Town may offer input if land deal passes

MILLINOCKET – If the Legislature OKs a proposed $14 million land swap expanding Baxter State Park, town officials will be asked to join a subcommittee that will help spend $2.5 million buying Penobscot County land for traditional uses, state Conservation Commissioner Patrick McGowan said Friday.

McGowan promised that the $2.5 million will be part of $5.5 million generated by the swap that the state Department of Conservation will spend on purchases in Penobscot, Franklin, Aroostook and Washington counties.

Ideally, the money will buy 2 acres “of the best hunting habitat we can find” for every acre lost to traditional uses, McGowan said.

“The idea is that we wouldn’t do things to shut people out,” McGowan said Friday. “We would do things with people at the table, with maps in front of them, with wildlife and science information like the number of deer per square mile, the number of moose, the trail opportunities. That’s what we want.”

McGowan was reacting in part to a Town Council unanimous vote Thursday night to support the proposed land swap if certain conditions are met, including local officials having a voice on all future land transactions involving taxpayer dollars and the maintenance of traditional uses in the region.

McGowan’s agency is also, he said, the state’s biggest proponent for sportsmen and maintaining, if not expanding, traditional economic and sportsmen’s uses of public lands.

Town Manager Eugene Conlogue and Town Councilor Wallace Paul’s reaction Friday to McGowan’s proposal was mixed.

“It’s a start,” Conlogue said. “We need to know more about it, more detail, but it’s a start. It’s something we can talk about.”

“That was what the deal was right along, that they were going to replace the land that was lost,” Paul said. “It mitigates our concerns in that there is some relief to the loss of traditional uses, but I don’t think it addresses the big picture.”

McGowan said he could not promise what councilors really sought – a voice in such transactions in the earliest stages of negotiation, before state officials announce them to the public and the deals are voted upon by the Legislature.

If they are to be successful, such land negotiations must be conducted privately, as the law allows, McGowan said. Public input is welcome during the hearing process, which determines whether such deals are made final.

The Legislature’s hearing process is due to start Monday in Augusta.

Paul and Conlogue said that across the state, rural government officials and many residents feel that state government, private landowners and conservationists in distant places are deciding in secret, through such negotiations as the land swap, what is to be done with them and the land around them.

Local residents and officials are then presented with deals such as the swap that look like a fait accompli.

“The public should have been at the table before it got to this point, and that’s what the resolve calls for, is a seat at this proverbial table,” said Conlogue, who wrote the fine-tuned version of the resolution and e-mailed it to councilors Friday. “If it weren’t for the hearings beginning Monday, the public would still be shut out of the process.”

Conlogue forwarded the council’s resolution to East Millinocket, Mattawamkeag and Medway officials for review on Friday, while Paul will be meeting with an official from another northern community to discuss the resolution.

They believe the resolution might be the beginning of a groundswell of local public officials who seek greater voice in how state officials and large conservation groups do business, Paul said.

“It’s almost an urban-rural battle here, and rural life is being callously ignored. This is what we are saying and people here are at various stages of being fed up with it,” Paul said.

He characterized the sentiment as, “What’s going to happen to me and my life is not going to be decided in Augusta, Portland, or Concord, Massachusetts, without me having a big say in it.

“The whole north, everyone in the rural parts of Maine, is beginning to feel that way,” Paul added. “Throwing us a bone [with the $5.5 million purchase plans] is not going to fix it. It’s not going to satisfy people up here.

“We are going to get into the discussion. We are going to have a say. We are not going to be swept off into a corner.”