IN THE EYES OF THE BEHOLDER

Some of the conclusions in a recent Journal Tribune editorial concerning lighting in Kennebunkport deserve further discussion. The impression left with readers is that there are no street lights throughout the village area but in fact, there are many and they've been sufficient for years.

The area proposed for more lighting is entirely outside the business zone and
consists of nearly all of the National Register Historic District of homes in
the Village Residential Zone, next to Dock Square. Some of the lights are more than a half mile from the downtown.

While employees and customers of downtown businesses park along town streets and in a parking lot outside the business district, they, as well as residents, have been walking these streets without the proposed lighting for decades, without any apparent consequences. The justification for spending more than $160,000 to purchase these lights - not to mention the cost of installation - just isn't there.

This is an idea that might be nice when times are flush or if business interests are willing to pay, but they haven't offered.  Times are tough and taxpayers are tired of funding needs for tourists and businesses.

When many Kennebunkport village residents look toward the north, to Biddeford, we see an unnatural glow in the sky. When we look to Dock Square from the Historic Zone, there's a similar glow.  The village residential zone outside Dock Square isn't the Maine Mall, Biddeford Crossing or downtown Biddeford. Many of us who live here enjoy the distinction and would like to maintain our residential quality of life, including the ability to look up and see the stars at night.

My advice to businesses concerned about their customers and employees walking at night: pool your resources and provide a shuttle service to outlying parking areas.

My advice to taxpayers: hold onto your wallets! Pretty soon, we won't be able to afford to live here. Those who can afford to pay increasing taxes may be able to read inside their homes at night without turning on interior lights.

"NO BETTO IN BIDDO"*

Despite the endless and repetitive television and radio advertising in favor of betting in Biddeford, it came as no surprise that voters statewide rejected that racino proposal as well as the one designed for Lewiston.  Voters have said “No” to gambling proposals in Maine eight times in 11 years according to today’s Portland Press Herald.  It would be easy to lose count without the paper of record reminding us how many times we’ve been down this road.  

We’ve come a long way in one year, since the voters in Biddeford authorized municipal leaders to negotiate with Scarborough Downs and Ocean Properties, Ltd., to bring a racino operation to their city. In Biddeford, the racino proposal won approval in yesterday’s election but not by enough votes to override the “no” votes elsewhere in Maine.

Joanne Twomey, the Mayor who championed the racino proposal for the jobs it would provide, finds herself out of a job the day after the election. Her opponent, Alan Casavant, who did not support the racino, pledged to negotiate a better deal for the city if the proposal got statewide support.

In the mysterious world of politics which cannot be explained, nearly the same number of people who voted for the racino voted for the anti-racino candidate for Mayor.

Biddeford and the towns surrounding it should have some optimism today for the future of this much-maligned former mill town.   Mayor-elect Casavant wants to work on improving the community’s downtown core instead of casting his lot with the racetrack and slot operators out by the Maine Turnpike. Good for him.

Biddeford contains historic buildings in its downtown Main Street and including the former textile mills which line the Saco River. With the growth of University of New England and the expansion and development of communities around it, Biddeford seems poised to begin to capitalize on its assets. 

The election result for Question 2, soundly rejected by voters statewide though equally strongly supported by voters in Biddeford, seems to be a case of outsiders intervening and saving Biddeford from making a terrible and irreversible mistake. It just might be that people will look back on this vote as a turning point for the city.

*Bumper sticker credited to Richard Rhames who was elected Councilor-at-large in Biddeford's election yesterday.

THE VALUE OF PUBLIC LAND

The Kennebunkport Conservation Trust has had remarkable success acquiring and saving land from development. From the islands of Cape Porpoise Harbor to the meadows and streams of the Emmons Preserve, the KCT now holds vast acreage within the community and we are all grateful for this.

Recently, the Trust accepted about $1 million to rebuild on its original site the Olde Grist Mill, a 250-year old tidal mill which was owned continuously by the Perkins family until its destruction by arson in the 1990’s.  

Another million dollars will be used to reconstruct an enclosed shed linking the Goat Island Lighthouse to the lighthouse-keeper’s home. The shed or one like it was destroyed by a storm decades ago. The Coast Guard, its prior owner, wisely decided not to rebuild it.

When these decisions were made to invest in buildings rather than land, financial times were bullish. The Trust even found the funds to erect granite markers denoting some of its holdings which is a far cry from the hand-painted sign which used to signify the entrance to the Trust headquarters on Gravelley Brook Road, the only unpaved public road in Kennebunkport. Times are different today and the economic climate is less certain.

Now we read that the Trust is desperately seeking about $1 million in order to buy land and an island off Goose Rocks Beach and Biddeford’s Granite Point, called Timber Point. This 110-acre parcel, which includes Timber Island, is described as one of the last large parcels of land under single ownership along the coastline between Kittery and Cape Elizabeth.  The $1 million to be raised is only a portion of the roughly $5 million price tag.  The partnership attempting to buy the property includes the KCT, the Trust for Public Land, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Friends of Rachel Carson and Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

The clock is running down on the acquisition deadline, September 15.

Sometime during the last 10 years the KCT began a new quest.  The organization expanded its mission from simple land acquisition to include preservation and maintenance of properties which reflect the heritage of the town. It was at this divergence, when the mission was expanded, when some began to question the core principals of the beloved land conservation organization.

One wonders why an organization devoted to saving and acquiring land would get into the business of restoring and maintaining historic properties in the first place. Organizations which are in that business could probably advise why they are getting out of doing this very thing.

The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) adopted a policy some 20 years ago not to accept donations of property without an endowment.  This non-profit, which owns dozens of historic residences throughout New England, recognized its inability to raise enough funds to maintain the properties it wants to preserve.  Kennebunk’s Brick Store Museum reluctantly but wisely decided to sell the Edith Barry home on Summer Street.  Maintenance costs for the house threatened the organization’s ability to operate its museum and house its collection.

We can all hope that some generous benefactor will come forward to ensure the deserving preservation of Timber Point and Timber Island.   Maybe the KCT will rediscover the value of saving land for wildlife and limited public use.   There aren’t any other organizations standing in the wings, prepared to make major land acquisitions here.  The townspeople of Kennebunkport need a KCT recommitted and dedicated to saving land, not buildings.

THE SAME-DAY VOTER REGISTRATION BALLOT INITIATIVE and other reasons why the Maine Democratic Party lacks common sense

The decision of Maine Democrats to launch a ballot initiative to restore same-day voter registration shows why the Party has lost its relevance. While Maine residents endure unemployment, under-employment, a collapsing housing market, reductions to education spending etc., Democrats are consumed with restoring the right to register and vote on the same day.

Speaking from my own experience, as a lifelong registered Democrat and as someone who has moved from state to state at least a half dozen times, and from towns within states many more times than that, I can’t understand why it’s so hard to register to vote 2 days ahead of an election. It isn’t as though registration is required every election or even every year. Once you have registered to vote, until you move, you don’t have to go through the process again.

I started to wonder what was going on with the Maine Democratic Party when it was discovered that two Super Delegates to the 2008 National Democratic Convention were no longer residents of the State: former Governor Kenneth Curtis and former Senator George Mitchell.  Didn’t anyone at the State Party know that Curtis moved to Florida - probably to avoid Maine income tax - and that Mitchell was living elsewhere?

Another alarm went off when the State Party chose to engage in a reputation-slurring, racist campaign against gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler in the fall of 2010.  Does anyone remember the mass-mailed fortune cookie flyers? Cutler’s time in China was portrayed as anti-union and his sin was to perform work for a company that conducted business in China. 

An email to the Maine Democratic Party headquarters in an attempt to find out who was responsible for the offensive mailing produced no answers. Someone did send me a lengthy diatribe about Cutler’s character in case the fortune-cookie flyer was too subtle.  Rather than an explanation taking responsibility for the flyer, I got a lecture.  This is understandable as the Party seems incapable of anything but preaching to the converted.

There were also numerous Kamikaze-like emails and phone calls during the final weeks before the election directing union members - state employees and teachers mostly - to vote for Libby Mitchell rather than Cutler even as Mitchell was tanking in the polls while Cutler began to surge. The Democrats deserve much credit for handing the election to Paul LePage.  Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

My final beef has to do with Maine being a caucus state.  This may not be the Party’s fault but while I’m at it, I’m going to lay the blame on them.

The caucus system is a charade of a true election. It’s something I experienced while living in Iowa and it’s a combination of much ado about nothing and a joke. If you can’t be there, you don’t get to vote.  Attempts have been made to eliminate the caucus in favor of the more democratic secret ballot system which would permit absentee voting but there’s no reason to change things when a few in leadership control the process.

The last Maine State Democratic caucus, at which Barack Obama was named the victor, was disorganized and lasted well beyond its scheduled length, forcing some attendees to leave before actually casting their votes.  That’s democracy in action! Whoever was in charge should be ashamed.

In Maine today there are many voters who are not registered as Republicans or Democrats. People are abandoning party affiliation and identifying themselves as Independents or members of the Green Party.  Since these folks don’t vote in primaries (unless they temporarily register as Republican or Democrat prior to the primary) both parties end up nominating people to run on their ticket who come from an extreme position. 

Which brings me to the last peeve about Maine Democrats: too many folks come to the party at primary time. There’s no better way to surprise voters than to run 6 to 8 candidates in a primary. Understandably, no one controls such things and it is anyone’s right to run. But isn’t there a way to ask some to check their egos and hold back for another time rather than encourage a baseball team’s worth of candidates?

It’s great to rant about these things but the sad truth is nothing will change. The only option left is to move on to another party or become one of the “unenrolled”.  That title has a desperate quality to it.  Sounds like my kind of group to affiliate with.

BLEAK HOUSE ON THE BEACH

It is a gross oversimplification to describe “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens as a story about a legal dispute coming to a conclusion only when the opposing parties run out of money. In Dickens’ novel, the heirs find at the end of a lengthy probate process that there is no inheritance to be claimed: the financial legacy was exhausted on legal fees.

It isn’t too much of a stretch to see similarities between “Bleak House” and the litigation that parties are engaged in over the ownership and control of Goose Rocks Beach. 

Saturday, June 18, 2011, marked the second time some Kennebunkport voters attended Town Meeting to vote to spend a significant sum of money to litigate this dispute. A total of $700,000, more or less, has been spent or appropriated by the taxpayers. One can only wonder the financial cost to the private property owners.

The beach case, expected to cost the Town at least $1 million, and which will probably cost the property owners/Plaintiffs the same, will be a drain on many other worthy causes which won’t be funded by the Town.  Consider the public projects which might be funded if the Town set aside a quarter of a million dollars annually for 4 years: expansion of sidewalks, free summer recreation access for all children, purchase of waterfront land for a public boat launch or a massive tree planting effort, just to name a few. Think of the money not being donated to non-profit organizations because of the private money tied up in the litigation.

One wonders what might have been if Selectmen recognized the private beach ownership and concentrated their negotiations on finding an acceptable amount of money or other compensation (property tax reductions, for example) so that the townspeople could be offered a long term recreation lease on the private beach areas.

Instead, we are all paying for this complex litigation to wind its way inevitably to the Maine Supreme Court. Who wins, besides the lawyers? There’s already so much bad feeling within the community about the litigation that it may take a complete turnover in property ownership to clear the air. By that time Goose Rocks will be overrun by more people than the delicate beach can handle.

Most appalling of all, the Town’s acting Police Chief  has recently announced in the newspaper that there will be a change in policy for the 2011 summer season: police officers will not enforce “no trespassing” signs at Goose Rocks Beach.  

If you own land in Kennebunkport and someone trespasses on your property, you call 911 - unless your land happens to be on Goose Rocks Beach.

Considering how high emotions are running, it’s inconceivable that law enforcement or Selectmen would permit a festering of arguments over the use of private land.  No good will come of this.

Potential trespassers now know that the police will not come to ask anyone to move along to the public beach. The homeowner is helpless to stop someone from erecting a tent or leaving lawn chairs permanently on his or her land.

This is very bad public policy. It should send a chill through anyone who thinks our home is our castle. In Kennebunkport, castles are indeed made of sand.

SUMMER READING LIST: on the trail of European detectives by book

One offshoot of the popular Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tatoo series is the surge in interest in Scandinavian detective mysteries. Though Larsson is not my favorite author, readers have an appetite for something more because only three of his books have been published. A dispute over his estate and the ownership of his unpublished material may take years to resolve.

What follows are, in my opinion, some of the best contemporary and some older but not dated European – not all Scandinavian - detective mysteries.

HENNING MANKELL, the Kurt Wallander series. Mankell is still alive and writing but just published the last book in this series, The Troubled Man. Mankell locates these books in an actual small town in a rural area of southeastern Sweden. He is skilled at writing about the changes being brought to his country by both immigration and growth and the inevitable backlash from hate groups in what is considered a tolerant, open society. Wallander is cast as an anti-hero, deeply flawed in the conduct of his personal life, charmingly aware of his failings, and consumed by his work at which he is highly successful. Also recommended are the 6 episodes of the Public Television/WGBH-produced “Mystery” series starring and directed by Kenneth Branagh. Because the novels are complex, they were simplified for television. Read some of the books before watching the series which is available on DVD.

MAJ SJOWALL and PER WAHLOO. Their Martin Beck series was written in the 1960’s yet there is little to date these Scandinavian books. Considered by some to be among the best detective novels ever penned. The website www.Scandinavianbooks.com recommends reading these books in sequence, beginning with Roseanna.

OLEN STEINHAUER. His first series - there are five books - is set in the eastern bloc beginning post-World War II and continuing into the 1980’s. Beginning with The Bridge of Sighs these novels contain frightening sequences. His police officers experience bleak and dangerous situations. Sometimes the greatest danger comes from their colleagues who may be agents working on behalf of the repressive political regime. Steinhauer lived in Romania under a Fulbright Scholarship and knows his subject very well.

MICHAEL DIBDIN, the Aurelio Zen series. These will delight you, scare you, make you laugh and appall you. The Italian bureaucracy is completely exposed with a mix of charm and contempt. Zen is a detective who is assigned to a number of the outer provinces, away from his Venice home base. Dibdin writes intelligently but with sparseness. Zen is witty and smart. He sometimes knowingly plays the boob in order to beguile those around him but he is skillful at verbal zingers. Start at the beginning with Ratking. The books will make you want to travel to every location in Italy memorialized in his books. Dibdin’s death leaves his appreciative readers with only a fixed number of books. They are easily read more than once.

ALAN FURST, The Foreign Correspondent. This book was recommended to me by my sister-in-law who is very knowledgeable about the genre and could probably write a blog of her own on this subject. It is not his only book but as I have read others, it seems to be his best. It is set in Paris in World War II during the time of the Nazi occupation. Another good one is titled Spies of the Balkans.

OVERHEARD AT THE POST OFFICE April 18, 2011 - "Tourism Training 101"

CARIBOU – Training sessions aimed at providing front line workers with the tools they need to properly prepare and welcome tourists to Aroostook County are being offered at three locations this month.
Anyone who provides services to the general public would benefit from the class, including gas station attendants, taxi drivers, front desk workers at lodging establishments, retail store clerks, convenience store clerks, waiter-waitress-host, bartender and grocery store employees.
The services are offered courtesy of the Maine Woods Tourism Training Initiative and are supported by funds from USDA Rural Development.

Bangor Daily News, April 14, 2011, page B3


AL: Hey, Jesse, glad I ran into you. I may be out of town for a little while.

JESSE: What’s up?

AL: My sister who lives in Aroostook County has invited me up there to enroll in Tourism Training.

JESSE: How are you going to train tourists to do anything?

AL: No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. I am going to be trained about how to welcome tourists.

JESSE: Oh? What’s wrong with the way tourists are treated right now?

AL: I will have to find out specifics when the classes start. But apparently the federal government believes that tourists are not well treated in Aroostook County.

JESSE: Are there any tourists up there?

AL: Actually, I don’t know.

JESSE: Who is paying for this training?

AL: The money is coming from some U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program.

JESSE: You mean our taxes are paying for this?

AL: Looks like it.

JESSE: Well of all the pork barrel, confounded wastes of money, this sure takes the cake. Wait a minute: is this part of the stimulus money?

AL: Could be. You know how long it takes trends to reach Aroostook County.

JESSE: If it didn’t break my frugal heart so much I could get a real laugh out of this tourism training idea.

AL: It’s more than just the USDA. Have you heard of something called the Maine Woods Tourism Training Initiative?

JESSE: No, no, stop, I can’t take this anymore. Help me, I just filed my tax return.

AL: Relax, Jesse. What with gas prices going up, there won’t be many people who can afford to drive to Aroostook County this summa. But if the people from away do get there, the local folks will know how to welcome them. We are learning from the experts. Who else but the government would know how to train people to take someone else’s money?