MEDWAY, Maine — Voters will take a stance on a proposed north woods national park and recreation area in a nonbinding referendum on Tuesday, June 23.
The election will be held at the Medway fire station, 23 Grindstone Road, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Board of Selectmen endorses the proposal but was not speaking for townspeople, town Administrative Assistant Kathy Lee said Monday.
The board’s endorsement came with eight conditions it outlined in a March 2 letter to members of the state’s federal delegation. The conditions included that the park be limited to no more than 150,000 acres “and could not be adjusted without an act of Congress”; that existing federal air-quality standards be maintained; and that the National Park Service “be required by law to give preference to Maine-based companies for concession, outfitter and guide contracts and permits.”
The spokesmen for park proponent Lucas St. Clair and for the Maine Woods Coalition, which opposes the park, both expressed hope Monday that they would win. Members of Maine’s congressional delegation, who would need to introduce federal legislation to create a park, said that the idea must have the support of the park’s neighbors.
“We feel good,” St. Clair’s spokesman, David Farmer, said Monday. “We have been talking to a lot of people. We can tell there’s a lot of energy around the campaign and we are hopeful that our supporters will get out and vote and bring their friends with them.”
Coalition spokesman Ted O’Meara said he was not making any predictions.
“We have tried harder in the last few weeks to get our side of the story out, to point out that the whole assumptions the job predictions are based on really are based on false information,” he said Monday. “My sense being up there Thursday night [ during a debate on the park proposal] is that has gotten people’s attention and cast a lot of doubt on the promises they have been making on the number of jobs and what this park has been like.”
St. Clair proposes donating family lands east of Baxter State Park to create a 75,000-acre national park and a same-sized multi-use recreation area as a gift to the nation. His proposal follows a similar plan his mother, millionaire industrialist Roxanne Quimby, offered in 2011.
That year, East Millinocket residents voted 513-132 against supporting a feasibility study of her proposal.
St. Clair has said a national park would generate 450 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 existing industries.
Park opponents have said they fear a park would bring federal authority into Maine, cramp the state’s forest products industries, generate only low-paying jobs and morph into a 3.2-million-acre park plan offered in the 1990s. They also express skepticism about the job-creation estimates and the idea that St. Clair’s plan is substantially different from Quimby’s.
The opponents held a press conference last Thursday in which they said about 224 businesses opposed the park. They also criticized St. Clair for advertising the park and recreation area as a 150,000-acre proposal. His family’s nonprofit foundation, Elliotsville Plantation, Inc., owns 87,564 deeded acres, including 65,864 of which would be the national park and 21,699 in the proposed recreation area.
During the debate at Schenck High School Thursday night, St. Clair said he always has maintained that the 150,000 figure was only an outer boundary set in response to fears of how big the park could get. He said that the lesser acreage is irrelevant. National parks have never failed to bring substantial economic benefits to their neighbors, he said.
Also on Thursday, St. Clair’s organization released a letter from former U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud which endorsed the park. Proponents mailed the letter to East Millinocket and Medway residents on Friday.
Some East Millinocket and Medway residents have described the the issue as divisive and pro-park signs have been reported stolen or torn from yards and public greens.
East Millinocket also will hold a nonbinding park vote on Monday, June 29. Town leaders rescheduled the vote from Thursday, June 25, due to a clerical error. Anyone wanting to cast an absentee ballot in advance of the election can do so by visiting the East Millinocket town office. Absentee ballots will not be available at the town meeting on Thursday night, East Millinocket officials said Monday.