MILLINOCKET, Maine — Local voters won’t get the chance to tell the Town Council in June whether they support the proposed 150,000-acre North Woods national park and recreation area.
Councilors on Thursday debated placing on a ballot for the annual school budget referendum in June a question asking voters whether they support Lucas St. Clair’s proposed gift to the National Park Service. The council voted 6-1 against the notion as suggested by Councilor Michael Madore, an outspoken park critic. About 40 people attended the meeting.
Madore, who cast the sole vote favoring the ballot question, was frustrated at the council’s rejection. He said he was trying to get direction from residents on a divisive issue that has, he believes, dragged on interminably since Roxanne Quimby first publicly proposed putting a park on family-owned land east of Baxter State Park in 2011.
“If we keep doing nothing, eventually these other communities and park proponents are going to just pass us by. They are going to think of us as ineffectual or irrelevant. I don’t think we are going to make any impact on the issue if this continues,” Madore said Friday.
East Millinocket residents will be asked to vote on whether they support the park during their town meeting on June 11.
“And there has been enough misinformation and bantering back and forth out there that we are losing the actual focus of the issue itself,” Madore added.
St. Clair has proposed creating a 75,000-acre national park and a 75,000-acre recreation area by 2016, the National Park Services’ 100-year anniversary. His proposal follows a similar plan Quimby offered in 2011.
Park opponents have said they fear a park would bring unwanted federal authority into Maine, cramp the state’s forest products industries, generate only low-paying jobs and morph into the plan offered in the 1990s for a park covering 3.2 million acres. They also are skeptical of the positive economic impacts park proponents claim the initiative would have upon northern Maine.
Proponents said a park could generate 400 to 1,000 jobs, be maintained by $40 million in private endowments, diversify a Katahdin region economy devastated by the closure of two paper mills and coexist with other industries.
Bangor’s City Council and East Millinocket and Medway’s Board of Selectmen are among the governmental bodies that have endorsed the park since Millinocket officials said on Feb. 7 that U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, had asked them to draft a letter of their requirements for a park should a federal bill be written proposing one. National parks are created by Congress, and the state’s federal delegation has said it won’t draft a park bill without significant local support for it.
Thursday’s council discussion, which followed a news conference in Bangor in which more than 200 businesses pledged their support to St. Clair’s proposal, got bogged down in the precise wording of the ballot question.
Councilor Anita Mueller, who supported the referendum, voted against it because she wanted to see the question more closely reflect St. Clair’s plan. Councilors Jimmy Busque and Gilda Stratton said they opposed the referendum unless it was preceded by a forum featuring proponents and opponents. Motions to alter the wording or include a forum failed.
Madore said a forum would be redundant. A forum on the park on March 11, which both sides attended, received extensive coverage, including broadcast over local-access television. The issue has also been around since St. Clair, Quimby’s son, took control of the park initiative in 2012, he said.
He called the failed referendum “an example of the council’s inability to make a decision.”
Madore said Friday that he had hopes that a list of requirements drawn from park opponents’ concerns and released by St. Clair on Thursday would motivate King or other delegates to “get answers to the unanswered questions [regarding the park] and provide clarity as to the role of the federal government in this process.”
The list is a significant step forward in the park debate, Madore said.
“It’s about time that something like that came out. While it squelches some fears and anxieties in people, I don’t believe that it finishes the job of answering the concerns of the citizens of the area directly affected by the park,” Madore said Friday of the 10-point list.
Madore said he would himself be drawn “much closer” to supporting a park if the list included provisions that guaranteed ATV trail access to the park or the recreation area. Millinocket officials and volunteers have worked for years trying to further develop Katahdin region trails.
St. Clair has said that the conditions outlined in the list could be part of the federal law the delegation would propose that would allow the National Park Service to accept the gift and the park proposal. Such a law would be difficult to change, he said.
Critics have said the federal government could ignore the law or would change it with subsequent acts of Congress, effectively denying residents control of the park or its impact upon the region.
The list didn’t spark much of a response from Michael W. Byerly, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin. Byerly said that Poliquin “is continuing to meet with folks on both sides of this issue.
“He is reviewing the latest proposal and the impact it would have on the local region. He remains firmly opposed to any proposal that would negatively impact local industries, limit Maine jobs or restrict public access to camping, hunting, fishing and snowmobiling,” Byerly said in an email.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for King said that he “looks forward to reviewing the businesses’ list of requirements, and he will continue to listen to the thoughts and concerns of people within the region as part of the ongoing conversation about Elliotsville Plantation Inc.’s proposal and the future of the area.”
Alleigh Marre, a spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who opposed the 2011 venture, said that “Collins will be reviewing this list as part of an ongoing process to consider all perspectives on the fundamental issue of whether or not federal ownership of this land would produce more jobs and a better way of life for the residents of this beautiful region of our state.”