Brewer attacks Barrett on regionalization

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BREWER – It’s mud season, and the mud is flying, and it’s being thrown in the direction of the Queen City. More specifically, at Bangor City Manager Edward Barrett.

Several Brewer City Council members claim that Barrett has opposed regionalization efforts unless Bangor takes the lead and that the city manager has stopped numerous Brewer-initiated partnership projects, including several recent ones, during his 17 years in Bangor.

Brewer councilors are incensed about Barrett’s comments at a January gathering of the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce, during which the city manager announced that his efforts to “make one community” out of Bangor and Brewer have not been well-received by Brewer officials.

“I think the first discussion lasted zero seconds,” Barrett was quoted in a Jan. 10 Bangor Daily News article. “The second one lasted about 30 seconds, so maybe we’re getting somewhere.”

His comment, intended to be humorous, has been blown out of proportion, Barrett said on Friday.

“It was a joke,” he said. “There has always been a good working relationship with the communities.”

Brewer city leaders, however, are not laughing.

“He’s offered to take over the city of Brewer and incorporate it into the city of Bangor – that is not regionalization,” Brewer Councilor Manley DeBeck, one of the more vocal critics of Barrett, said recently. “Regionalization is two communities working together for the benefit of everybody.

“Regionalization is not going to work if one community thinks [that] if you give them the money, they’ll run it,” he said.

After a resident attending the March 8 Brewer City Council meeting asked why Bangor and Brewer weren’t collaborating on more projects, Councilor Larry Doughty held back no punches.

“The problem with regionalization is across the river,” he said. “It’s the city manager over there. The city manager is the obstructionist to regionalization.”

Other Brewer councilors had criticized Barrett publicly at a Feb. 8 meeting during which Doughty, who has sat on the Brewer council for 17 years, said: “Until Barrett moves on, I don’t think there will be any changes.”

Bangor’s refusal to join Penobscot Regional Communications Center, which dispatches police, fire and ambulance services for communities in the county, is one example of Bangor’s unwillingness to adapt to regional partnerships in the area already under way, DeBeck said during an interview.

“To me, PRCC is the first step [to regionalization] for everybody in the county,” he said.

Bangor conducted an in-depth analysis of PRCC and determined that, at that time, “regional dispatch was not quite capable of meeting our needs,” Barrett said during an interview.

Now that the city has lost its lawsuit against paying Penobscot County for a service it doesn’t use and PRCC has made significant improvements, the city is reconsidering joining, Barrett said.

Brewer also led a resolve among 110 communities statewide that called for extra state funding for schools to be used for tax relief in late 2004. All area communities signed on – except for Bangor, another slight, according to Brewer officials.

Barrett said last week that the resolve was unclear and that is why Bangor didn’t endorse it.

When Eastern Fine Paper Co., located in Brewer, closed its doors in January 2004, residents from several local communities, including Bucksport, made donations to the displaced workers.

Bangor officials made no donation.

After giving Millinocket $5,000 in late 2003 when that community’s mill closed, Bangor councilors thought, “Where would it end?” Bangor City Councilor Dan Tremble said last week.

He said the decision had nothing to do with the fact the defunct mill was in Brewer.

Bangor city officials are saying Brewer councilors are overreacting to Barrett’s comments and are hot under the collar only because the two communities are friendly rivals.

The two communities do share some services and are working together now to create new partnerships, city officials from both communities said.

“[Penobscot Energy Recovery Co.] in Orrington is a perfect example of a regional effort Bangor and Brewer were both instrumental with,” Barrett noted.

The BAT Community Connector, the area’s public transit system, is another example of a regional entity that is supported by several communities, including Bangor and Brewer, the Bangor city manager said.

Not all city leaders in Brewer feel there is an issue.

City Manager Steve Bost said there are numerous examples of partnerships between the two cities. Brewer Mayor Joseph Ferris also said he’s a 30-year friend of Bangor Council Chairman Frank Farrington and that the two communities are working together.

“I do think there is interest in working with Brewer,” Ferris said. “Clearly Mayor Farrington is interested in moving forward in this regard. Regionalization is important, and we understand it’s important. One of my goals is to move forward with that regard.”

The two communities currently are discussing sharing engineering services, trash collection and recycling, street line painting and routine street paving, both Bost and Barrett said.

Regionalized traffic engineering and signal maintenance are two other areas that could be combined, along with joint purchasing and marketing the two waterfronts, the two city managers each said.

“We’ve met several times, and we’re focusing primarily on areas where we could consolidate or share services,” Bost said. “Ed and I are in direct contact with department heads to talk about some of the things we could work on together.”

The tension between Bangor and Brewer has a long history and is linked to friendly competition between the two sister cities, Barrett said.

“I think that’s pretty natural, with two high schools that compete against each other, that there would be a friendly rivalry between the two,” he said.

Sometimes the rivalry is fun, and sometimes it can lead to hurt feelings, but what’s important is to see how the region as a whole benefits, Tremble, a former Bangor mayor, said on Thursday.

“It doesn’t make sense that we should compete for something that will benefit the whole region,” he said. “Competition is a good thing when it benefits someone. If we pooled our resources, we could do a lot.”

The choice of Bangor by L.L. Bean to locate its fourth calling center is an example of how a business development in one city can benefit other communities, Farrington said Friday.

“We were lucky enough to have L.L. Bean pick Bangor, but they didn’t pick Bangor for the city – they picked Bangor for the region,” he said. “The most important thing is to bring the business to the region because it helps not only Bangor and Brewer, but Hermon, Hampden, Veazie and Old Town and Orono, too.”

Part of the issue over community partnerships centers on the way the council changes from year to year, Tremble said.

“Part of the problem with Ed is that he works with the council and the council hasn’t been supportive [of regionalization],” he said. “I think that’s the biggest part.”

Different councils can have different goals.

“I think this council believes we have to find a way to regionalize,” Tremble said. “I think it’s important to see what we can do. It’s mostly about communication.

“Regionalization has to be a two-way street with benefits for everyone,” he said. “I think Bangor is just taking its time.”

The residents of each city also can direct the rivalry, both Tremble and Barrett pointed out. Numerous Bangor residents have made it clear they don’t want to be part of the PRCC, the two officials said.

“Absolutely it’s competition,” Doughty of Brewer said, adding that he doesn’t think the competition between Bangor and Brewer is always friendly.

“Bangor professes that they want to work with the city of Brewer on development for the general area, but that’s a bunch of hooey-do,” he said last week. “I don’t think Bangor cares about Brewer at all.”