Caron organized the road trip to figure out what Mainers think that economy should look like. Problem is, our independent streak makes it tough to come to a consensus.
The researchers heard from Mainers who are conservationists, others who want the forest cleared for industry; some who want to bring back manufacturing jobs, others who think the future’s in R&D; some who say higher education is important, some who want more trade schools; some who run from the rat race, others who commute weekly to jobs in New York City. Uniting them was an anxious concern for the future of the Maine they love.
“In some ways, it’s quite distinctive, the strongly felt connection to place,” said Bruce Katz, vice president and director of Brookings’s Metropolitan Policy Program, which since 1996 has proposed innovative policies for dynamic cities and urban areas. Katz joined us on the road trip’s second day. “There’s a level of engagement to these meetings that’s actually quite striking.”
Forest through the trees
Voices from those who will lead this state — the 35-and-younger set — were disappointingly few at the road trip meetings. Most participants were middle-aged or older. And, judging by how much everyone disagreed on what Maine needs to prioritize, it looks like Caron could have a rough road ahead to make his “blueprint for Maine” a reality.
Residents of Caribou, a rural farming town that suffered in 1994 when the Loring Air Force Base closed, called for more help for potato farmers. A Farmington man said the state needs to protect its forests and “unfractured landscape” for tourists. An artist in Eastport, which has struggled to find direction amidst heated debate about a proposed liquefied natural gas depot, said Mainers don’t want to be billionaires, they just want “enough” — enough money to feed themselves and their families, enough to buy a house to live in, “just enough.” A young lawyer in Camden thinks the state should pay for perks for young professionals like himself by building a light rail for commuters from Rockland to Augusta. A middle-aged woman at the town meeting on the Colby College campus in Waterville was concerned about her brother:
“My brother works in the woods and lives on a farm and there is such incredible pressure on him. What he gets paid for his wood has not gone up in the last 12 years. So what can the state do to support these traditional natural economies? Not that everybody is going to go back and become a forester or farmer, but we need to retain some of those to maintain our natural character.”
In response, a Colby student quipped, “Always keep in mind that it’s okay if people move and if they don’t have the same jobs their parents did.”
“Now we find ourselves in this extreme time of transition and no one knows what the outcome will be and everyone wants to protect what their interests are,” says USM’s Barringer, who was an unpaid consultant to the Brookings researchers during the early months of the study. “And that means that when you travel around the state enough and ask people what they’d like to see preserved and protected, they tend to say those things that are in their interest and that they love.”
