MORNING BREAK OUT SESSIONS

David Cole, Eastern Maine Development Corporation

  There is clear agreement among session participants that the following are priority issues confronting the future Hancock County. First and foremost is the human resource issue of young people leaving the area. How to reverse this out-migration trend is key. Cost of doing business in the area is just as critical, if not more so. "Cost" relates to myriad of issues including worker compensation, tax and regulations. The "danger of unplanned and unmanaged growth" and how that may affect business retention and economic development in the region also percolated to the top of the priority list. "Green space," "clean environment," "quality of life," "recreational facilities" are all inter-connected aspects of the underlying growth management issue.

Opportunities

Hancock County needs to target and capitalize on its many assets strategically. There are already strong institutions in the region: banking, education (K-12 systems as well as UMAINE, Eastern Maine Technical College and College of the Atlantic), research and development (Jackson Laboratory and MDI Biological Laboratory), and business (tourism and the boat yards).

There is debate among the economic development field whether to nurture and grow existing businesses (and help sprout new ones), or lure in firms from elsewhere. For the session participants, the response is to do both. Underlying this response is the realization that many of the conditions that make a community good for business are good for all businesses - whether new or existing, locally grown or externally recruited. These conditions include "quality of life," equitable benefits, living wage and a "healthy workforce."

For this response to work on both fronts, there must be coordinated targeting of public and private sector resources - technical assistance, financing, work force training, infrastructure development, transportation and transit assistance, etc. In this context also, entrepreneurship needs to be considered as a strategy for rural development. Small towns and villages often lack the capacity to mount a full-scale effort. Economic development in the region, therefore, must entail "community building." That is, the civic capacity - local leadership, vision, knowledge of place and its assets, institutions, citizen engagement, and the like - must be enhanced.

3. Transportation SESSION

Access Management - Kathy Fuller and Mike Hoover, MDOT

Population growth is slow but vehicle-miles traveled are growing at a much faster rate. This means that the traffic growth is not so much because there are more people but because the people in Hancock County are driving more (longer and more frequent trips) to get to work, to conduct business or to recreate. This trend has a direct correlation with the "spreading out" pattern of development the entire state is experiencing and translates into more dollars spent on vehicle maintenance and fuel as well as increases in highway wear and tear. The end result is less disposable income and more highway improvement need. Congestion causes delays and costs Hancock County $22 million annually will increase to $31 million in the future. These costs include fuel, time, vehicle wear, delays for freight, etc.

MDOT wants to protect arterials in particular; the most expensive highways to build or replace. They are a relatively small percentage of the roadways in the state, but very prone to congestion because they are designed to carry and move the most traffic. The important thing is to keep the traffic moving and to plan access points in such a way as to balance the needs of those who need to access adjacent land with the needs of those who depend on through travel to make a living. With Ellsworth as the hub, access management policies will be very important to consider.

• Better traffic flow - facilitates economic prosperity and development
• Better Safety
• Better management of state investment, to keep roads functioning as intended for a longer term and to protect them from damage due to improper drainage.

Passenger Transportation - David Nelson, MDOT

MDOT launching Calais Branch Rail corridor study, exploring light rail opportunities and

considering building a rail line extension from Ellsworth to Trenton

- Evaluating financing needs (political decision)

- Evaluating other options for moving people - Rail, bus, bus-way

- MDOT is building infrastructure to support Ferry service in this region.

• Human scale - Home, size, familiarity, rhythm, especially near waters
• Resources - Farming, Fishing, Otters, eagles, mink, ducks, turkeys, Still affected by weather

Issues

1. Lack of long term and regional thinking, action on transportation issues. At times this has fostered a cycle that increases the problems: traffic increases, so roads are improved or new roads constructed, so that we can increase traffic and so on.
2. There is severe (for rural Maine) congestion and traffic delay due to seasonal tourism and year-round commuter patterns.
3. We face health problems due to poor air quality, a significant portion of which stems from our reliance on automobiles. Cardio-vascular health problems stem from our dependence on the automobile and from our concerns about safety we hesitate to walk or ride bicycles.
4. We have an aging infrastructure supporting our reliance on automobiles
5. When traffic congestion increases on major state roads in Hancock County, people switch to local roads which were not constructed to handle the number, speed and size of vehicles making these local roads unsafe for the purposes for which they were intended.
6. There are clear funding constraints for many of the improvements and innovations that will be necessary to ease our transportation problems.
7. Individuals who do not have cars, have difficulty participating in the life of the community, in getting to jobs, in getting health care.

Opportunities

1. We can see that all appropriate parties coordinate their efforts in transportation planning and implementing the plans: citizens, local towns, county government and agencies.
2. We can develop the full array of public transit options and services: busses, ferries, trains and light-rail, air service, van-pooling, bikeways and pedestrian ways, at the same time we improve the safety of our existing roads, through engineering and managing access to state owned roads.
3. We can create a by-pass, which will help assure that those people who live in Ellsworth as well as those needing to shop and get services, attend events in Ellsworth can do so with safety and convenience, while those who need to get around Ellsworth can do so.

Priorities

1. Immediate concerns - congestion in the Ellsworth Corridor

2. Long range opportunities - better regional coordination in transportation planning

3. Health issues of environmental quality and exercise emerges as a third issue