GROUNDS FOR DEVELOPMENT

Maine has lived for more than a century off a well-deserved reputation of its workers. Costs may be higher, the weather more severe and the state may be farther from major markets, but businesses have opened in Maine in part because they knew of the skill and reliability of the employees they would find here. That reputation is a vital part of economic development.

No part of the state needs economic development more than Washington County. Its decades-long slide in prosperity has been chronicled repeatedly and can be seen in its unemployment rate, its income levels and plenty of other measures, including its rate of drug abuse.

The Cutler Development Corp. this week will discuss three potential economic development uses for the former Cutler Navy Base. All three show promise, all would produce benefits for the region. They are a plan to convert the 61 housing units at the base to time-share resort housing and seek additional commercial development, a plan to sell the housing at affordable prices to be accompanied by separate commercial development and a plan for converting the housing into a therapeutic facility to treat drug addiction.

The corporation has a difficult choice because it will have hundreds of questions to answer about the proposals before it can predict which is the best use for this asset. There are the unknowns of what a drug treatment facility would mean, of what effect so much new housing for sale would have on local construction businesses and on the prices of other houses on the market, of how desirable these units could be as a resort and many more.

Certainly, because of the way each of the proposals has been offered, the region will likely be better off than before with any of them. But whether at the base or elsewhere, it is inescapable that Washington County requires a high-quality drug treatment facility of the sort proposed for Cutler by the Maine Lighthouse Corp. Even if the county’s drug problem is not what the national media have claimed, even if it is not what the rumors of hiring problems describe, it exists, it is serious and it hurts the reputation of the region, inflicting long-term damage to its people and its economy.

The corporation has five criteria for ranking the proposals: jobs, amount of the base used, impact on taxes, effect on the environment and economic development. The drug treatment facility proposes between 62 and 100 full-time jobs with benefits, when fully operating, has offered payments in lieu of property taxes, is environmentally benign and uses a modest amount of the base. The other developers can make similar assertions, with different emphases, about their projects. The Lighthouse group, however, offers a year-round, long-term, recession-proof industry – drug treatment – that not only provides a social good but additionally serves as economic development by countering the perception and reality that the region’s drug problem continues largely unabated.

The Lighthouse has proposed using the Daytop model of therapeutic counseling at its facility. For nearly 40 years, Daytop has proven successful by creating a drug-free community to teach clients healthy, drug-free behaviors. Kimberly Johnson, director of the state’s Office of Substance Abuse, recently wrote in support of the Lighthouse plan. “With the growth of addiction to prescription drugs and heroin, Maine’s existing residential treatment programs are bursting at the seams,” she said. ” … Both the criminal justice system and the child-welfare system have complained about lack of access to treatment for clients. These people risk longer prison terms, recidivism and the loss of their children because of the inability to access care.”

Washington County’s economy suffers from this lack of care. Cutler provides an opportunity for an important, long-term solution.