CARIBOU, Maine — Turning one northern Maine municipality into two moved a step closer to reality on Monday night.
Members of the Caribou Secession Committee submitted their petition to leave Caribou and take 80 percent of its landmass with them.
“Tonight, after nearly nine months of circulating our petition and tabulating the results, we are submitting it to you for certification by the city clerk,” said Secession Committee Spokesperson Paul Camping.
Camping told the council that the committee had a legal requirement of gathering signatures of more than 50 percent of registered voters in the secession area, “and by our calculations, we have exceeded that number,” he said.
The spokesperson handed a binder of petitions to Mayor Gary Aiken, who thanked Camping, and the subject of secession at the council meeting was wrapped up in about 90 seconds.
Following the City Council meeting, a handful of secession committee supporters gathered in the city clerk’s office to await the petition’s acceptance by Jayne Farrin, Caribou’s city clerk, and to receive a receipt for the exchange.
Around 8:30 p.m. on Monday night, Camping said that all 44 petitions were logged in and accepted by the clerk; he also mentioned that there was a little dispute between secessionists and Farrin regarding the borders of what would become the town of Lyndon, should secession efforts prove successful.
Simply put, most of rural Caribou would become the town of Lyndon; rural Lyndon’s proposed borders nearly encircle a smaller square that is downtown Caribou. The new Caribou, for example, would no longer border Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield, Limestone or Connor.
To define what would and would not be Lyndon, Camping and his fellow secessionists combined street numbers on a map with corresponding GPS coordinates.
“Our petition clearly states that the lines drawn on the map are intended to follow property lines, and the last sentence under the last GPS coordinate says words to the effect that ‘exact points will have to be established with an instrument survey,’” Camping explained.
Discrepancy arose on Monday night when the Caribou city clerk’s coordinates for Lyndon’s borders proved slightly different than the secession committee’s estimation; Camping said that Farrin was attempting to exclude some of the petition signatures based on the different GPS coordinates.
“There’s going to be a concerted effort to knock our petition down any way possible,” Camping said late Monday night. “If there’s a loophole, [the Caribou city clerk] is going to drive a truck through it.”
Caribou’s City Manager Austin Bleess feels that comments like Camping’s are not only blatantly false, “but it’s Washington-style politics that is unnecessary and not called for on the local level,” he said on Tuesday morning.
“Contrary to what the secession committee may believe, the city staff is not working against them in this process,” Bleess said, commenting that city staff have spent numerous hours assisting the secession committee in their many requests, and have gone above and beyond to provide them with the information they have sought.
“State law is strict on how petitions are dealt with to ensure the integrity of the petition and the petition process. Jayne will uphold state law to ensure that integrity,” the city manager added, emphasizing that Farrin is a dedicated civil servant to Caribou and its citizens.
“To be unfairly targeted for upholding the integrity of the process crosses the line. There are no loop holes. This is not an ‘us versus them’ situation and it is unfortunate the committee is resorting to these reckless and untruthful attacks on the integrity of city staff and the petition process,” he said yesterday.
State law says that Farrin has 30 days to verify the signatures on the petition; once she does, the city is required to hold a public hearing. The law stipulates “the purpose of the public hearing is to allow municipal residents, officers and residents in the secession territory to discuss secession.”
Secessionists are also legally required to conduct a formal presentation by the petition’s leaders — which include Camping, Milo Haney, Maynard St. Peter, Doug Morrell and Freeman Cote. The law states that individuals attending the meeting will discuss the problems, potential solutions other than secession and the potential impact secession could have on both new Lyndon and new Caribou.
St. Peter thinks that Caribou could be preserved as a whole, but not unless major concessions are made by the existing government.
“This is a big ‘if,’” he prefaced, “if our complaints are met, and the city changes its ways — which they have refused to in all past instances — I think there is a possibility for the city to remain whole.”
“Of course they have to go back to a town form of government — that’s non-negotiable,” St. Peter added.
St. Peter was confident that his views reflected those of secession committee members and roughly 1,250 voters who signed the petition.
The exact number of signatures required for the petition to effectively require a public hearing has to be over 50 percent of the registered voters in the proposed area of secession; that number will be determined by Farrin going forward.
Monica Sprague went door-to-door collecting signatures in support of the secession movement, and said that overwhelmingly, folks were happy to sign.
“People were saying ‘if it wasn’t you going around with the petition, how would any of us little guys be able to fight the system?’” she explained.
Sprague and the movement’s lead petition circulator Milo Haney agreed that more people approved of the secession movement than the petition reflects.
“Everyone that I came in contact with that was either a city employee or a person who rented a city building, they would not sign out of fear of their jobs,” Sprague said. “It’s not that they didn’t agree with what we were doing. They did agree, but they would not sign — which was interesting,” she added. “They just said ‘we can’t do it, because they are going to raise my rent,’ or ‘they are they going to kick me out of the position I’m in.’”
Haney, Sprague and St. Peter explained that of the 1,600 individuals the secessionists spoke with, only 350 said “no” to withdrawing from Caribou.
“There’s no question that we’re solid,” St. Peter said. He said that the committee will have their public hearing to address and speak on every issue — specifically their point of view on every one of their issues.
Committee members will display their ideas for how their proposed form of government will run, what it will cost to operate and what services would be provided.
St. Peter said for 15.9 mils — 25 percent less than Caribou’s current 22.3-mil tax rate — Lyndon could promise residents as much service as they’re currently receiving.
“That’s a big change for people who are having a hard time not making the [tax] payments,” he added.
Caribou’s mil rate for 2015 was voted on in early December — without a tax increase. The overall expense budget totaled $8,855,829.
Additional information about the Caribou Secession Committee can be found by visiting their Facebook page.
