CARIBOU, Maine — Citing high taxes as an impetus to turn Caribou into two separate municipalities, members of the Caribou Secession Committee are one step closer toward making the town of Lyndon their new home.
For the secession movement to move forward, committee members had to show that those living in the proposed secession territory were in favor of the idea. Secessionists submitted a petition to members of the Caribou City Council earlier this month that contained 1,315 signatures in favor of starting their own town.
Caribou City Clerk Jayne Farrin had 30 days to verify the signatures on the 44-page petition — a task she completed within three weeks.
Farrin verified in an email on Monday that of the 1,315 signatures contained in the petition, 117 were found to be invalid with 1,198 valid.
When secessionists first announced their intentions to the Caribou City Council in July of 2014, they estimated there were 2,063 registered voters in the proposed town of Lyndon. The petition needed to contain the support of 1,096 voters — more than 50 percent of the registered voters in the area as designated by the clerk — and the petition contained 1,198 signatures.
Members of the Caribou Secession Committee plan to go before the Caribou City Councilors during their next regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, April 13 at 6 p.m. to request a public hearing
According to state law, “the purpose of the public hearing is to allow municipal residents, officers and residents in the secession territory to discuss secession.” The law also stipulates that the hearing must include a formal presentation by the committee members, and that presentation will include a description of the problems that have led to the secession effort.
Those who attend the public hearing will have an opportunity to discuss secession related problems and their potential solutions — so long as those solutions could stave off secession — and to talk about the impact secession would have on both Caribou and the proposed Lyndon.
Should secession efforts continue after the public hearing, the next step would be to put the effort before the state legislature and request permission to conduct a referendum vote.
Spokesperson for the Caribou Secession Committee Paul Camping explained that the process of creating Lyndon is lengthy; even if everything occurs as quickly as possible, only a “best case scenario” could put the secession question on the ballot for this November.
“We can’t take our eye off the end goal, but we have to realize that in order to get to that end goal there are individual hurdles in front of us,” Camping said.
Once secessionists request the public hearing, city councilors may not conduct the public hearing for 14 days to allow adequate time for advertising its occurrence.
Secession efforts would remove 80 percent of Caribou’s land mass, which is roughly everything but the downtown district, to form the new municipality of Lyndon.
Leaders of the secession movement have maintained that Lyndon’s selectperson government could run the town with a mil rate of $15.90 per $1,000 of property value — 25 percent less than Caribou’s current $22.30 mil rate.
Additional information regarding the Caribou Secession Committee can be found by visiting their Facebook page.
