulled Tomezsko aside and told her to stop the project, she said. Pinkham declined to comment on Tomezsko’s claim, citing the pending lawsuit.
Pinkham did say, however, that he thought the development process was going too fast and left town residents in the dark.
“It was a total shock, I would say,” Pinkham said. “If I plan on doing something and think it’s a worthwhile project, I go out and build support for the people in the community,” he said.
That sentiment was echoed by several of the apartment’s opponents and even found its way onto the moratorium ordinance:
“…areas of the Town of Milbridge are suddenly under threat of increased development pressure for Multifamily Housing…”
The project’s opponents shifted the argument away from jobs to concerns about taxes, zoning and traffic in public meetings after the petition was organized.
Petitioners argued the building site was on a dangerous road. “Every winter, I lose a mailbox,” said Lena McKenney, a Wyman Road resident who signed the petition. “Two winters ago, there were five accidents in one morning.” But a traffic study commissioned by Mano en Mano found just four reportable accidents in a three-year period, and limited traffic impact from the proposed apartments.
McKenney says she has nothing against Latinos, but that the local economy is in such bad shape that they shouldn’t be encouraged to live here and create a possible burden on the town. “These are very unpredictable times,” she said. “Do we need more on the town right now?”
McKenney and others also argue that the project’s nonprofit status will be a burden on the town because the property will be taken off the tax rolls.
Mano en Mano has proposed to pay a yearly fee that would bring in more revenue than if the land were left undeveloped, but Pinkham believes the development still will add too great a burden to the state’s school compensation rate for the town.
Pinkham also contends the town’s subdivision ordinances are inadequate for the project, but Mano en Mano lawyer Ed Bearor said the ordinances are clear and legally binding. “This is a use that is allowed,” Bearor said. “There’s no legal basis for a moratorium.”
But the studies were not enough to persuade the townspeople to vote down the moratorium. “We’re willing to answer all the questions and come to talk to them, but if they’re not going to listen to our response, there’s not much we can do,” Tomezsko said.
Tax, zoning and traffic arguments are common tactics for stopping affordable housing projects, said Ruben Hernandez-Leon, a University of California, Los Angeles sociology professor and co-editor of a book on Mexican migration, New Directions. He said Milbridge’s drama is playing out in rural areas across the country, as Latinos move in and the character of American small towns morph into something new.
“You can’t really resolve these tensions. They are largely inherent to this type of social change,” Hernandez-Leon said.
Mano en Mano’s lawyers have filed suit in federal court to block the moratorium. They argue that the ordinance is illegal under the federal Fair Housing Act. If the legal challenge fails, it’s likely that Mano en Mano will lose the USDA grant and all hope of building the apartments. But Tomezsko remained hopeful and struck a defiant note.
“We will not submit without a fight,” she said.