March 29, 2024
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Appropriations panel hears $82.9 million in bond requests

AUGUSTA – More than 1,100 Maine homeless residents go to sleep each night in shelters, cars and abandoned buildings, according to Michael Finnegan, director of the Maine State Housing Authority.

Finnegan implored the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee on Wednesday to support a $20 million bond issue for affordable housing to deal with the affordable housing “crisis.”

The committee heard bond requests totaling $82.9 million on Wednesday.

The King administration requested more than $60 million of that total, including $26.5 million for capital projects at the University of Maine and the Maine Maritime Academy; $17.2 million for municipal water pollution, solid waste, drinking water and tire disposal projects; $15 million for school renovation and repairs; and $4.2 million for farm manure storage and irrigation projects and funding the Maine Potato Market Improvement Fund.

In total, the King administration will request $123 million in bond issues this year and an additional $70 million next year for a two-year total of $193 million, according to Evan Richert, director of the State Planning Office. Bonds totaling $182 million will be retired in that same two-year period, he said. The total being requested by King meets the administration guideline of keeping bond issue totals within 5 percent of estimated revenues.

Richert estimated that if all the administration bond issues were approved, the total would represent 4.6 percent of total revenues next year and 3 percent the following year.

During Wednesday’s daylong committee session, however, it was the affordable housing bond issue, which isn’t on the administration’s list, that drew the most testimony. Poverty advocates, the homeless and agency workers all supported the request. The scope of the problem in affordable housing can be illustrated in homeless shelters, where occupancy has jumped 40 percent in the last five years, Finnegan said.

The $20 million bond issue would be used by poverty agencies and nonprofit organizations to leverage another $30 million in federal funds to renovate apartments, build affordable housing, assist mental health consumers and expand domestic violence shelters. Creating affordable housing “goes hand in hand with economic development and is good for the economy,” said Finnegan, a former banker. He said it has been 11 years since the state approved a bond issue for affordable housing.

More than a dozen speakers testified to the need for affordable housing from one end of the state to the other. Retired teacher Ray Parquette, who now lives in a Portland shelter, said it was “beyond belief” that King could support $40 million for school laptops and $4.2 million for manure storage, but not support $20 million for homeless programs. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland and the Maine Council of Churches also supported the measure.

Committee Chairman Jill Goldthwait said the cost of housing has become so expensive in her Mount Desert Island district that out-of-town workers are bused in to work in restaurants and schools. Working-class families cannot afford apartments and houses in many coastal areas, she said.

While no one spoke against the bond issue, committee members had a variety of questions. Rep. Richard R. Nass, R-Acton, questioned how much “accountability” there would be for the requested $20 million and noted that the bond was not supported by the King Administration. Goldthwait asked what the program could do for coastal areas, where land and housing prices have escalated dramatically.

The committee now has to schedule a work session to vote on the bond requests it heard about during Wednesday’s public hearing. Further votes by the full House and Senate also will be required before any of the bond issues can be presented to Maine voters for their approval in November.


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