Dinosaur Politics on the Peninsula, Does a Phoenix Have a Chance?
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the future! Seeking three board members!
The Dinosaurs
In a recent post, I spoke about the unofficial dominant and minority parties of the Peninsula, which is not a correct dichotomy since a minority of the people can and do dominate the rest.
However, I was speaking about political power and not populations. The political views on the Peninsula per capita are unknown but a small minority with money can easily dominate the political climate on this Peninsula with a little help from their friends, the media.
Such is the party advocating the proposed fifty-million-dollar school, currently receiving ongoing media coverage as if it were decided by the people when it is brought about by only a small circle of friends of Paul Coulombe who attended a fundraiser at Coulombe’s private club to raise two and a half million dollars to pay architects to design a new public school.
The planners assure us that public opinion is very important and have set a date in 2023 when the public will be able to vote on whether we want a fifty-million-dollar school on the Peninsula. The architectural plan, paid for by a wealthy people’s caucus, will be completed by then, but will the public be offered any other options to choose from? Will it be the equivalency of holding an election for a single candidate?
The dominant political party on the Boothbay Peninsula likes to think of itself as the party of the “new” and anyone not welcoming their changes just doesn’t like change. Period.
Yesterday’s “new” is today’s “pre-covid”. At the rate of change underway today, how outdated will a large institution serving the corporate world order be in 2023?
As anyone who follows this newsletter knows, I am opposed to the fifty million dollar school as the public educational system is governed by the Industrial Partnerships Act of 2013, which repurposes public education as an instrument of the centrally managed state’s economic development policies, favoring the state’s targeted economic sectors, which are already largely taxpayer-subsidized, including tax-payer funded job-training.
There is nothing wrong with a job training center per se except when it is displacing another important institution and when taxpayer money is used to unfairly advantage some industries and businesses over others, at the cost of the disadvantaged- and when it is too large a development for a community for environmental reasons.
The school is part of greater gentrification and population expansion plans designed to attract “well-heeled families” to the Peninsula- to use Mr. Coulombe’s phrasing.
The idea that attracting the wealthy to a location is the goal of economic development is nothing new in Maine. In 2003 Governor Baldacci was a follower of Richard Florida. In the Richard Florida world view, the purpose of urban planning is to attract the “creative class” and so Florida had developed a standardized model of the urban environment which promised to attract the “creative class”.
The purpose of attracting the creative class was to attract the wealthy. Much was made about unique neighborhoods with interesting individualistic restaurants and boutiques but they were not valued on their own, but because the Richard Florida approach to economic development held that small creative local enterprises would lure the wealthy to a community.
I was naive when the creative economy first became the popular slogan. Upon first hearing the term, I took it to mean creativity at all levels of the economy. I soon learned it did not even include our creative ceramic art and design and production business because to be in the peer group of the movers and shakers of the creative economy one’s goal needed to be aligned with big money if one didn’t already have big money. As I began to read the state economic development policies, it was transparent from the first page onward that economic development was the equivalency of gentrification and that if we continued in this school of thought that someday Maine would be a state for the wealthy only.
And so it is no surprise to come across a story in contemporary media titled: Richard Florida is Sorry
Over the last decade, Florida has been beating a retreat away from some of his early optimism. As early as 2005 he described the “externalities” of the rise of the creative classes — namely, they brought dizzying levels of income inequality into every city that they’ve inhabited. As his work evolved, the “creative economy” has ceased to be a goal and instead become an unstoppable force, something that governments need to be tame rather than encourage.
His latest book, The New Urban Crisis, represents the culmination of this long mea culpa. Though he stops just short of saying it, he all but admits that he was wrong. He argues that the creative classes have grabbed hold of many of the world’s great cities and choked them to death. As a result, the fifty largest metropolitan areas house just 7 percent of the world’s population but generate 40 percent of its growth. These “superstar” cities are becoming gated communities, their vibrancy replaced with deracinated streets full of Airbnbs and empty summer homes.
Meanwhile, drug addiction and gang violence have spread to the suburbs. “Much more than a crisis of cities,” he writes, “the New Urban Crisis is the central crisis of our time” — “a crisis of the suburbs, of urbanization itself and of contemporary capitalism writ large.”Richard Florida Is Sorry BY SAM WETHERELL
I began my journey of researching the Maine economic development policies during the Baldacci years, and so I became cognizant not only of the individual legislative acts but that many acts are designed in concert as a singular system, as Judge Lance noted in his ruling about Maine’s ballot access laws. It is not a single law by itself, it is how the single acts are designed to reinforce one another to an end in itself, frequently left unstated.
Given the repurposing of education embedded in the Industrial Partnerships Act, the fifty-million-dollar school is a plan acting in tandem with an agenda to change local ordinances to allow for smaller living accommodations on smaller plots of land, even rows of urban-styled townhouses have been mentioned. The plan to decrease the size of land plots and living spaces is justified as “workforce housing” a term coined by central management used in trading “quality jobs” for tax exemptions and subsidies for large corporations, deals that use the rest of the economy to capitalize the continuing growth of large corporations, enabling the large to become even larger, the haves to have more, the rich to get richer and the poor poorer. That is an established fact since it is common knowledge that the wealth divide has increased since the central management of state economies was established in the 1970s, following the enactment of this 1968 federal plan.
The big change is the workforce doesn’t want to work at corporate headquarters anymore. The workforce wants to work from home and home need not be in close proximity to headquarters. That is why a community so blessed by nature should be promoting the Peninsula as a great place for people working remotely and encouraging businesses in the home. Such a plan is for a smaller size population than a culture centered around large corporate developments requires.
The Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen is the creative economy for the grassroots and middle class
In developing the 501(3)(C) purpose for the Andersen Design Museum of American Designer-Craftsmen, it is desirable to incorporate affordable housing and economic development into a business in the home concept, which would permit designer-craftsmen projects to apply for financing to non-profit funding resources for all things related to businesses in a home as a project fiscally sponsored by the museum. At present, it is not worked out in language. When board members are included, they will be able to participate in developing the purpose of the non-profit,
An Alternative Vision for the Future of the Peninsula
The Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen is an alternate vision of a learning and economic development environment on the Peninsula. as a contender for the development of educational opportunities and the cultural future of the Peninsula. To have a chance on the Boothbay Peninsula, A support group needs to materialize and synergize quickly to develop a more high-profile awareness of the possibility that such a museum and designer-craftsmen culture offers as an alternative to the large corporate development that the (as yet unfunded) school will surely serve.
The museum does not need to be on the Peninsula, but if the Peninsula is to be considered as an option, as the original home of Andersen Design, it needs to come together now, which is the best thing to happen for any reason.
The scale of the dominant party’s targeted development, with the fifty-million dollar school at the core, has been identified by the state as threatening to our local water supplies and this was before the Gardens built a parking lot in the watershed and public-private partners financed the obstacle in the middle of our main throughway, creating construction upheaval that led the water department to dump excessive amounts of flocculants into Knickerbocker Lake, as we witnessed by the fact that it became impossible to mix a ceramic casting slip using the Knickerbocker Lake water supply.
Adams Pond and Knickerbocker Lake currently meet state water quality standards, but both are listed on Chapter 502 of the Maine Stormwater Law as “Most at Risk from New Development” and on Maine’s NPS Priority Watersheds List. Adams Pond and Knickerbocker Lake Water Shed Protection Plan published 2015
The threat to our water supplies is being dealt with by the same pie in the sky promises used to obscure the lack of funding for a fifty-million dollar school. The difference is that the funding of the school is not yet a part of the conversation, it is talked about as if funding the architects to design the school is the same as having funded the school. The solution for the water supply is identified with specificity as hooking up to the Bath, Brunswick, and Topsham water districts, but it is as realistically worked out as is the funding to pay for the fifty-million-dollar school.
Meanwhile, unprecedented climate change is occurring all around us.
A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand.
I am not an engineer or environmental scientist, but my common sense says that the plan to place a fifty-million dollar school on the peninsula requires a level of population expansion that the current water supply cannot accommodate.
The public needs to be a lot smarter than it was when it approved the four-million dollar obstruction in the middle of the main road connecting Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor.
What thought-form led an entire voting class to approve placing a tiny roundabout in the middle of a straight road that had only one one-way street intersection?
A messenger bearing money is the medium of such public foolishness. The winning rationale was that we are going to have to place an obstacle in the middle of our main way at some point, so we might as well do it now when we have a private developer to secure the DOT funding.
So let’s talk about money because the great concentration of redistributed wealth can flow in any direction. I have been studying the network through which wealth is concentrated from public-private, for-profit and non-profit sources for years. It is very difficult to change a deeply entrenched system but one can redirect it. Much of what goes on is ethically challenged under the original concepts of each interacting sector, but it is not illegal as the entire system is codified into our laws.
If You Can’t Beat Them Join Them!
One does not have to adhere to the ethics of the dominant system but the systemic channels carved out to concentrate and then redistribute wealth can be redirected to the benefit of a different demographic, especially in the consideration that the system has incorporated 501(3)(C) organizations into itself.
The same financial structures that the Martha’s Vineyard Island Trust developed to acquire property on the market quickly to purchase property for “workforce housing” can be used to advance more humanistic solutions for the homeless.
Municipalities need to accept social responsibility for their own homeless problems instead of dumping a problem that they are helping to create in Portland. Former bed and breakfast accommodations that once served seasonal visitors can be made over to accommodate the new class of seasonally homeless year-round residents- the seasonally homeless due to Airbnbs, using the same financial structures put into place by the Island Housing Trust, particularly its short-term loan fund that allows the Island Housing Trust to quickly snap up properties when they appear on the market. Turn a negative into a positive by making the temporary homeless environment enriching.
The same approach can be used as a more humanistic solution for the greater homeless problem resulting from the general gentrification of Maine. If each community accepted responsibility for their homeless problems by creating solutions within their communities, the problem would not be descending on Portland as a much larger mass.
The dominant political party on the Peninsula does not address the homeless problem. The demographics that it serves are delimited by “the workforces”. The people who fall through the cracks of the system do not exist in the eyes of the dominant political party of the pre-covid era, consistent with reports that Richard Florida policies led to gated communities.
Richard falls short on solutions
Richard Florida falls short when coming up with solutions to the problems that he helped to create because Richard Florida lives in a mental gated community of his own. He is not in touch with life outside that community.
When I approached the JECD, I assumed that Wendy Wolf knew what fiscal sponsorship is. Maybe she did and just didn’t want to say so. To acknowledge what fiscal sponsorship is, would have meant having to acknowledge what Andersen Design has achieved, but Andersen Design exists outside the demographics whose existence is recognized by the dominant political party on the Peninsula. If Wendy Wolf’s perspective were centered on benefitting the entire community, she might have recognized that Andersen Design has great potential in acquiring non-profit funding once we get our ducks in line. Watershed does not teach the science and art of ceramics but it has garnered six million dollars in funding. If Watershed can do that, Andersen Design, which teaches the art and science of ceramic making, should be able to raise similar amounts of funding.
When the board of Fractured Atlas rejected Andersen Design’s life-long purpose, it told us we could apply for a school or a museum. Since Fractured Atlas, if selecting a school, forbade us from teaching how to make our product, we chose the museum. However, museums have historically been educational institutions, particularly in the crafts and so museums are also an educational option for the Peninsula, and less challenging to the environmental issues confronting the Peninsula, in that they are not dependent upon a massive population expansion.
But Andersen Design wants to continue in its original purpose and so I realized that forming a 501(2)(C) Museum that would be the fiscal sponsor rather than the sponsored project makes sense. The key is in how the non-profit purpose is stated. The Museums' purpose will be designed to support businesses like ours, which can include anything from original food products to mechanical inventions and of course fine crafts for the home.
And our product is an economic development asset, one that is very enjoyable to make with a lot of creative leeways.
I envision a network of museums in many communities.
Andersen Design has recognition in our own field built up over the years since we were established on Southport Island in 1952. It is not madness to suppose that an Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen can generate a healthy amount of non-profit funding.
The dominant political party is an extension of the centrally managed state, acting on thought templates of the state, issued in the era of dinosaurs, and now long outgrown their relevance.
Fascism is meant to consolidate power by choking the throats of dissenters.William Owens -Time for the Tyranny of the Majority? - Tremr
Richard Florida doesn’t understand the problem because he hasn’t lived it. I have. I know that the system is designed to oppress economic development at the grassroots entrepreneurial level while using public money to capitalize private ownership of the means of production at the top. That is the imbalance that needs to be fixed.
The 501 (3)(C) needs three board members but could have many locations across the country. As a qualified fiscal sponsor, the Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen can sponsor as a project many other museums as well as designer craftsmen studios, equipment, projects, and shows.
Post in the comments if you have an interest.