Here on the Schoodic Peninsula, located on the eastern edge of Hancock County, the two town government offices of Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro are located about five miles apart. Gouldsboro was established in 1789 and Winter Harbor, then called Mosquito, was one of five villages that constituted Gouldsboro. About 100 years later, Winter Harbor seceded and set up its own town government. Historians tell us that the summer residents of the Winter Harbor Grindstone enclave engineered the secession in order to reduce their property taxes.
Today each town has its own municipal employees, its own police and fire departments, its own governing board and resident committees and its own garbage collection and road maintenance contracts. Until just a few years ago, each town supported its own primary and middle school.
When the Navy abandoned its base at the tip of Schoodic and took with them the lion’s share of elementary school students and simultaneously Gouldsboro’s school building developed a bad case of mold, the two towns joined in creating a joint K-8 school called, appropriately, the Peninsula School. The school merger was a “marriage of convenience,” and a timely one as well: the school-aged population was dwindling as Winter Harbor’s population declined 48 percent during the past decade and Gouldsboro’s declined 11 percent, bringing the total population of the peninsula to about 2,250 permanent residents.
Our school consolidation preceded the forced one under the Baldacci administration in 2007, but in both cases the reason for consolidation was to eliminate redundancy, increase efficiency, save money and provide improved services. Early reports about our RSU indicate the promised savings are, in fact, real.
Now, employing similar logic, states such as Michigan, New Jersey and New York are advocating town consolidation. It seems appropriate to ask why the towns of Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro wouldn’t consolidate.
Winter Harbor’s municipal budget articles voted on at the 2011 town meeting — I provide rounded figures — show about $125,000 for town administration, while Gouldsboro’s appropriation for town administration was about twice as large, at $252,000, despite having a population that is almost four times greater than Winter Harbor’s.
If town expenses for service committees, town property and public safety and public works are added, Winter Harbor will be spending about $585,000 this year while Gouldsboro will spend $1.2 million. It is clear that Gouldsboro’s town government is significantly more efficient than Winter Harbor’s, likely due to a certain economy of scale. Were the two town governments to merge, even greater savings in town administrative costs would be realized.
There are three stumbling blocks to a two-town merger: Winter Harbor residents pay less in property taxes than do Gouldsboro residents (Winter Harbor’s current mill rate is 5.45 while Gouldsboro’s is 7.95, not an insignificant difference.); Winter Harbor holds significant investment monies; and countless Winter Harbor residents like their independence.
A two-town merger would most likely immediately save Winter Harbor $1 million, the amount which its voters were asked to permit to be withdrawn from investments for the construction of a new public safety building. They’d save another $250,000 in investments for the construction of a new transfer station, which the town proposes to take, again, from its investment portfolio. Gouldsboro already has adequate public safety accommodations and a transfer station.
Additionally, to make town consolidation work, Gouldsboro would have to promise that the Winter Harbor endowment will be used as a restricted fund for the sole benefit of Winter Harbor residents. Gouldsboro would also have to demonstrate that administrative efficiencies gained through consolidation would act to keep Winter Harbor property taxes low.
The Great Recession and enormous public debt have forced most Americans to rethink how the government does its business and to ask how government can become more efficient. Why shouldn’t the same question be asked on the town level? And isn’t it wiser to ask the question now before the Maine state government follows the lead of other states and forces town consolidation just as it did school consolidation? Marriage by choice is surely better than a shotgun marriage.
Roger Bowen is a political scientist residing in the village of Prospect Harbor in the town of Gouldsboro.