There is no update in the Boothbay Register about the planning board meeting with the Department of Environmental Protection.
The story disappeared from the Register’s news and talk listings soon after I published my story and has remained buried ever since, begging the question “Who is pulling the strings?”
In the past, I searched for information about how the Planning Board is selected on the Town website but the information was nowhere to be found.
Today I tried a different path. In The Maine Municipal Manual for Local Planning Boards, I learned that the laws that govern planning boards depend on when the planning board was created. I typed “When was Boothbay Planning Board established?” in the Google Search Board- and VOILA!
The rules governing the planning board are hidden in a coded link address: https://ecode360.com/8626851
But I am mistaken! This is the Planning Board for Boothbay Harbor, not Boothbay. and so I tried https://ecode360.com, hoping to find a list of towns but the address leads to a special login for “the diverse information needs of attorneys, planners, engineers, builders, and other professionals”.
If one is not a municipal employee one can purchase access as a professional for a small fee of$195.00.
ecode360 appears to be a depository of legislative and municipal codes across the country but the web information does not tell us what kind of organization is behind it, is it public or private?
It raises the question why is there a charge for access to public information? There is no address listed for this service. It is not identified as either a government or private service. There is no About Us, no people with names and addresses associated with this data depository. What is it? It appears to be a public-private whatever.
Laws and codes should be available to the general public without charge. Boothbay Harbor is using this service but one cannot find the information it displays by searching the Town website, and yet it is the kind of information that ought to be available through the Town website, and not require a special search to find it.
This is the new world. Our relationships to the external world interface with apps. It gets worse than this as Cory Doctorow writes in Revenge of the Chickenized Reverse-Centaurs, describing the apps that interface companies and contract workers. In the advanced age of public-private relationships, the public is no longer entitled to know. Who funded the architect’s designs for the fifty-million dollar school? Don’t ask! Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Access-for-sale is the character of a private club. It’s not about an essential need for privacy as anyone willing or able to pay 195.00 for access and can claim status as a professional can get in - it’s ensuring that only those of a certain means can be in the know.
The public’s right to information about government activities lies at the heart of a democratic government. The Maine Freedom of Access Act (“FOAA”) grants the people of this state a broad right of access to public records while protecting legitimate governmental interests and the privacy rights of individual citizens
I cannot find a page governing the planning board on the Town of Boothbay website but the Maine Municipal Manual says “In order to determine whether a board was created legally, it is important to know when it was created and how the law read at that time.”.
It is safe to assume that Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor’s planning boards were created at around the same time. Based on that assumption, I am taking the laws governing Boothbay Harbor Planning Boards as also applying to Boothbay Planning Boards.
[Amended 5-6-2002 by ATM Art. 20]
A. Pursuant to M.R.S.A. Constitution, Article VIII, and 30-A M.R.S.A. § 3001, the Town of Boothbay Harbor hereby establishes the Town of Boothbay Harbor Planning Board.
§ 44-2Appointment, membership and terms.
A. Board members shall be appointed by the Selectmen and sworn by the Clerk or other person authorized to administer oaths.
It is important to understand what 30-A M.R.S.A. § 3001 establishes, so here it is:
§3001. Ordinance power
Any municipality, by the adoption, amendment or repeal of ordinances or bylaws, may exercise any power or function which the Legislature has power to confer upon it, which is not denied either expressly or by clear implication, and exercise any power or function granted to the municipality by the Constitution of Maine, general law or charter. [PL 1987, c. 737, Pt. A, §2 (NEW); PL 1987, c. 737, Pt. C, §106 (NEW); PL 1989, c. 6 (AMD); PL 1989, c. 9, §2 (AMD); PL 1989, c. 104, Pt. C, §§8, 10 (AMD).]
1. Liberal construction. This section, being necessary for the welfare of the municipalities and their inhabitants, shall be liberally construed to effect its purposes.
2. Presumption of authority. There is a rebuttable presumption that any ordinance enacted under this section is a valid exercise of a municipality's home rule authority.
3. Standard of preemption. The Legislature shall not be held to have implicitly denied any power granted to municipalities under this section unless the municipal ordinance in question would frustrate the purpose of any state law.
Beyond the fact that the Selectmen appoint the members of the board, there is no further information about how a person is appointed to the planning board. There is no online application form, implying that one has to be a member of the board's circle to be considered.
“Peer group” is a phrase used by Wendy Wolf, head of the Joint Economic Development Council of Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor at the time I approached the council for support in establishing the Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen, at the time as a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas.
Ms. Wolf informed me that I was not of the peer group that was entitled to interact with the JECD. The high tax rate we were paying on our property was six times the rate for the structure that replaced it, as reported on Zillow, but that didn’t buy representation. The JECD was a public-private whatever. Don’t expect to know the laws that govern it.
It matters who is on the planning board and how they got to be there because the planning board has an influence on the writing of the Town ordinances.
One day, a neighbor came by to introduce himself but only to let me know that he was hiring a surveyor to establish the boundaries of land ownership because of new neighbors on both sides. I pointed to the stone wall and said I assumed it to be the boundary, which he brushed off but after the surveyor was done, the stonewall was established as the boundary. Having been raised in the region I knew using stone walls to establish property boundaries is a long generational practice.
The gentleman said the new neighbor on the other side is a silkscreen artist and I remarked that I hope that he doesn’t expect to be able to have a gallery in the home, being aware of the dystopian town ordinances I had encountered when I attempted to request a Doing Business As form at the Town Office. As it turned out my neighbor is partly responsible for instituting ordinances suppressing the growth of businesses in a home. He told me about his own corporate career in which he traveled around the world, as he was telling me about the oppressive ordinances designed to stop the growth of any future businesses similar to Andersen Design. My mother bought merchandise at the New York Gift Show and sold it in our ceramics gallery and received awards for doing so. My neighbor assured me that the silkscreen artist could have a gallery as long as he only showed his own work and nothing else. Why? What kind of madness is that? He told me that a business in a home could have employees as long as they were limited to a tiny staff, I think it was three people. This restriction would ensure the business could not grow in its original location, perhaps trying to force it to relocate to the industrial park, suitable or not. None of what he described made any sense, and I asked why and was given the usual reason, there might be too many cars parked in the small driveway. It’s not a big box asphalt parking lot as at the Botanical Gardens which has a gift store! It was a clear message that the Boothbay planning board wants to discourage the development and location of a working-class entrepreneurial class in the region. Does he know who he is talking to? Andersen Design is the model for what the Boothbay planning board wants to prevent.
After many months of trying to find board members by word of mouth, I am finally talking with someone who may become a working relationship. He is qualified to run a production and has a sister who may be interested in serving on the board and the family owns some Andersen pieces. This is my “peer group”- working people. I am hopeful that this will lead to actually realizing the Museum and subsequently to re-establishing the Andersen Production.
The fiscal sponsor function of the museum can be realized before other functions because fiscal sponsorship does not require the large space that presenting shows require. The brother and sister are located in other Maine Towns. I think it is an exciting project to find the right space. The people who bring the museum into being will have input on where the museum will be located. The decision should take into consideration the treatment in the town ordinances toward working-class entrepreneurs, just as large corporations make deals with municipalities, an alternate culture enterprise needs to be sure that the town will be an accommodating environment for growth. I believe that large cultural forces are transforming in such a way that is very advantageous to hand-crafted businesses that can be attached to a home or done in a small to medium-sized studio. No interfacing with apps! Just people to people using all their nature-given senses!
A Museum functioning as a Model A fiscal sponsor can make the financing of small entrepreneurial endeavors of many types possible. In the right community, it can create a culture of economic growth attracting the ex-patriots of the corporate culture seeking to create a different world. Let’s do it! Let it Roll! Let It Be! It is a brand new day!
Take 10% off at Andersen Design with code OC6ZK4IHZCEZ-good thru 27th