The Logic of Applying for A Grant During an Alien Development Invasion
Data Collaboration Networking Opens the Door for Decentralized Regionalism
Yesterday I completed the grant applications that I was working on for months. These are my thoughts which I share so that others might gain insight into the process of applying for a grant. I am figuring it out as I go and I am at the beginning of the journey so my success status is unknown.
As I am composing this post I watched my first Ersi seminar about collaborative data networking, Building a Better Future with Our Integrated Geospatial Infrastructure, which met all my expectations and I could see that any individual or group can collect data and make it available for general use online to other groups using the program. The Ersi data compilation software is used by governments. Through collaborative data-networking, one does not have to be selected by the State or our local government to participate in a Ten Year Plan, one just has to create a data hub that is available to the public. Data networking is decentrentralized collaboration. The Ersi data collaboration software allows individuals to contribute whereas Maine’s Ten-Year Plan commission does not but the commission is likely to use the Ersi data collaboration software on equal terms with all other contributors. In a Home Rule State, that’s the way it should be.
This grant process was much more difficult than submitting the first-level application to the John Templeton Foundation for a foundational level grant, that covers an overall concept with funding that is enough to hire others to put the concept into motion.
The Center for Crafts grant is a tiny step, stage one.
In the budget narrative, I described a bare-bones budget, enough to cover what I can do on my own, leading to the next level of development involving a team. I am grateful for the fact that the budget covered only the bare bones because I have no reason to be confident that I can network locally. When it came to finding references, I did not receive a local response. However, building this project might help to identify where my support network is.
The Center for Crafts application was very difficult to work on because I had to pinpoint the starting point of the foundational goal from a bare-bones budget perspective. I knew if the idea is to create a network of ceramic slip-casting studios, I need a method for developing a network that emerges locally.
I identified the deliverables as establishing a database of small makers and grassroots entrepreneurs using Ersi data compilation software and producing a brochure that mimics in style the brochures produced by the public-private government, but the narrative would be quite different, telling of the historical role of the designer craftsmen throughout history, drawing upon a contemporary debate among archeologists over whether traveling craftsmen of the bronze age were free agents or employees of a class of wealthy elites, tracing the history of feudalism, the pre-Industrial Revolution cottage industries, and the suburbs as a response to Industrial Revolution overcrowding, and the corporate state that emerged in the seventies to manage the economy centrally. It will conclude with a projection of where we are going and how the future might alternately evolve through decentralized regionalism.
Once, it felt like there was a local community of crafters and small entrepreneurs on the peninsula but today it feels like everyone is on their own in the midst of the very organized new developers' cult, with a penchant for very bad manners, extending outward from their clubhouse at the country club and bulldozing over everything in their path.
The culture war happening on this Peninsula is centered on the Working Waterfront Park, The war is led by Paul Coulombe proxies, the Doyle’s, armed with persistent lawsuits, letters to the editor, a website, and banner ads. On the Doyle’s side proponents sound like they are delivering talking points from a pre-planned script. One of the oft-repeated talking points, directed at the pre-existing community is “Show (your new leaders) some respect!”
Today I said in the Register comments that the new developers of Clifford Park should show the pre-existing community respect, wondering if the designers of the new “park” are aware of how many land trust parks exist on the peninsula, all with dirt parking lots and walkways. I have never before seen a park with asphalt walkways except behind the children’s playground which is incautiously situated along the side of the road, functioning as a screen behind which Clifford Park is heavily laden with asphalt. What is that all about? Compare this with Barrett’s Park which has a dirt driveway, about the same size as the recently installed asphalt driveway at Cliffords Park, and a long unpaved walk down a grassy natural hillside to reach the recreational areas.
It’s fortunate that as I was preparing to submit my application, the deadline was extended over the weekend because after I submitted the first grant on the original deadline, another grant opened up. I had no idea that this was about to happen. The second grant is a scholarly grant and for a larger amount by 50%. If I were to be awarded both Center for Crafts grants it would equal the amount of the grants that the State is distributing to non-profit groups working under its tutelage to create a Ten-Year Plan for Maine. Considering the priority zones for concentrated housing mandated in every municipality by LD 2003, the State sounds like it is planning dystopia. Mitigating plans are needed to intercept, adapt and reinvent the State’s grid. Despite the States massive grab of municipal authority, Maine is still a constitutional Home Rule State. There may be some communities in Maine willing to work with that concept and the Ersi Data collaborator can help to locate them, where ever they are. Creating a data hub is like putting a message in a bottle! Let it float on the sea and be found.
For the scholarly grant, I applied for foundational support for this newsletter, particularly the section, History and Contemporary World of Hand Made Making, currently a blank slate. The research that is needed to produce the brochure is anticipated to result in a much greater amount of information than suits a brochure format. Streaming it into the newsletter over eighteen months maintains a constantly developing focus, much like what the cabal is doing in keeping the eighty million dollar school in the Boothbay Register Spotlight for two years. I have to convince the academic world that a newsletter is a viable way to deliver scholarly research if one wants to reach the general public.
In answer to a question about other scholars working in the same area, I quoted Dr. Peter Critchley from a paper titled LEWIS MUMFORD AND THE SEARCH FOR THE HARMONIOUS CITY THE ARCHITECTONICS OF AN ECOLOGICAL REGIONALISM, who had this to say about Lewis Mumford:
“Mumford’s transdisciplinary works were written outside of the academic world and outside of academic specialism. Mumford’s writings were designed to inspire a change of mind and practices amongst the people, earning Mumford the title of ‘public intellectual’, denoting a thinker and writer who addresses a general but intelligent audience about key questions and issues of contemporary concern”.
At the end of the application, there was an opportunity to submit articles and so I included a PDF of Luddites, Guilds, and Societies of Correspondence, which tells of the Society of Correspondence started by small entrepreneurs in eighteenth-century London which was a snail-mail newsletter paid subscription, a forerunner to today’s online newsletters.
In the first month of its existence the society debated for five nights in succession the question-"Have we, who are Tradesmen, Shopkeepers, and Mechanics, any right to obtain a Parliamentary Reform?" -turning it over "in every point of view in which we were capable of presenting the subject to our minds". They decided that they had. The Making of the English Working Class E. P. Thompson 1963 (emphasis by Mackenzie Andersen)
That resonates across centuries with my motivation for getting this project going, now, as a response to LD 2003 and the State’s Ten-Year Plan which looks like the State centrally guiding the municipalities on writing their ordinances, stepping way over its boundaries in a home rule state.
We can’t stop the housing concentration camps - I mean priority zones, short of a lawsuit that successfully challenges the constitutionality of LD 2003, so we need alternatives to the housing zones that are accessible to the same demographic. Creative talent is a way to develop opportunities but overcrowded housing allows little creative space to do so, forcing the creator into public spaces owned by institutions that claim that owning the facilities extends to the intellectual property rights of creators using the facilities. How to keep the poor poor and the rich rich. That’s what it’s all about! Opportunity zones- for people with individualized creative spaces owned by the creator can be an “opportunity bonus” for the residents!
After watching the Ersi presentation, I imagined that one could collect data from people to find out what kind of creative spaces they need for self-employment and use that data to guide the creation of a different type of “priority zone”, that is not overcrowded and accommodates the types of spaces that the data identifies as needed. The best-case scenario would be individualized homes such as the way it was when I was growing up in Maine. Non-profit organizations such as the conceptual Andersen Design Museum of American Designer-Craftsmen and The Field can provide Model A fiscal sponsorship enabling non-profit funding to go directly to the individual homeowner rather than the non-profit corporation as the owner of the housing.
Non-profit owners of low-income or affordable housing accumulate millions of dollars in real estate assets on which they pay no property taxes. If individual homes and working spaces are funded by Model A fiscal sponsorship, the owner is not a non-profit and pays property taxes, something for municipalities to consider as they give preference and funding to organizations like the Boothbay Region Development Corporation to develop state-mandated priority zones.
The State on the other hand is tying the mandate to the distribution of funds to the municipalities. It is required by the Maine Constitution that if the state mandates expenditures over the municipalities it has to fund at least 90% of the costs. If the zones are developed by non-profit corporate owners of single-family homes, the Town is signing up for a large development that will be mostly property-tax exempt. it makes little sense for the State to finance 90% of the costs of its mandate and then for the municipality to enter into a deal with a non-profit developer for the mandated housing zone on which the Town will not collect property taxes. The 90% cost is just a one-time deal but tax-exempt property taxes are forever!
Erin Cooperrider, VP and primary spokesperson for the Boothbay Region Development Corporation was one of the three Commissioners who wrote the framework for LD 2003 and who decided not to include short-term rentals in the study.
The State of Maine collects a 9% sales tax on short-term bookings and services.
Airbnb bookings in rural Maine surge to $95M in 2021. 9% sales tax on bookings alone, not including services, is 8.55 million. The budget in the fiscal note for LD 2003 covering the costs of mandating housing priority zones is $4,579,762 in 2023, and by then Airbnb bookings will have increased even more if the trend continues, so its a good deal for the State, if not for the quality of life for Maine residents who are being relocated to smaller and smaller spaces.
There are also additional costs to the Town, costs that property taxes are supposed to cover. The Boothbay Region Development Corporation is planning a 36 acre housing zone at 3.5 the density of the surrounding area, which will be primarily rental housing owned by the tax-exempt corporation. Concentrated housing means a concentrated population using concentrated services. A judge in Georgia recently came down on a corporate welfare deal citing that the state did not account for the costs of the town services as one of the reasons.
“Mr. Silvio further testified that there were no studies done to determine what the cost of maintenance of county improvements would be if the Project is constructed. For instance, no study was done to determine addition EMS costs, school expenses, educational buildings and facilities or teachers, or infrastructure costs. No determination was made of additional county costs for the construction of the project.” Boondoggle 5 Ways a Georgia Judge Exposed the Corporate Subsidy Machine
The Constitution says that when the State mandates a requirement on the municipalities that generate a cost, the state has to cover 90 % of the cost but the LD 2003’s fiscal note treats it as a one-time cost. If non-profit corporations own most of the housing development it leaves an ongoing cost to pay for the services that property taxes are supposed to cover. If it is a for-profit public corporation, it would owe property taxes as long as the municipality doesn’t give the developers a property tax exemption, but horror stories about public corporations as landlords of single-family homes are abundant across the nation.
Do we need that much housing or is the quantity of housing due to developers’ ambition to increase the population of this peninsula? It’s a cultural and environmental issue. The faction that is pushing aggressive development plans on the Peninsula has shown open disregard for environmental concerns and appears oblivious to our Peninsula’s fragile water supplies. Why do we need a housing zone that is at an even greater density than what is suggested in LD 2003 (2.5 the surrounding area)? Erin Cooperider told the Town of Rockport that the density was higher than the people wanted for “economic reasons! That is to say, the “density bonus”.
It’s not just a population change but a planned cultural change like the cultivated landscape that is replacing our natural landscape, on a peninsula surrounded by rising seas, a threat that the developers scorn.
The State is implementing a Municipal Housing Development Permit Review Board program, controlled by the State, a Municipal Land Use and Zoning Ordinances Review Incentive Program controlled by the State, a Municipal Planning Assistance Grant and Incentive Program Fund program controlled by the State, $3,000,000 for grants to municipalities to review municipal land use and zoning ordinance. (Mandate funding) distributed by the State and $1,294,680 to assist municipalities in the development and implementation of zoning and land use ordinances. (Mandate funding) distributed by the State. You can read about it here.
LD 2003 prohibits municipalities from prohibiting overcrowding but does not mandate that priority zones must be overcrowded, so it’s a matter of which developers get in the game first. Erin Cooperrider, VP and primary spokesperson of the Boothbay Region Development Corporation had insider knowledge because she helped to write the framework for LD 2003. That put Cooperrider and the Boothbay Region Development Corporation first out of the gate. Cooperrider is also a principal of the New Heights Group, which is developing a priority zone in Rockport, Maine. LD 2003 mandates priority zones in every municipality. One or two groups can’t do them all, - or can they? How would that look? An entire state is developed by one or two developers?
When I got to the end of the scholarly grant, there was another request for references that were more specific. One required a scholar in my field with whom my project is not affiliated. The other required someone from an institution with which my project is affiliated.
When I read that my first reaction was that I could not proceed with the application but then I got creative. How would someone be affiliated with my project? A subscriber!
There is an aspect within the totality of human consciousness that is called intuition. It appears as choices made quite arbitrarily for no particular reason but after the fact, the choice appears pragmatic.
One day a new subscriber signed up for my newsletter with an unusual name. Uncharacteristically and for no apparent reason, I decided to look this person up. I found only one reference on LinkedIn who is a man employed by the US Congressional Committee on economic development. I cannot be 100 % sure that my subscriber is the same person who works with the congressional committee, but it seemed likely and if I did not enter any name and institution I would not be able to proceed with the application.
And so I entered this person as a reference and said his affiliation is as a subscriber. In the personal message, I explained that I am not 100 percent certain that he is the person who works for the US Congress congressional committee on economic development-to be perfectly clear.
For the scholar, I entered the head of the Boothbay Historical Society. I was looking for Barbara Rumsey who I know but her email was hard to find.
There are no notifications that either responded. I do not know how important the references are in the decision-making process The requirement has the optics of a gatekeeper to an insiders club, so common in the world of academics, and elsewhere.
On the other hand, before I began the application I read the craft council report called Craft Can. What is expressed there is not the gatekeeper mentality. The emphasis is on classes of people who are underrepresented. I enjoyed reading the Craft Can report because the participants spoke directly to the point of what they had to say, with no run-around-the-bush political rhetoric and obfuscating.
Every organization and many individuals send mixed messages, so I kept the point of view expressed in that report in mind as I filled out the application because it is in sync with where I am coming from.
Also published on Medium’s Data-Driven Fiction