Funding for the Land for Maine’s Future program will be one of 8 ballot items that Mainer’s will face next month. Question 3 reads: Do you favor a $9,750,000 bond issue to invest in land conservation and working waterfront preservation and to preserve parks to be matched by $9,250,000 in federal and other funds?
By any measure the LMF program has been a huge success. In the past 10 years it has drawn $3 in federal money for every Maine dollar raised. Since its start in 1987 a total of $117 million dollars has been borrowed in Maine and that has in turn leveraged an additional $150 million of federal, local and private funds.
Evidence of the activity of this program is present in every county of our state and includes farmland, woodlands, shorefronts, mountain ridges. and lake fronts. In our own area we can look to the Androscoggin river access project, Jay to Farmington Rail trail, Kennebec Highlands, the Mount Abraham summit, Mount Blue, Tumbledown, and projects in the Rangeley region. This is a program that has benefitted hikers, farmers, woods workers, the commercial fishing community, hunters, trappers, and anglers.
While it ought to be, passage this year is not a slam dunk. This is a year in which in which there are strong currents of voter revolt and antipathy it is anybody’s guess how this will turn out. While LMF funding has generally enjoyed 2/1 public support LMF fell captive to partisan wrangling in the last legislative session. The last dollar of LMF money was actually spent 2 years ago.
Time is not in our favor. In the early years of this decade 25 percent of Maine’s land changed hands as the major timberlands owners divested themselves and became renters rather than owners of woodlands. While the pace of land sales have slowed, the evidence is close at hand that Maine’s forests and shorelines are rapidly becoming subdivided and privatized.
Once upon a time land conservation had bipartisan, Republican and Democratic, support, and in some circles it still does. Check out George Smith’s editorial in the Waterville Sentinel. He understands that sports men and women need public access as much or more than recreational users and he takes the Republican standard bearer, Paul LePage, to task for opposing public funding. LePage claim to support hunting and fishing and pledges to “brand Maine as a place to hunt and fish.” But his method to do that is to privatize land so that landowners are somehow paid to allow the public’s access. Everyone pays their own way in his world. That’s not the Maine I want to see.
So while LMF funding passage would be a shoo-in during an ordinary election year, ours is not an ordinary year. Partisan politics continue to prevail and many voters are angry and hostile to government spending. But opposing LMF is to shoot one’s own foot. As stated in the original 1987 legislation The Land for Maine’s Future was established 20 years ago to guarantee “the traditional Maine heritage of public access to Maine’s land and water resources… continued quality and availability of natural resources important to the interests and continued heritage of Maine people.”
Now more than ever be sure to vote, support ballot question 3, and advise your neighbor to do the same.
Steve Bien
Jay
In the 20 years of removing land from the tax rolls, has there ever been an accounting of the tax revenue lost and how it was replaced? When land moves from private to public hands, the public services it needs remain the same, at best, but probably increase. Guess who gets to pay the tab when the former owners no longer have to? Ponder this before you vote on question 3. The $9.75 million is just the visible part of the transaction.
“LePage claim to support hunting and fishing and pledges to “brand Maine as a place to hunt and fish.” But his method to do that is to privatize land so that landowners are somehow paid to allow the public’s access.”
This program that our next governor is talking about is a great program and works very well in other states, i have many friends that live in Maine and go to these state’s to hunt for weeks at a time. What if we could keep our hunters here and bring in hunters from other states? Wouldn’t that help the economy here in Maine?
What i have seen from the LMF is the closing of roads with gates and/or the removal of bridges blocking access to areas. Is this the Maine you want to see? One big inaccessible forest.
Maine is currently 9 Billion dollars in dept, we can not afford another bond issue!
A good idea, but we are bonded to death and broke. No more borrowing.
LMF!!! WTF!!?? Are people in this state really stupid enough to keep voting yes on these bond issues? And more “public land” is just what we need. Do you understand where these funds come from? Sadly, look at voting history on bond issues in Maine, we are that stupid….
the more land that is owned by the state, the less is available to our children, grand children, great grand children…. you get the idea. It will be very rare and unaffordable because the state does not support the land it owns, forcing higher and higher PRICES AND TAXES on the remaining privately owned land. STOP AND THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE!