To the editor:
As chairman of the Caribou Planning Board, I feel obligated to respond to the inaccurate suppositions taken from the Caribou Comprehensive Plan by the Caribou Secession Committee.
First a little history: I lived in Caribou from 1977 to ‘99 and again from 2010 until this day, a total of 27 years. I currently reside on the Washburn Road in what I would consider the “rural” part of Caribou (close to the Woodland town line). I’ve known Maynard St. Peter for about 30 years and Doug Morrell for about 10 years. I like both of these guys and identify myself as a fiscal conservative as they do and the last thing I want to do is make any enemies. My sincere hope is that even if we have to agree to disagree on some things, I hope to remain friends with these two individuals.
As a conservative, I do not like paying taxes any more than the Secession Committee does. Teachers working for the school department will attest to that based on my prior letters to the editor about Caribou school expenditures. I even went to a Secession Committee meeting last year to inquire about the effort and to consider joining. I was told I did not live in Lyndon and therefore could not participate.
The bottom line is I don’t like taxes and agree we need to keep them at a minimum. I have corresponded with Governor LePage several times asking him not to cut revenue sharing to the towns and cities because it would drive our elderly on fixed incomes out of their homes. Unfortunately the Governor has not agreed with me on this issue.
After reading the Secession Committee (aka the Committee) report, I surmise they have two major issues: 1) Property taxes are too high, and 2) they think the City of Caribou has a bias against rural Caribou. I think issue 2 is a continuation of issue 1 and they decided to use the 2014 Comprehensive Plan to exaggerate issue 2. I also believe that Caribou taxes are too high and expenses need to be lowered. However, my hope is to prove that the Committee has not been fair in their use of sentences picked out of context from the Comprehensive Plan to make allegations that are completely unfounded regarding a bias against rural Caribou. After all, if there was an anti-rural conspiracy, would the chairman of the Planning Board that produced the Comprehensive Plan, who lives in rural Caribou, have promoted this conspiracy?
Some more history: At least five of the seven members of the Caribou Planning Board were appointed in 2013-14 with no prior experience. We were new to this and had to learn what our role was. We were guided by newly hired (2013) assistant City Manager, Tony Mazzuco (now moved to Mass.). Tony informed us that per Maine law, Caribou had to update its 2004 Comprehensive Plan to 2014. This was a monumental task and we, being new to this, relied heavily on Tony who wrote much of the 2014 plan, which we’d review and critique as the months went on. I do recall conversations about how Caribou once had a population of over 12,000 and we were now down to around 8,000 but still had the infrastructure of 12,000 population to maintain. This conversation did guide that we desired people new to Caribou to settle on existing roads so as not to create more cost to the City.
Now let’s talk specifics contained in the Committee’s Report:
1. Page 3, I strongly refute the allegation that there is a “long standing and deeply rooted anti-rural bias held by the City Council and the Planning Board.” How can this be when the majority of the Planning Board and assistant city manager had only been on the job for about a year when the Comprehensive Plan was updated?
2. Page 4, regarding the “gross disparity in the provision and delivery of services” have the rural citizens of Caribou been denied the use of the Airport, Parks, Swimming Pool, Rec Center, Parking lots, Winter Carnival or attending Thursday on Sweden Street? As for sidewalks, they are there for safe walking from one in-town location to another. Rural citizens also use these sidewalks to go from store to store.
When I lived on Rose Street 30 years ago, I asked the city to install more sidewalks on Glenn Street so my young daughters could walk to Teague Park School without walking in the road. The city agreed. While on the subject, in-town kids walk to school; do we charge the rural citizens extra for the cost of bussing their kids to school? Would that be considered a “gross disparity in the provision and delivery of services” in favor of rural citizens?
3. Page 5 is regarding the poor economic conditions that exist in Caribou. Why is this even mentioned? Is it the city’s fault that the entire USA has been in an economic recession? If you haven’t noticed, all of Aroostook has been suffering since the closure of Loring AFB. This is not the doing of the Municipal City Government, so why is it even in the report?
4. Page 21 slams the City Government for not using zero-based budgeting yet on pages 46, 47 and 50 “The committee uses actual year-end data from Caribou’s FY 2014 budgets … because using actual data is always more reliable than proposed or hypothetical data …” If the Committee so strongly believes in zero-based budgeting, then why didn’t it use that for its financial projections?
5. Page 28 criticizes the Comprehensive Plan for suggesting “the City must continue to fund investments in economic development …” I suppose had we not said that, you’d be criticizing the Plan for not taking a proactive position for economic development? On page 5 you criticize the City for poor economic conditions and on page 28 you criticize it for trying to do something about it. You appear to be contradicting yourself.
Phil Cyr
Caribou
Editor’s note: Due to space restrictions, this
letter to the editor will continue next week.
