Vote NO! On Question 1 on November 7!
Preserve the Unique Reality of our rural peninsula and its midcentury school, a reminder of an era when the distribution of wealth took the form of a bell curve!
As we approach November 5 there are many letters in the Boothbay Register, for or against two referendum votes that represent a dual expansion of power wielded by the State.
One is for the takeover by the state of privately owned utility companies. This is a reoccurring referendum. Proponents seem determined that if they repeat it often enough, the odds are that they will eventually win the vote. The only good that can come out of such a win, in my opinion, is that the private utilities will then challenge the state’s authority to take private companies by eminent domain and to charter a corporation by special act of legislation for which object can clearly be attained another way- in the private sector.
Maine Constitution
Article IV. Part Third. Legislative Power.
Section 14. Corporations, formed under general laws. Corporations shall be formed under general laws, and shall not be created by special Acts of the Legislature, except for municipal purposes, and in cases where the objects of the corporation cannot otherwise be attained; and, however formed, they shall forever be subject to the general laws of the State.
That would be interesting, expensive, and hardly the best method of deconstructing the corporate state of Maine, potentially the larger result once a corporation that the legislature has chartered by a special act of legislation is struck down via a constitutional challenge in the court.
This post is about the other referendum for the 89-million-dollar school system, which has now been divided into a two-part question, but both parts can be financed by conditional gifts, which is reason enough to vote them both down.
I prefer to respond to the letters in the comment section. I usually do not share the comments online but we are now in the most intense moment of debate and I decided to do so, only to discover that code is embedded in Boothbay Register to block the sharing of comments:
That’‘s a jolly good reason to share my comment in a newsletter post!
This is the comment to the Letter by Loise Cohen titled" Do what’s right for our students"
The title says “Do What’s Right For Our Students” and then appeals to the taxpayers about the cost of the project as if what is right for our students is spending money on demolishing a building from one era and replacing it with a building of another era. Is that a fact? There is nothing else to be considered in what is best for our students than the cost to taxpayers. Is that a fact?
While nobody wants higher taxes it is time to face up to some of the facts—an undeniable fact is that the physical condition of the high school is deplorable
This is what the proponents of demolishing the current school keep telling us. But without going into the specifics, it’s just words, not facts. Tell us what needs repairing, as a matter of fact, then let us decide what the midcentury building is worth in comparison to what the new building represents, both on their own merit, cost aside. By making it all about money, other considerations are left out of the conversation, such as a comparison between two very different styles of architecture and what those styles represent. Architecture has a voice of its own and that voice speaks volumes and permanently affects the daily lives of the inhabitants for generations.
You suggest deducting the cost of repairs from the cost of a new building to make the cost of the new building appear less expensive, and then build an argument that investing a large sum of money in a new building equates with better education.
Then we are told that repairing the building will cost us money long into the future but spending extra money now on demolishing the building and replacing it with another will save us on future repairs. Is that a fact? How do you account for the facts that unfold in the future? We know we will spend more money now if the demolishing developers get their way. That’s a fact. We do not know what maintenance and repair of the replacement building will cost us in the future so that is not a fact. We have not even been given an assessment of the ongoing cost of maintaining the glass windows of the glass tower, and not to mention we know for a fact that we will be paying for the cost of the new building long into the future.
But they tell us, if the building is approved, donations will kick in lowering the cost, But those donations come with conditions since our boards elected to be governed by Title 20a section 1705 which authorizes the authority to accept conditional gifts. That is. gifts with strings attached and the general public will be left out of the negotiating loop.
Being governed by Title 20A (education) conditional gifts extends to being governed by Title 30 §5654. Conditional gifts (municipalities and regions), There are no conditions on the conditions the donor can make but the public must honor the conditions in perpetuity and pay the cost of maintaining those conditions which are hidden future costs.
I submit that when the community invests a lot of money in a particular idea of “upgrading”, it generally follows that property maintenance becomes more important than the people using the property. Is that what is best for the students?
The architecture targeted for demolition speaks the language of a time when the greatest amount of wealth was distributed among the greatest number of people. Social balance is reflected in its unassuming design. Today we have lost that social balance and are back in a time of a great divide between the ownership class and the working classes. The legislature has enacted many laws that authorize the use of our public educational system as workforce training as approved by the state.
The plan that the demolishing developers have for our peninsula looks a lot like a Chinese Ghost city where the workers live in densely packed spaces and institutional buildings, the centerpiece of the community, are spacious, expensive, and glamorous, at least by what can be seen from the outside, which is all that is usually shown. This community model has earned the nickname of ghost city because there are many such cities built by the Chinese government that are practically empty of inhabitants.
The dominant feature of the new design is the glass tower, commonplace in urban environments and symbolic of power and wealth. We are even told that the new school will be “the front porch of our community”, as we are presented with images dominated by the glass tower. I have not seen a single image of the classrooms, and yet we are told that the building is about education and that the glass tower, which was designed taller than our ordinances allow, is educational.
Yes- agreed- architecture is educational as it conditions our environment and that applies as much to the building targeted for demolition as the one that is designed to replace it.
The unassuming but well-designed architectural style of the 1950s allows for people to take center stage, reflective of a time when the middle class was the largest class. Why should we demolish such a building that is a living reminder of a better time? Is it what is good for our students to erase all evidence that this unique era ever occurred? We should repair and preserve the midcentury school as a cultural reminder of that era. That is its educational value.
You say a big number of our non-resident friends will shoulder a very large percentage of the total cost through their local real estate taxes.
Translation: Owners of short-term rentals will pay the cost, but short-term rentals do not send students to local schools. In not adressing short-term rental as the primary cause of the housing shortage, the state replaced the real cause with “underproduction of housing” so that the state could partner with large developers and equity investors to build densely packed housing units for the residents displaced by the short-term rental industry conforming to the template of Chinese ghost cities.
You ask “And what better incentive to prospective home buyers than to have a safe, secure, up-to-date school for their children?
Answer: Laws regulating short-term rentals, and zoning ordinances supplemented with innovative spatial living design that accommodates the new remote worker’s movement.
Then you tell us “The fact is, that for many practical reasons, other towns don’t want to link with Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor for a regional school”. How did you arrive at this fact?
By not verifying statements claimed to be facts, you are saying the public should accept unverified information as factual. Based on what? You talk about what is best for our students as if an expensive building in and of itself will create a better education as you discourage the questioning of unverified statements of facts. What would be good for our students in this day and age would be to teach them a disciplined method of distinguishing fact from fiction as our entire society seems to have lost its grounding in what is a real fact. Teaching such a skill does not depend on investing in a large gentrification project that uses our public school system as its instrument.
The regional school should be for the state’s workforce training and in fairness it should be a community college but the state isn’t fair. The state serves its own corporate interests and it wants our public schools for its workforce training, which is inherently unfair to the vast diversity that resides in the private sector. But the state has the power of writing our laws and the boards just handed local authority over our public school system to the state in their repealed and replaced school charter,
But if you read the home rule amendment of the Maine Constitution, the authority to amend the charter does not belong to the boards, it belongs to the inhabitants of the municipality. So let’s take back power to the people rather than power over the people.