BANGOR, Maine — With about 75 percent of precincts reported at 1 a.m. Tuesday, Mainers gave their state the go-ahead to borrow about $64.5 million for road and bridge repairs, conservation and water treatment. Another $11.3 million higher education bond was still up in the air.
With precinct results coming in at a steady rate, Mainers heavily favored three of the four bond questions on the ballot. The only bond issue behind in votes was Question 2, an $11.3 million bond to build a diagnostic facility, with favorable votes lagging behind by about 5,000.
Question 4 has the highest price tag of the four bond initiatives and brought about some of the most vocal support. It also saw the most support at the polls as of 1 a.m. — winning about 72 percent of the vote.
Most of the Question 4 money — $41 million of the $51.5 million — would go toward the repair and reconstruction of highways and bridges deemed vital to business and public safety. The remainder would go to port facilities, transit buses, rail services and airports.
“Maine people have historically supported transportation bonds and given the shape of some of our roads and bridges,” said Maria Fuentes, executive director of the Maine Better Transportation Association. “It seems clear that voters know there is more work to be done.”
Question 2 asked voters whether they supported borrowing $11.3 million — $7.8 million of which would go to the University of Maine System for an animal and plant diagnostic facility at the University of Maine. The rest would go toward infrastructure projects for the Maine Community College System and Maine Maritime Academy.
In 2005, voters turned down a $9 million bond for building renovations at UMS campuses. It was just the second time since 2001 that Mainers rejected a bond initiative.
Question 3 — which was ahead 61 percent to 39 percent — would allow the state to issue up to $5 million to fund the Land for Maine’s Future program, which focuses on land conservation, farm preservation and working waterfronts.
“Tonight’s vote reaffirms Mainers’ commitment to investing in our natural resource based economy …,” said Tom Abello of the Nature Conservancy in Maine, who issued a statement shortly after 10:30 p.m. “Voters have shown that they value Land for Maine’s Future’s role in conserving working lands and popular recreational areas throughout Maine. This is a much needed shot in the arm for conservation.”
“Yes” votes on Question 5 led 63 percent to 37 percent in the state’s vote count. That bond initiative would allow the state to borrow $8 million for drinking water and wastewater treatment programs. A total of $3.6 million will go into the state’s safe drinking water revolving loan fund, which is administered to eligible public water systems by the Maine Bond Bank and Department of Health and Human Services.
The bonds went on the ballot without Gov. Paul LePage’s signature, and the ones that pass aren’t likely to be sold at market in the near future. The governor announced early in the summer that he planned to withhold the sale of bonds until the state’s fiscal situation looks brighter.
It’s not uncommon for a governor to hold onto bonds after voter approval, according to Adrienne Bennett, spokeswoman for the governor.
“Now is not the most appropriate time to be borrowing more money,” Bennett said Monday. “We’re on the brink of a cliff nationally.”
Maine faces much fiscal uncertainty in coming years, Bennett said, citing looming federal sequestration cuts, the state’s $460 million debt to hospitals, and $40 million in voter-approved bonds from past elections that haven’t yet been sold at market.
Sequestration refers to the automatic, across-the-board cuts that will go into effect Jan. 2, 2013, if Congress fails to reach an agreement on budget cuts required under the 2011 federal Budget Control Act.
“We do not have a credit card, and the governor does not have a credit card mentality,” Bennett said.
Should have been 4 for 4, but we’ll take it.
Yay new/improved roads(hopefully!)
This is a great time to issue the bonds. Interest rates are low and the economy needs the stimulus. Worked in the past, will work now if Gov. Egghead will just get with the program.
artificially low interest rates = unsustainable malinvestment and higher commodity prices for everyone
mininum wage don’t buy you jack?…..gee I wonder why?
http://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-maine-debt-clock.html
Many hate this, and it will soon be going “forward” again.
I was not for any of the bonds, and voted down each of them. This will be my only loss of the day. However, i will at least be happy if the turnout is the same as now and the University Bond gets rejected…There is no way i wanna throw any more money at that University.
Good!
Anyone else having trouble getting the state wide results page to load ???
More taxes! YESSSSS!
Sadly it is probably a good time to do something like this before more people die because of bad pavement but it doesn’t solve the real problem, which is the disappearance of sustainable villages in rural Maine communities, places where life is possible without travelling by car on poorly maintained roads and bridges
Exactly. Expand the BAT bus system in both geography and hours of service. Hermon, Winterport, Orrington: get on board. Keep the hub within walking distance of the downtown Bangor business district. To paraphrase Jane Holtz Kay, author of Asphalt Nation, why is that we “invest” in highways and airports, but “subsidize” buses and trains?
I believe you’ll see commuter rail between Brunswick and Augusta. The Feds are wondering why, after a decade, the only thing on the expensive new track between them is rust.
Exactly. Maybe Maine also needs a VAT. The VAT tax has worked so well in Spain and Greece. It is bound to work in Maine. Start at a reasonable rate, like 20%. It can slowly increase every year.
It’s easier and less expensive to maintain gravel roads, and some towns are going to gravel which can resurfaced continuously, year round.
The major problem with secondary roads is that they have a single lane, usually of concrete down the center and fill w/asphalt along both sides. In time and relatively short time the ‘edges’ break off and deteriorate, requiring repaving, only to have the process repeated every few years.
Perhaps the Democrats will support a major road overhaul which creates the same base for both lanes and a breakdown/bike lane. Expensive? initially, yes; but doing the road over and over and over is insane.
I voted NO on all the questions…this is the worst day in the state’s history
I think those who voted yes should pay for the bonds.
no, they’d rather force themselves upon the rest of us and ‘sread the misery around’
Really? only 2 times since 2000 have bonds failed, they pass all the time.
This should be a wake up call to the Trustees of the UMS. In an atmosphere where all bonds EXCEPT the education one passed, this shows how the good people of this state are unwilling to put good money after bad. The UMS is seriously broken. It’s time to fix it; for good. It is top-heavy. The campuses compete rather than cooperate. Hires and tenure decisions are based on friendship and mutual back-slapping, not merit. Redundancy is rampant. etc. etc. We won’t get fooled again!
I don’t agree entirely with your statement, but you are correct that the Trustees of the UM System, and James Page, need to ask themselves why their call to invest was rejected while others for transportation and conservancy passed. In other words: why they are less popular with the public of Maine than they should be. It is either substance or message, and I hope they do not fall into the trap of believing it is just a matter of public relations.
Rather, I believe the intelligent approach to asking the public for funding is showing precisely how the System is not only gaining revenue from the bonds, but how the system is SPECIFICALLY (with $$$ figures) saving money for the State. The article that came out in the BDN about it taking 40 years and we still don’t have an effective transfer credit procedure within the system was just about the worst public relations imaginable right before the vote. It made the UMS people asking for millions of dollars look incompetent to the public.
I feel that the competition with SMCC and USM—two campuses to ‘feed’; has come to a decision point. The community colleges are booming and providing economically relevant training and certification; while the ‘human services’, art curricula are sucking up available student loan money and resources. Enrollment losses at USM were substantial enough to close the Gorham Campus or perhaps the Portland campus, or perhaps separate the two into two distinct campuses.
Thus the vote of no confidence….it really galls me to see the ‘clever’ packaging of the good with the bad; and you never see who got what after the bonds were passed.
I wonder how a Calif. style ‘Prop. 30’ to raise taxes on Maine’s ‘rich’ to pay for the ever more expensive UMe. system would fare?
Looks like the voters of Maine believe in investing in the future!
way to go Maine!
Just where do folks in favor of the bond issues think these millions of dollars are coming from?
from all the ‘rich’ people making over 50K a year!!
Way to go Maine, already one of the higher taxed states we were just starting to move down the list and now you pass all these bonds that do little more than raise taxes. I am sure they will create some more government jobs too because there will need to be numerous committees formed to decide where to spend our tax dollars. When will the general public wake up???
It feels great spending money we don’t have
Don’t worry! Maine can just increase taxes. Near the highest taxes in the county isn’t enough for Maine. Maybe Maine should try to get the award for highest taxes in the county? I beleive in Maine!
Lepage won’t release the bond money anyway, so what’s the rush? Seriously, though, how often does Maine say no to bonds? Almost never.
Act now! No money down! Low interest rates! Operators are standing by….
This is just incredible how we keep digging ourselves in deeper and deeper holes. Maybe we should take the matching fed funds and use it to pay off the bond and then use the rest for it’s supposed purpose, too bad it doesn’t work that way.
“Voters have shown that they value Land for Maine’s Future’s role in conserving working lands and popular recreational areas throughout Maine. This is a much needed shot in the arm for conservation.”
Holy cow don’t we have the most conserving working lands per capita in the United States? When are we going to set aside land for industrial use, to help ease the tax burden?
Even worse, many of the lands have no income nor any stomach for sustainable forestry so they fill up with debris waiting for the ‘perfect forest fire’.
Why are all of the lands purchased in N. Maine a long drive using fossil fuels from the population centers in S. Maine?
Who are beneficiaries anyway?
Now that the state owns them, there will even be less tax money to pay for more bond spending on roads and water for the umpteenth time.
Woo more borrowing!
Infrastructure – roads, ports, bridges – are the veins of the economy. Without modern, safe infrastructure – economies, both local and national will suffer. That 4 and 5 passed at such a high margin shows that most Mainers, Republican, Independent and Democrat, understand this.
I voted against 2 and 3, though 4 and 5 I view as necessities. Pay now and pay less, or pay later and pay more? Seemed an easy choice.
Repave, wait two years; repave again, wait two years; repave again….like repainted a rotten wall till where the only thing holding it up is the paint!
Right. That’s why the bonds are needed above and beyond what usually falls under maintenance and normal taxation. Patch and coat does nothing about long term underlying issues. At some point it becomes more cost effective to replace. People seem to have tunnel vision (heh) about such things – thinking only in the short term.
No one wants to pay for infrastructure, I sure don’t, though we depend on it, so it must be done.
I enjoyed the moment as I checked yes on these bonds.
do you also get a thrill raiding the piggy banks of little kids?
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Amazing that our Maine people are so dumbed down that they did not realize we have past bonds that are coming to funding now, and the state can not afford what was just passed.
the government funded schools don’t teach economics for a reason…
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Maine should create a general sales tax or personal income tax to pay for the bonds. It worked so well for CA, IL, NY and NJ. Why wouldn’t it work in Maine?