Business as usual
Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission will likely receive a completed county-wide housing study by early 2023. On Aug. 16, commissioners authorized LCRPC to negotiate with Camion Associates of Saratoga Springs, New York for a study. Camion is an economic research organization with offices in Portland. In 2017, Camion produced a housing study for the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Joint Economic Development Committee. The Boothbay Register August 18
Why is a remote consulting firm doing a study of our local community?
Because LD 2003 provides for a grant for Municipal Planning Assistance Grant and Incentive Program Fund to hire consultants and staff for the purpose of administering the new State municipal ordinances.
Since 1968 when Maine constitutionally became a Home Rule state, the Maine Legislature has been fudging the language and overriding the intention of the Constitution in favor of an all-controlling corporate state. Such language includes the declaration that any corporation the Legislature charters by special acts of legislation prohibited by Article IV Part Third Section 14 of the Maine Constitution, serves an “essential government function” or chartering “municipal corporations serving as instruments of the state” as Section 14 makes an exception for municipal purposes. Now the State is trying to take overreaching control of municipal ordinances.
All things considered, there is an argument to be made, that the State is operating against the intent of the Constitution and If that argument is not made, the State of Maine will continue on down the totalitarian road. It’s time to reverse course, not dig in deeper as LD 2003 is doing, using the housing problem as a cover, with a solution that paints a feudalistic state with every Town having its own local housing concentration zones. That is not an exaggeration- just visual imagery of what is allowed under LD 2003, but allowed is not mandated so there is room to negotiate, and much rests on whom has negotiating power.
So far it looks like the State is granting that power to itself but although the State has claimed a significant amount of control over municipal ordinances we are still a Home Rule State operating as a public-private for-profit non-profit wealth concentration and redistribution system. The State has expanded to include all but as it morphs into new forms, other systems evolve as well. Through the non-profit circuit, other entities can play a significant not-to-be-denied role.
The intention of Home Rule is to provide for local control but the constitutional language uses the phrase “not prohibited by the State or general law” and so the new State law prohibits municipalities from writing ordinances prohibiting overcrowding or establishing character, while at the same time requiring municipalities to create “Priority Zones” where housing for local residents can be concentrated.
One could argue that the Constitution gives the State the authority to prohibit, en masse, across the state, as the state, but the requirement that municipalities create “Priority Zones” for concentrated housing is not a prohibition. It’s an order.
One can argue that the Constitution gives the municipality the power to alter and amend its charter on all matters, which are local and municipal in character, and so the State does not have the constitutional authority to require the priority zones or to allow affordable housing to be a 2.5 the density of the surrounding area resolving once and for all, issues that are local and municipal in character, and hotly debated in municipalities across the State before the Legislature stepped in asserting ubiquitous power over local authority.
Municipal Home Rule
Section 1. Power of municipalities to amend their charters. The inhabitants of any municipality shall have the power to alter and amend their charters on all matters, not prohibited by Constitution or general law, which are local and municipal in character. The Legislature shall prescribe the procedure by which the municipality may so act.
One could also argue that in the Home Rule Amendment, the declaration of the local authority is followed by a mandate of legislative responsibility that precludes the Legislature from acting on its own over matters local and municipal in character.
The local board members of the LLRC are Boothbay selectman, Chuck Cunningham, and Boothbay Harbor selectman, Michael Tomko. I do not know the voting record of the two selectmen but it would be something to know that might change the local culture if given its due importance.
The Edgecomb board member is Jack Sarmanian, who passed away last year.
The Town selectmen have a long history of closing down small entrepreneurs just at the point when the small business is experiencing new growth. Years ago when my parents wanted to expand by building a larger ceramic-making facility across the street from their home, the Town would not allow it. I was not around then so I imagined that it was because the Mill Pond is such an iconic view, which was our view from our kitchen window so Dad was not going to destroy it. Dad designed a building built into the hillside that would not obscure the view.
Today I am more inclined to believe the rejection of a building permit was due to the local cultural attitude toward the small entrepreneurs, similar to what has recently been directed against Lester Spear, and by extension all markets currently taking place on the Boothbay Common. A few years earlier the same cultural attitude stopped Stimson’s Boatyard from building a 50-foot steel schooner, requiring Stimson to limit his work on his premises to repairs. The small business person is treated as a nuisance that must be controlled rather than recognized for the creative contributions they make to the community and the economy. I do not anticipate that the small entrepreneur will be given consideration in the housing study, unless by the remote consultants, but local leaders have already demonstrated that they ignore what they don’t want to hear.
One is not aware of how prevalent the antagonism toward small entrepreneurs is until one comes up against it. I imagine the emotional response to such organized ill will caused my parents to locate their new facility in Portland, Maine but that decision was destined to become unsustainable. For the type of business, Andersen Design is, the creative studio needs to be in close proximity to the home. If the facility had been located across the street, I have no doubts that it would still be there and so would the beautiful historic Mannford-style homestead, and Andersen Design would still be designing and producing classic ceramic forms and original ceramic bodies and surfaces.
The decision to disallow the building in a location suitable to our business was made by the Town Selectmen. I imagine the mentality was the same then as it is now. I heard it was very controversial which would have meant that my parents faced the same local hostility as that which has recently been directed at Lester Spear. How does this mentality become and remain so entrenched in power? Even more recently it has been expressed in a vote by the Town selectmen to disallow charging an admission fee by event organizers using the Town Common. I cannot see a justifiable reason for this rule but it was spurred on by the loudly vocal local attacks against Lester Spear, claiming Spear was “making a profit” as if there is something very wrong with that, which was never explained but it was enough to actively enrage a faction of the local populous, or so they said but it felt more like it was something they could latch on to as an instrument of their own poorly recognized emotions.
The Lincoln County board member of the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission is Jamie Logan who is Tech Place Director at the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, a former navy base transformed into a public municipal corporation serving as a public instrument of the State,
Jamie Logan was once head of the Boothbay Region Chamber of Commerce. She was friendly and impenetrable in the way of those in public relations. She moved on to work for State economic development under Paul Lepage. One day she approached me in Hannaford about a post I had written about paragraphs of the Town Report that were word for word identical to paragraphs found in The Industrial Partnerships Act. She was angry and denied that there was any relationship between the two. It felt like she felt that I should be subject to her authority as if all of Maine is a corporation and we are all subject to its hierarchal order. If the corporate State does not control you, you do not exist, but there I was and she did not control me, but she ought to. Such was the visceral feel of the unfriendly encounter.
Why would Ms. Logan be so out of sorts over a story that points out that a municipal ordinance is copied word for word from a State Act? It speaks like an admission that something is going on that isn’t right, scoring a point for the narrative that the contemporary municipalities are just subdivisions of the State and not locally governed.
The identical passages I observed in my post concern moving businesses in the home to industrial zones:
Action B.2-4. Explore creating a small business assistance program that would help growing businesses, including home businesses and home occupations, with financing and with locating in appropriate commercial/industrial districts when appropriate.
Appropriate industrial zones? Like the 200-bed-per-room homeless shelter located in an industrial “opportunity zone” in Portland Maine? Is this a business in a home or is it home in a business? What about Airbnbs? Are they businesses in a home or residential homes as a business? Per the above directive, Airbnbs as businesses in a home should be relocated to appropriate industrial zones, rather than the other way around - relocating local residents to concentrated housing zones. The State’s idea of an appropriate working environment is tone-deaf to the rising call for work-life balance that is attributed to remote working, making for a happier and healthier workforce, as well as reducing carbon emissions by reducing daily driving.
Based on the LCRPC board members from my local community, there is reason to believe that the values of those who prefer working at home will not be given consideration in the housing study unless Camoin Associates does so. The Camoin Boothbay Regional Plan was fairly well considered so there is hope that the consulting group will take the remote working movement into consideration but is not a replacement for genuine community involvement. I have been wondering who the new people are that have been moving into our region. Where do they stand on many of the important issues of today? I would be surprised if a remote consulting firm is able to tell us. The Ersi data compilation program that Camoin used for the Town Plan has a way to input individualized data. Will Camoin Associates do that? Can they do it better than a local initiative? Will they ask the right question? Why are local communities being left out of this process? Can we form our own organization to do so?
Jamie Logan is the director of Tech Place. The website describes Tech Place as supporting the small business development needs of early-stage companies in a collaborative environment in the heart of Maine’s midcoast region. TechPlace gives entrepreneurs a place to network with other innovators, research and develop ideas, build prototypes, test products, assemble, grow, learn, and become successful manufacturing and technology companies.
Tech Place is a commune-style industrial park. This story is about its annual awards but it does not provide in-depth information as it describes Tech Place as working with small businesses (less than 10 employees), and large businesses (greater than 10 employees). It is an unusual way of identifying small and large businesses since “over ten employees can mean anything except “less than ten employees”. In general reading I have found small businesses identified as “up to 100 employees”, and businesses of less than ten employees are micro-business. I think the less than ten employees size is a healthy size, very much needed in the mix. The larger a business becomes the more hierarchical it becomes and the hierarchical psychological subtext seeps into the rest of society generating unhealthy community relationships.
I have wondered in the past why the State is purchasing industrial equipment. Every industry has its own specific equipment so why not just sponsor apprenticeship programs to make on-the-job training more affordable? Why a commune with shared facilities equipment and administrative staff? It gets into issues of ownership, as well as intellectual ownership and of course control.
Tech Places are sometimes administered by the Maine Technology Institute, which is closely tied to the University of Maine, which has a for-profit Advanced Manufacturing Center that works with student labor. The Tech Places statute states that Tech places must have a relationship with the university system.
5. Relationship with academic institution. A technology center shall establish a relationship with at least one academic institution in this State. The Department of Economic and Community Development shall establish guidelines for such a relationship and determine whether a technology center has met the requirements of this subsection. source
By connecting the Tech Centers to the University system, does the statement of GOVERNANCE AND LEGAL AFFAIRS, Section 209 Intellectual Property, found at the core of the university system, the University of Maine, apply?
At the core of the university system is The University of Maine which claims intellectual property rights to any work created using the publicly funded facilities “more than incidentally”, whether the work is authored by a paid employee, student, or other users, the intellectual property rights belong to the University, The recently rewritten terms are better defined and states that sometimes the intellectual property rights belong to the developer but the policy still claims that the University can claim the rights to work that uses Significant Use of University Resources in projects that are not University run projects, work done by an independent developer using the publicly funded university facilities, in which the University has no input to authorship but claims that ownership of the facilities establishes intellectual property ownership. Ever hear of communism?
The State, like private corporations, is trying to establish conditions in which the individual will use his or her innovative capacity to create intellectual property owned by the corporation. This sought-after identification of the self with the organization is called psychological ownership and has risen in corporate culture alongside the reality that earning a working living no longer includes home ownership. In the age of robots and desk-top 3D printing, intellectual property rights are the thing to own.
In a free enterprise system, the University can charge a fee for the use of facilities, but it cannot claim ownership of another person’s intellectual property rights merely because the University controls or owns the facilities.
The best way for budding developers to protect their intellectual property is by having multiple facility options and preferably owning their own facility, which is the underlying philosophy of my own projects sponsored on The Field.
The terms of Tech Places are left to be negotiated by the Department of Economic Development, which allows for flexibility that my project also encourages, but the public does not have access to what goes on behind those closed doors of the publicly funded State corporation.
Imagine if you are a talented developer of meager means and need a place to test out your ideas. The only place available is governed by a large publicly funded entity with Section 209 Intellectual Property in place, You need a place to work out your prototypes but you are aware that if the large organization gets wind of your project and the amount of time that you use the publicly funded resources, that they can claim ownership of the product of your intellectual work, which is your primary asset. Your intellectual property is your means of creating a passive income needed in today’s world to afford real estate ownership of a home or small business. So you have to sneak around, or maybe cut back your hours which disrupts momentum and slows down your progress. If you had other options you could spread the hours around or maybe even get your own space. Those options are is what the Museum of American Designer Craftsmen can provide. (the Museum is seeking board members to get it going).
My projects share industrial networking in common with the ambition of the Corporate State. Both projects seek to network creative producers into a supportive community, but there is a large philosophical difference, especially in relation to ownership.
Because our culture is practically governed by a public-private for-profit non-profit wealth concentration and redistribution network, it has many handles. The State network is not the only network through which one can connect to resources. There must be alternatives.
Other Networks Are Essential
The Field is the most supportive network I have ever been a part of it. Resources that appear by email and social media are like having a grant manager allowing me to concentrate on formulating the concept.
I am developing a concept for a scholarly research crafts grant, which could be research related to creating original glazes and bodies, as Andersen Design has done since 1952, but that requires physical space, and so I am formulating a research thesis related to the contemporary state of the field which would inform both my projects listed on The Field, a ceramic research facility and a Museum of American Designer Craftsmen.
I received a report about a leadership council that The Center For Craft, sponsored last summer. The movement is not solely focused in the craft-making process but how craft-makers interact with the world at large:
Change needs advocacy beyond the imagined bounds [of craft]. Without it, aren’t we just going to be
talking to ourselves again?
—Advisor and Participant Cindi Strauss
Municipal ordinances must allow craft-makers to exist in appropriate locations and to organize our work-life balance as it was once done before the Industrial Revolution decided everyone had to work at company headquarters.
Dr. Jono A. Anzalone was a presenter. This is his profile on the University of Maine, but the organization that he represents in the Craft Council Leadership program is the Executive Director of the Climate Initiative, a nonpartisan organization in Kennebunk, Maine. It is also called Youth for Climate Action, as it is primarily a young people’s group.
This grant concept applies to both projects listed on The Field, a ceramic research facility, and a Museum of American Designer Craftsmen. You can make a tax-deductible donation to both missions on The Field. When you support my work that way, you are also supporting The Field, a very worthy cause!