Lawmakers act to float foundering boat school

EASTPORT – The Boat School has been given new buoyancy now that the full Legislature has voted to overturn a 7-6 ought-not-to-pass vote last week by the Appropriations Committee.

For a while, it looked as though LD 1948, “An Act to Save the Marine Technology Center and Strengthen Maine’s Boatbuilding Workforce,” was going to sink under a partisan vote that found the majority of the Democrats voting against it, while the majority of the Republicans with the help of one Democrat voting to pass it.

It was Sen. Kevin Raye, R-Perry, who stood at the helm, pushing the legislation forward.

On Friday, the Senate approved the bill 32-3, while the House followed with a 106-40 vote. Raye said that Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, who originally had voted against the bill in committee, gave it a thumbs up when it went to the floor of the Senate.

Now the bill must compete with other state money for the $433,877 it needs to survive.

Raye said Tuesday he plans to bird dog the bill through committee. The Appropriations Committee is expected to take up the matter again this month.

The state senator said he was pleased when he was able to get both Senate and House approval. “We flipped it. We were able to reverse that and not in a small way,” he said. “This is an important step and a real shot in the arm and sort of validates the effort.”

Officially called the Marine Technology Center, it is widely known simply as the boat school and is a branch of Calais-based Washington County Community College. It is located at Deep Cove in Eastport.

The school narrowly avoided being closed two years ago after Bill Cassidy, president of the community college, announced plans to move the facility to the Calais campus.

Cassidy said Tuesday that he was pleased with this latest development. “It’s another step in the journey,” he said. He praised Raye and the members of the Washington County delegation for pushing the funding bill.

“I am very pleased the Senate and House recognized the importance of funding the boat school,” City Manager George “Bud” Finch said. “We now anxiously await the financial numbers from the Appropriation Committee.”

And it was Raye who rallied the support of the Legislature.

In the Senate debate before the vote, Raye recounted for his colleagues the impact of repeated budget reductions that he termed “death by a thousand cuts” for the boat school.

“A facility that once boasted a full-time director, a librarian, two full-time support staff, a full-time custodian, a maintenance mechanic and seven faculty positions, now has just one instructor, one part-time janitor and one part-time clerical person,” Raye said in a prepared release. “It was formerly able to offer a full-range of vital programs, including marine mechanics … as well as boat building, with options for specialization in design, composite construction, boat restoration, traditional boat building, boat-handling and safety.”

Over the past decade, Raye went on to say, the boat school has faced tough times. “It has suffered inordinate cuts that have virtually gutted its ability to recruit students,” Raye said. “Today it is down to just boat building and we need to regain lost ground.”

Raye pointed to the strong support of Maine’s boat building industry for the legislation. He said that the $650 million industry employs 5,000 Mainers and is currently the only growth sector in Maine’s manufacturing economy. He also noted that the very first vote of the Governor’s Task Force on Washington County Economic Development was unanimous in their support of the bill.

And the governor wants to keep the school afloat. During a conference held in Calais last month, Baldacci said that the boat school is not going to close on his watch. Maine-built boats are the best, the governor said. “It’s an opportunity that I am not going to allow to get out of my grasp.”

Although Baldacci said he would work to keep the program in Eastport, if it should be transferred to Calais, he said, his staff would try to make it “stronger and better and bigger than ever before.”