Voters in two towns have rejected it, but don’t expect Katahdin region arguments over a proposed North Woods national park to end anytime soon, local leaders said.
Park advocates said Tuesday that they were actually encouraged by East Millinocket’s 320-191 nonbinding vote on Monday to reject the proposal and Medway’s 252-102 vote on June 23 against the idea.
Park opponents, meanwhile, said the votes send a strong message to dismiss the proposal.
“I would hope it is dead,” East Millinocket Selectman Mark Marston, a park opponent, said Tuesday. “I would hope [park supporters] would say that, ‘We have tried, we have spent a lot of money, and it hasn’t worked.’ Being realistic, I don’t think they are ever going to stop, but I hope this would put an end to it.”
“I think it’s a dead issue,” said Medway Selectman Rob Farrington, who opposes the park. “What more can people do? What does it take to get this to stop?”
The nonbinding referendums came in response to Millinocket officials’ disclosure on Feb. 7 of a request from U.S. Sen. Angus King to state their requisites of a park should the necessary federal legislation be proposed. Millinocket wrote back opposing the plan, while East Millinocket and Medway selectmen named a dozen conditions that leading park proponent Lucas St. Clair essentially agreed to in February.
The referendums were designed to give leaders direction.
Mark Scally, a park supporter and chairman of East Millinocket’s Board of Selectmen, said that he was glad the town’s voter turnout was strong — 40 percent of the town’s registered voters came out for the straw poll. Medway’s turnout hit 36 percent.
“It was a good representation of the voting public,” Scally said. “It is still clear that the majority of the people are opposed to a national park. We gave [voters] an opportunity to make an informed decision. Both sides presented their cases.
“Should it be dead? I think there are other people who should be considered here,” Scally added. “What about people of Patten and Sherman? Shouldn’t they be heard on this?”
The two towns are located near the northern side of the proposed park and recreation area.
Patten officials are trying to schedule a public meeting with St. Clair to help inform residents about the proposal. No date has been set, Town Manager Terri Conklin said Tuesday. Sherman officials did not return telephone messages seeking comment.
Patten selectmen “have not made any stance on it at all,” Conklin said.
St. Clair spokesman David Farmer said despite the result at the polls, the park campaign resumed on Tuesday.
Medway’s selectmen have effectively opted to continue endorsing the park despite the June 23 vote, Chairman Bruce Jones said. A motion during Monday night’s meeting to reconsider that position failed.
A park supporter, Jones said he didn’t see the nonbinding referendums having much effect.
“This is a wider issue than just the Katahdin region,” Jones said. “I feel, just as I did prior to the vote, that something has to happen in the area. If that’s an opportunity to create jobs here, we should be greeting it with open arms.”
St. Clair’s proposal includes establishing up to a 75,000-acre national park and up to a 75,000-acre recreation area on family land east of Baxter State Park. St. Clair’s mother, Roxanne Quimby, began a campaign to give 70,000 acres to the National Park Service in 2011.
Through their company Elliotsville Plantation Inc., the Quimby family owns about 87,500 acres within the proposed park and recreation area boundaries. That’s about 66,000 acres within the park area and 21,500 in the multiuse recreational zone. The land is east of Baxter State Park.
Proponents said a park would 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 existing industries.
Park opponents have said they fear a park would bring unwanted federal authority into Maine, cramp the state’s forest products industries with tight restrictions, generate only low-paying jobs and morph into a 3.2 million-acre park plan offered in the 1990s. They also believe the park would not provide any real economic benefit to its neighbors.
Scally and Anita Mueller, a park supporter, Millinocket Town Councilor and photographic art gallery owner, said that more park supporters voted in the East Millinocket and Medway referendums than ever before, which they found encouraging.
It’s been a sometimes bruising debate, but Mueller hoped that St. Clair and Quimby wouldn’t quit.
“I would hate to see [them] give up on the only viable proposal that’s on the table for the economic prospects for the region,” Mueller said. “It is not a silver bullet, but it has some silver buckshot for turning something around.”
David Farmer writes a blog on politics for the Bangor Daily News.