Lubec marina’s future still undecided

LUBEC – Residents vented their frustration with the town’s $1.5 million floating marina Tuesday, telling state and federal funding agencies that repair of the facility is beyond the means of a poor town.

One man told Maine Community Development Director Orman Whitcomb and Milton Ross, community program specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development agency, that their agencies should stop providing grants to repair the structure.

“Let it go down the Narrows,” Carlton Leighton said of the marina. “I’m not blaming you fellas. But let it go down the Narrows.”

Leighton said then-Lubec Community Development Director Chet Childs had promised townspeople that local money would not be required when the facility was constructed in 1996.

Childs is gone and townspeople – who have a hard enough time paying taxes as it is – are being asked to come up with money for a marina that is in the wrong place and is continually damaged by winter storms, he said.

Whitcomb and Ross were in Lubec to respond to questions about whether the town will have to repay USDA or Community Development Block Grant money if the marina is abandoned. There was no definitive answer to those questions.

The marina has been closed since the end of January when voters turned down a proposal to take $20,000 from surplus for the marina’s operating budget and another $19,550 to provide local match for a $195,500 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The $195,500 from FEMA is to repair the marina and make structural changes so that it will not continue to be damaged by winter storms, according to Joe Albert, business manger for the Maine Emergency Management Agency.

Albert said Lubec has received $26,370 of the FEMA money to date and has until November to complete the work. If there is no local match, the remaining funds will be held back, he said.

Albert said a FEMA inspector will certify which portion of the repair work has been done with the $26,370, and the local match required for those funds can be in-kind.

Whitcomb’s agency contributed $600,000 to construct a wave attenuator and another $90,000 for subsequent repairs. He said his agency funded a wave attenuator, not a marina.

The attenuator – a large steel cage that hangs from the outer dock – acts as a floating breakwater to allow fishermen to use the town’s commercial pier for 50 to 60 percent of the year, rather than the 10 percent they were limited to without a breakwater, Whitcomb said.

As long as the attenuator fills that function, it is meeting the program benefit requirements of the block grant funds, he said.

Ross said USDA has provided $135,000 for both the attenuator and the dock.

If Lubec selectmen write a letter saying that the town cannot afford to put local funds into keeping the marina operational, Ross said he would recommend to his supervisor that Lubec not have to repay the funds.

Mike Bush, interim president of Eastern Maine Development Corp. – the agency that helped secure $900,000 in Economic Development Administration funds to construct the facility – suggested that townspeople probably wouldn’t have to pay back anything if they would do something constructive.

Letting the pier sit in the water “and rot” isn’t getting the town anywhere, Bush said.

The meeting ended without resolution. Selectmen and the Lubec Harbor board of trustees will meet at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 6, to continue discussion of the matter. The meeting will be at the town office.