Torn in a small town Some on Peaks Island want break from Portland

PEAKS ISLAND – As Lisa Lynch’s pickup truck came to a stop on Welch Street, its tires bumped and bounced over the high, granite curb in front of her small cafe. “Those curbs are the second thing we’re going to do when we become a town,” Howard Pedlikin, standing nearby, jokingly called out to Lynch as she smiled and walked inside.

Pedlikin, who is helping lead the island community’s effort to secede from the city of Portland, wouldn’t say what the first order of business would be, calling it “too personal.”

While Pedlikin considers the curbs “unnecessary and too expensive” for the small island community, they are a relatively minor grievance among the secessionists, as they are commonly called on the island.

Driving the effort, they say, is a desire to have direct control over how to raise and spend their tax dollars, a power that now rests on the mainland, which secessionists say has little in common with their island of 1,000 year-round residents.

“We’re not ‘city,'” said secessionist Judy Piawlock, who has lived on the island’s Back Shore for 19 years. “Portland is ‘city.'”

The debate offers a stark contrast to that taking place in the farthest reaches of northern and eastern Maine, where some rural towns, faced with dwindling populations, are exploring ways to dissolve their local governments and turn control over to the state.

Local control is just what the Peaks Island Independence Committee is seeking, its officials say, and last month they marched to City Hall in Portland to deliver nearly 600 signatures from island voters who want to explore the idea of secession.

Now that those signatures have been verified, as required by state law, a public hearing will be scheduled for sometime in March, according to city officials.

Jerry Garman will surely be among those in attendance.

Garman, who first came to the island in 1958, said he sees no reason to split from Portland. City officials, he said, have been responsive to problems raised by islanders, who are represented not only on the City Council but also on a special advisory committee to the city.

“We might as well have a bridge,” Garman said of the close relationship with Portland, a 20-minute ferry ride across Casco Bay.

Among the most pressing concerns for Garman and his fellow “unionists” is the fate of the island’s small kindergarten to fifth-grade school, built in 1832 and attended by about 50 children. Teachers there have expressed opposition to leaving the Portland school system and potentially giving up the benefits and seniority they have earned.

The school’s future was foremost in the mind of Leslie Davis, she said over the roar of the midmorning ferry pulling out to Portland. The young mother said she was doubtful that a newly formed small town could keep the school running while lowering taxes, as promised.

“I want my daughter to go there,” said Davis looking at her 6-month-old, Samantha Flynn, bundled up in a stroller next to her seat on the ferry.

Davis, whose husband is a Portland firefighter, opposes secession. Nevertheless, she sheepishly admitted signing the petition, albeit for a different reason.

“I think a lot of people signed it for the same reason I did … just to get the person to go away,” she said.

It has been 11 years since Peaks Island last tried to secede. The effort failed to win the required legislative approval, falling one vote short in the Senate.

Like that 1995 effort, the current secession try was sparked by a citywide property revaluation. As was the case in 1995, property values on Peaks, where homes routinely sell for $500,000 or more, saw a significant increase.

But high property taxes are not unique to Portland, said former state lawmaker and Peaks Island resident Mavourneen Thompson, who opposes secession. She said the Legislature must give the state’s service centers such as Bangor and Portland alternatives – such as a local option sales tax – to raise revenue.

Although a statewide issue, high property taxes were not a driving factor in another secession effort just north of Peaks on Chebeague Island.

Chebeague, which has 330 year-round residents, has been part of the town of Cumberland for 184 years. Its secession effort was born after the school district floated the idea of sending the island’s fourth- and fifth-graders to the mainland schools, according to islander Jeff Putnam.

“We saw that as a huge threat,” said Putnam, a 27-year-old lobsterman who considered the move a first step in closing the island school.

Now, months into the negotiations with the town over whether to split, a tentative agreement has been reached and is scheduled to go before the Legislature next month.

While the school issue might have prompted the effort, Putnam said, it is the underlying issue of local control that has kept it alive.

Whatever the result of the Peaks Island secession effort, that discussion of self-governance has been a valuable one for islanders, said Ellen Mahoney, who strolled along the island’s streets recently with her two small children in tow.

“I think it’s an excellent democratic exercise,” she said.