“What if Caribou splits?” was one of “10 questions for Maine in 2016” recently posed on the front page of the Bangor Daily News. In an attempt to explain the relevance of this question, the writer pointed out that “a divorce of urban and rural exemplifies the growing tensions in Maine.”
Yes, and particularly so when the city of Caribou refuses to recognize the different needs and expectations of its rural community. The city’s one-size-fits-all approach to governance, which excludes the direct representation of its residents, speaks volumes about the dysfunctional style of Caribou’s city government.
The article continues with a woeful lament that, “more so than ever, our state is divided between north and south, east and west, prosperous and struggling, growing and graying.” While we would agree with this assessment, the dilemma of Caribou’s urban and rural divide is our most pressing issue
The city of Caribou has a well-defined and blatantly stated bias against the residents in its rural territories. What is more concerning is that those who govern Caribou don’t seem capable of comprehending that it is fiscally impossible to spend a municipality into prosperity. Instead of returning lower property taxes to the community, when the state recently returned 3.4 million dollars to Caribou, the city banked $3 million of it and raised the mill rate, yet again.
The whole tone of the article implies that the divorce of a community is necessarily a bad thing. But what do the rural residents of Caribou have to gain from the outrageously steep property revaluation of 2011, from some of the highest property taxes in Maine, from not being able to sell their homes, from excessive municipal spending, from the centralization of development into the urban core or from the unheeded input of an overtaxed citizenry? How do these conditions strengthen, unite and improve us?
A better way to ask the question is, what will happen if Caribou doesn’t split?
The short answer is that rural residents will continue to be exploited by a nonrepresentative city council that caters to the urban residents who, on a per-capita basis, pay significantly less property tax than rural residents do. Our right to petition our municipal government regarding matters of taxation and spending will be violated in perpetuity, as the size and cost of city government continues to grow faster than the rate of inflation. In short, the status quo will remain as Caribou’s population continues to decline.
The article’s section on Caribou concludes by asking, “If a rock-ribbed community such as Caribou can split along these lines, what does it say for the rest of Maine?”
The term “rock-ribbed” — as in the uncompromising attitude of the city of Caribou toward any of our reasonable demands — accurately describes the overarching necessity for secession. The “good old days” of Caribou are gone forever.
We need to wake up to reality and stop sentimentalizing the past. The town of Lyndon would be a constitutional reorganization of governmental services that would allow for a 28 percent reduction in property taxes. Let’s begin planning for Lyndon’s future today. The state constitution of Maine grants us the right to secede.
Paul R. Camping chairs the Caribou Secession Committee.