Regional investment plan unveiled at forum

BANGOR – A draft regional investment plan calling for an unprecedented level of cooperation among communities in the Bangor area was unveiled during a public forum Thursday night. The event drew only a few people who did not have a hand in developing it.

Penobscot Valley Prudent Investments Linking Our Towns, or PV PILOT for short, is the product of a $150,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration’s Transportation and Community and System Transportation pilot program. It was administered by the Bangor Area Comprehensive Transportation System, or BACTS, in partnership with Eastern Maine Development Corp.

“I like what I see in the report,” said Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner John Melrose, who was in Bangor for the event. Melrose said municipalities in the region have much to gain from working together. Such cooperation also is beginning to occur among states, he said, citing a 511 traveler information telephone service proposed for Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont as one example. If the three states are able to cooperate, they would save significant amounts of money by sharing a call center among other things.

The Maine DOT chose Greater Bangor as the first area in Maine to implement the “extended community” planning process, which calls for breaking down barriers between communities for the benefit of all.

Over the course of several months, more than 50 people from 15 communities in the Bangor area and various governmental units looked at existing and potential regional linkages in the areas of land use planning and growth management, community resources, economic development, access management and transportation among communities in making their recommendations, BACTS Transportation Planning Engineer Sandi Duchesne said in her overview of the plan.

Members of the team that developed PV PILOT have identified numerous areas in which the region might benefit from the extended community approach. Those areas are outlined in the draft plan. Once the plan is final, communities will be invited to participate.

As proponents see it, the plan could result in a more viable and competitive region through such outcomes as economies of scale, improved services for residents, political clout, avoiding sprawl to give downtown areas a better chance of survival and by pooling resources to attract new businesses that would enable young people to work without leaving the area.

However, Duchesne and others who participated in the pilot project noted that participating communities will have to buy into the concept if the program is to be successful. Because it calls for an unprecedented degree of cooperation among individual towns and cities, a major change in thinking also will have to occur.

As things stand, area municipalities traditionally have had to compete against each other for such resources as state and federal grants and economic development projects. In addition, government policies and state laws aren’t always conducive to such cooperation. Self-contained and self-sustaining, individual communities typically rely heavily on the property tax for funding.

The draft plan will be posted today on the BACTS Web site at www.emdc.org/bacts.htm. Information also is available by calling 942-6389 or, toll-free, (800) 339-6389.