Three of five Rangeley selectmen: Chairman Cynthia Egan, Vice-Chairman Ethna Thompson, and Samantha White, attended the June 20th board of selectmen’s meeting. Selectmen Ethan Shaffer and Shelly Lowell were absent.

NEW VENDOR’S LICENSE APPLICATION

The first item of interest was a public hearing regarding an application for a new vendor’s license from Chelsea Croteau of Fresh Eatz who wants to offer food at the Hideaway at 2419 Main St. on Tuesdays, while still selling at the local farmer’s market on Thursdays.

Croteau, “This is my husband, Derek. I’m out of Jay. We were up in the farmers market last year, but just a table and tent, but this year we have upgraded our business to a food trailer. So we make Korean food. I used to live in Korea for about six years. So that’s where it all stems from. I’m very passionate about the cuisine and bringing some different flavors to Rangeley.”

Stephanie Barea, owner of the Rangeley Hideaway intends to host Fresh Eatz. “We have an RV hook up on site, so they’ll be able to plug in right there and as of last week I’ve received approval from the Planning Commission to amend our Conditional Use Permit to allow up to two vendors on our property when we’re open.”

The Conditional Use Permit will be on the agenda for final approval at the next Planning Board meeting to be held on June 28th.

BOB CARLTON- PROPOSED HIGH PEAKS WILDLIFE REFUGE

After closing the public hearing portion of the meeting, Egan welcomed Bob Carlton who wanted to address his concerns regarding the proposed High Peaks Wildlife Refuge.

In order to bring listeners up to speed, Egan related that at a prior selectmen’s meeting both a representative from the Umbagog Wildlife Refuge as well as Nancy Perlson, came to discuss what amounts to a 400,000 acre area.

Carlton, “I’m not here as a commissioner tonight. I’m here as a concerned citizen, as a licensed forester, as a sportsman, as a taxpayer, as you know, a user of the High Peaks and I think it was back in May when Nancy (Perlson) sent me an e-mail saying, hey, ‘I’m working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to create a wildlife preserve and I thought you’d be interested in this as a Commissioner and all this other stuff and my experience with the feds, red flags went up big time, and as I started to look into it, I started to remember we went through this ten years ago. And I don’t know if you remember, but they were here in Rangeley 10 years ago, and they were at Sugarloaf pitching this High Peaks Wildlife Refuge and Steve Philbrick, God rest his soul was one of the driving forces that said ‘no, no, no,’ because I think the quote was it’s a Trojan horse. So once that all started, we got all the concerned parties involved and we started talking, we went to the listening session like you had here in Rangeley and we went to one in Farmington and there was just a bunch of people taking notes and looking for answers and the big question we had was ‘why are you here? Who asked you to come here? Was it the governor? Was it the state? Was it IFW? Parks and Lands?’ And they said ‘no, no, no’, and everything was very vague. And we asked for more details.”

Carlton continued to discuss his uneasiness and after talking to many of his colleagues formed a grassroots group in a very short period of time that includes former State Senator Tom Saviello and lobbyist James Cody. “We’ve had a lot of conversations with Paul Casey and we’re getting bits and pieces and what they want to do is a land protection plan. Again, we don’t know where, we don’t know what, but somewhere in the high peaks. And that high peaks could be anywhere from Roxbury up to Rangeley, over to Mount Abram, Sugarloaf, Bigelow.”

He referred to the oval on the focus area graphic and mentioned how the issue went away about ten years ago and now it’s back and he has not been convinced there is a legitimate reason why.

“Here it is 10 years later and they’re back. So, some of us that were around for that last session 10 years ago said ‘Why does this keep happening? And then I started thinking. We also had an attempt to try to turn the top of Saddleback into a national park. I’m sure some of you remember that and that was very contentious and once again, it’s the feds trying to establish themselves here in the widely used terms of high peaks. My experience as a forester and 40 years in the business has worked off and on with the feds, most recently, as this past winter, never good.”

He offered some specific examples in the recent past that would illustrate his point of view reiterating his lack of faith in the federal government. “They have no consideration of the local businesses, areas, and so on and so forth. So we strongly oppose it because once the feds get their foot in the door, they’re here.”

Carlton continued by saying that the area already has 80,000 acres of conservation that included Bigelow, Crocker, Mt. Abram, Perham Stream, Quill Hill, and the Appalachian Trail, and does not agree that more is needed to be discussed at this point, at least not with the federal agencies. “Why do we need another layer over what we have already? We think it’s more important to have state control where we deal with Augusta.  So if you have a problem, you go to IFW in Augusta, you go to Parks and Lands in Augusta and you go to Maine Forest Service in Augusta.”

He spoke of good examples of conservation that he could support such as one in the Carrabassett Valley. “A great deal in the Crocker Preserve that protects the high peaks, it protects everything that needs to be protected, but it still allows hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, ATV’ing, all the traditional uses, trapping,… everything that is traditional is still there and it was a sweetheart deal, everybody won on that deal. We don’t feel that way with the feds. They’ll tell you whatever they want. ‘Oh, we’ll allow snowmobiling but will they allow snowmobiling where you want to go? One of the things that’s so successful for this part of Northern Franklin County is we have open land.”

After naming some open land areas he continued to voice his concern. “We feel once they get in there that will start to disappear and you know, they’ll tell you everything you want to hear but what I’m worried about is what’ they’re not telling you and I think there’s other agenda items that are in the background.”

He finished up by inviting interested parties to a stakeholders meeting 4-6pm on June 28th at the Sugarloaf hotel.

“You know, I got enough on my plate. I really, I don’t need another battle to fight, but my wife said, ‘are you willing to die on this hill?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, absolutely’, because you know what we all enjoy here, you know why we live here? Scott Stevens said it best, he said. ‘So you mean the reason that we put up with the cold winters, lousy pay, the excessive travel for all those things that we like to do on our backyard might be threat threatened, I said absolutely and he summed it up the best. So I think it’s a threat, a threat to development. Our economy is booming, you know, growth positive growth for the last two years and looks like we’re going to continue. I look at this as, as a threat to our economy.”

Egan responded with an appreciation for Carlton’s visit and agreed she perceived some vagueness in the proposal.

Carlton added, “I can’t stress this enough. We’re already in conservation, so anything above 2700 feet is already protected. It’s an act of Congress to do anything above 2700 feet. So we already have those protections in place.”

MATT TEARE- ATTAINABLE HOUSING

Next on the agenda was attainable housing with Matt Teare of Rangeley Workforce Housing, LLC, developers, designers, and operators of planned communities who was joined remotely by Matt Primo of the Genesis Fund. Primo, “We’re a non-profit CDFI which is a community development financial institution, and we provide financing and technical assistance to both non-profits and small developers looking to do affordable housing and we’ll lend up to 100%. We’ll go places where banks won’t go for mission related causes and one of which is affordable housing.”

Teare, “So I think I was here almost over a year ago and we had to wait for a conflict of interest to expire. My partner and sponsor John Wasilewski was on the board of Maine State Housing Authority, and he had to resign and then that had to go on for a year before we could really get up and going. But now we’re going. We’ve done all of our due diligence. We’ve done wetland studies, we’ve done all of our survey work, and things. We’ve done a lot of financial work. We’ve done a lot of different models. We did look at the neighboring property. So this is the five acres on Cross Street that we have on our contract. And then we looked at the neighboring property for a little while. There was a pretty good wetland in between the properties, and it just felt like, you know, I heard some concerns about the size of what we were doing and things so we thought we’re better off to set that aside for now and really focus on the original 5 acres. We were, have been in front of the economic development group last month and we did a conceptual meeting with the planning board a few weeks ago too and started to get their input on things so we’re excited to move forward. Really the reason to be here tonight is to ask you, are you interested in partnering with us on this project and if you are interested, could you direct your town manager to spend some time working with us, possibly the town attorney and our attorneys to kind of start working on the details of what that might look like because this is complicated and there’s answers that you’re going to want. We would pick up any cost for the town manager and the town and legal costs, that kind of thing. So that’s really what I’m hoping for tonight to get some direction from you that you’re either interested in this or not interested in this. The property we’re looking at, the property we’ve been looking at the different things that I said we’re in front of the planning board, but we have 14 home sites on there right now. And what we’re hoping to do is of those 14 home sites do eight small single families. So these are about 1200 square feet. And then do 6 duplexes. And these are also not much bigger than that, about 1300 square feet. There’s a first a first floor unit and the 2nd floor unit.”

He conveyed their recommendation of a mix of market rate and subsidized duplexes.

“So our what we would need the sources of the money to make the numbers work are Misha, who provides $60,000 per unit for the subsidized units, the market rate homes would provide not quite that much, but they would help subsidize. And then we’d be looking to the tab for help with our infrastructure. So those would be kind of the three legs of our stool to make the numbers work on the project.”

In anticipation of specific dollar amounts of affordability he summarized. “We’re looking at Franklin County median area income is about $72,000 a year. What we’d be targeting is. 80-120% varying median income. What does that mean? It’s basically $40,000 to $85,000 a year of annual income. In terms of monthly ownership costs, $1000 to $1700 monthly ownership costs. And that would work out to a home sales price of $120,000 to $214,000.”

After questions regarding specifics of anticipated costs, and possible financial resources, the selectmen agreed to approve the motion that authorizes Rangeley’s Town Manager Joe Roach to work with Rangeley Workforce Housing, LLC, the Economic Development Committee as well as attorneys, to move forward.”

Selectman Thompson, “I think each of us wholeheartedly support the path forward on this project.” Egan chimed in with words of agreement over the time that had passed since his last visit and Thompson added, “Thank you by the way for sticking out the year. We know that these things can be time consuming, and while people think we may have been sleeping on the subject, we have not been.”

CONSENT ITEMS:

Event permits for Maine Forest Museum’s Logging Festival & Parade and July 15, 2023 10am-12pm, Doll Carriage Parade July 3, 2023 10-11am, Rangeley Region Guides & Sportsman’s Association’s Strawberry Festival July 13, 2023 10am-4pm, Rangeley Friends of the Arts Walk to Bethlehem December 10, 2023 5:30-6pm & Street Dance July 19, 2023 6:30-10pm.

Other items on the agenda that were discussed were the Rangely town dock improvements and the Oquossoc Park renovations, both of which won’t be repaired this summer. Provided safe conditions, BMC Diving will prioritize next winter and Oquossoc Park renovations, once studied, would still need to be put out to bid and then approved. Not wanting to throw good money after bad, they are hoping for a long-term solution as opposed to a money wasting band-aid.

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