If you, like I, have been following all the recent articles and political maneuvering by our legislators as they dealt head on with the issue of property tax relief, you must continue to be amazed. Amazed that even by the defeat of the so-called Palesky bill, a bad piece of legislation, we still seem to be in a state of disagreement as to our collective future and tax relief. Even when the citizenry spoke decisively and clearly to state lawmakers to pay the 55 percent share of education to all municipalities in Maine now, not in a phased-in process, they choose to ignore the same people who put them in Augusta.

There is no painless quick fix to this dilemma and the continued tweaking of the tax structure only helps for the short term. The state’s effort, spawned by government incentives, called the Fund for the Efficient Delivery of Local and Regional Services, only addresses those Maine communities that have a receptive need to do it now; a crisis to deal with. It is clear the monies offered by the state will provide only a quick fix to a community’s budgetary shortfall and does not offer a real long-lasting solution. One can almost guarantee that we will be back in crisis mode in the foreseeable future to once again come up with yet another temporary quick fix. How many times can we continue down this tumultuous path?

So what’s the solution? The solution is part of the problem, or lack thereof, and that is a quality vision. We lack the vision to get it right now. We incent only those communities that want to participate rather than having a consolidated strategic economic vision that’s leading edge and penalizes those communities that do not embrace a consolidation effort that reduce redundancies. As we attempt to compete in a global economy, we desperately need to embrace the regional concept not by those that are forced out of desperation but by all of Maine’s cities and towns in a cohesive seamless structure that delivers the most complex services to the citizens. We have the technology.

We cannot continue to spend the sacred tax dollar for each and every Maine community to go it alone. This is so uncharacteristic of Maine and our New England heritage; so uncharacteristic of the “local control” mentality that we have been so fortunate to raise our families in the most sacred part of our country. But a lot has changed over the years and if we are stubborn and unwilling to pool our resources we will continue to be held hostage to high property taxes, redundant government in all facets, from town, county and state levels, turmoil in the Legislature and constant adjustments to the tax structure.

So what’s a quality vision? If this is where you expect an answer, I have none. What I do know is Maine is a huge state by comparison and if we don’t get our collective act together to resolve this, to reduce duplications, improve service delivery, provide for those less fortunate communities, we will continue to be a jobs exporter, and our children will only come back to vacation in vacationland.

This is a magnanimous issue that spells political death for most legislators, however, the need is now. We are at a fork in the road. One road leads to the continued way of tweaking to gain short-term relief, the other road leads us to a new regionalized frontier that promotes a no-holds-barred spirit of cooperation where police service districts could crisscross a region. If we were to pool all the money spent today toward a policing service district we could have the dollars regionally pooled to put all citizens in an efficient, responsive zone with the best quality paid officers and the best equipment for those dedicated officers.

How long can we continue to support the local effort and all the regulations? It baffles me that we can all attempt economic development individually as Maine’s towns and cities, when the economic service district could pool resources and attempt business attraction in a more cost effective manner. Instead we spend tax dollars pitting one town against a neighboring town plus giving them the new business opportunity, additional tax- dollar incentives. Just stop and think about a fire service district that put stations strategically positioned to be within acceptable response times, equipped with late-model state-of-the- art equipment, and professionally trained full-time employees.

Please do not take this to be a negative statement against the many volunteers who provide the core of our firefighting responders in many Maine communities, but the stakes have kept rising from the time every- one came running to the station when the alarm rang, jumped on the back of a truck and rushed into the burning building. All this with little or no tactical training. For those old enough to remember what I describe, compare this to today’s equipment and training standards and calculate in your mind the costs to all Maine cities and towns. What about a fire service district?

We all seem to have a greater interest in sprawl and conserving resources but again without a consolidated effort splintered fragmented planning efforts by some towns sends development to those without thus sending sprawl to another community. I won’t attempt to demonstrate the effects on education but the opportunities exists in a state that educates 4.44 percent fewer students today than 10 years ago (10-year trend resident pupil counts Oct. 1, 1994 to Oct. 1, 2003). Furthermore the projected 10-year trend going forward reflects a drop of 12.50 percent.

The list can go on and on with the vision as the opportunities are endless if we have the will and desire to make things better.

Maine is rich in tradition but in the end do those served really care who responds as long as they respond quickly, efficiently with trained people and top-quality equipment?

Stop tweaking, listen to the people and fix the problem with a long-term vision that spells real tax relief for all Maine citizens in all parts of Maine.

Rod Hathaway is a past member of the Veazie Town Council and of the Penobscot County Budget Committee.