Infrastructure improvements in three bond issues

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Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of articles examining the referendum questions to be decided by Maine voters Nov. 7.

BANGOR — State officials are pushing for voter approval of three bond issues that would be used to shore up public structures from cargo ports to housing for the mentally ill.

If the issues look familiar, it’s because many of the programs the bonds would fund have been supported in years past by voters. Others are new items designed to make Maine economically viable for the next century.

The three items on the Nov. 7 ballot combine for an initial total of nearly $77 million, although one bond would make the state eligible for millions more in federal matching funds. When interest payments are factored in, the cost of the three bonds totals about $116 million.

Question 2

Question 2 calls for $58.9 million to improve the state’s transportation infrastructure. The bond would make Maine eligible for $138 million in matching federal funds.

If passed, the funds would be distributed by the Department of Transportation as follows:

$36.4 million for highway and bridge improvements. The money would be used to match $113.5 million in federal funds to support statewide highway and bridge improvements outlined in the fiscal year 1996-97 Transportation Improvement Program. The program would fund 430 highway, bridge, and safety projects in 350 Maine communities. The money also would fund the Collector Road Improvement Program, which is designed to promote investment based in municipalities.

$2.5 million in aviation improvements. The bond would match $20 million in federal funds to be used for capital improvements at 37 of the state’s airports.

$17.5 million for cargo ports, including $13 million for Estes Head in Eastport, $2 million for the International Marine Terminal in Portland, and $2.5 million for a package of marine infrastructure projects at a number of smaller ports.

$2.5 million for rail-intermodal improvements at five facilities from Paris to Presque Isle. In Presque Isle, for example, $1 million would be matched with $2 million in federal money to fund a project that would combine rail and trucking facilities and be used to transport potatoes.

Interest on the $58.9 million bond — estimated at 5.65 percent over 20 years — would add another $34.9 million to the tab. The total estimated debt service on the bond would be $93.8 million.

“This would help us maintain what he have, plus give us an edge we would need to have to remain competitive,” said Maria Fuentes, a spokeswoman for the Keep Maine Moving Coalition, a collection of groups supporting the referendum.

Question 4

Maine voters approved a similar measure to Question 4 in 1989, but the funds have since been exhausted on projects across the state. Six years later, the Maine State Housing Authority is returning to the ballot with another $4 million bond request for the “acquisition, construction or rehabilitation of housing … for people with mental illness.”

If approved, the bond would be used to help finance the development of about 250 subsidized apartments or residential treatment beds for about 2,000 mentally ill people at a given time, according to the MSHA. The bond would actually benefit thousands more who would use the units over time, according to MSHA spokesman Dan Simpson.

As a result of deinstitutionalization at Maine’s mental-health facilities in the 1970s, hundreds of mentally ill patients have been living in Maine towns. Many of them, according the MSHA, live on a monthly Social Security payment of $450. More than 8,000 Mainers who qualify for mental-health services live on less than $5,000 a year and cannot afford to rent market-rate apartments, where the average cost of a one-bedroom unit ranges from $275 to $435 a month.

The bond issue would be paired with between $4 million and $6 million in additional funding already in MSHA coffers. The pool then would provide financing for nonprofit groups to purchase private housing for the elderly and mentally ill.

If passed, the bond would help to get thousands of mentally ill residents out of homeless shelters, according to MSHA director David Lakari.

“Over time, we’re building hundreds of units a year through a number of resources,” Lakari said. “The problem is we’re not getting there as ideally as we’d like to because of these limited resources.”

Estimated interest payments — 4.4 percent over five years — adds $528,000 to the bond, for a total debt service of about $4.5 million.

Question 5

If passed by voters, Question 5 would authorize $14 million for grants to cities and towns to alleviate a number of environmental hazards.

The bond would provide $10 million in grants to towns and cities to cap solid-waste landfills, $3 million for the removal of state-owned underground storage tanks, and $1 million for the Small Community Water Pollution Control Program.

Most of the bond money — the $10 million — would be used to reimburse towns for closing and properly capping their solid-waste landfills, as mandated by state law. Since 1987, 202 of the 391 municipal landfills have been closed and capped, and Maine voters have since passed six landfill closure bonds totaling $49 million to pay the costs.

The $10 million will pay about a third of the estimated $31 million needed over the next few years to close the remaining 189 landfills, according to information provided by the Department of Environmental Protection.

To safeguard drinking water supplies, Maine law and federal regulations also require that old, unprotected petroleum storage tanks be removed.

As tank owners must bear the costs of the removal program, the state must pay the estimated $3 million to remove and replace hundreds of old tanks operated by several state agencies. The bond issue, according to the DEP, would allow the state to remove the tanks by Oct. 1, 1997, as required by law.

The final $1 million would fund the Maine Small Community Water Pollution Control Program, which would provide grants to rural areas to correct failing septic systems and solve local pollution problems.

Dozens of communities, from Bradley to Beals, are likely to benefit from the bond issue, as are individual homeowners. In 1994, 335 individual systems were built across the state using grants from the Small Community Program.

Since it was established in the early 1980s, voters have funded the program with nine bond issues, authorizing $12.5 million that has supported the construction of more than 2,600 systems.

“It’s key because a lot of the work we’re asking to be done here is being done by municipalities,” said DEP spokeswoman Deborah Garrett.

The total estimated debt service on the bond would be $17.7 million, with a principal of $14 million and another $3.7 million in interest payments.