By Amanda Estes

Staff Writer

    More than 20 years have passed since city councilors
in Portland and South Portland have met in a joint workshop setting,
but officials from both cities vowed the collaborative efforts
discussed at a Jan. 2 meeting would not die that night.

    Councilors, city managers and department heads from
Portland and South Portland gathered at the South Portland Community
Center with the purpose of identifying projects and initiatives of
mutual interest such as school funding, public safety, infrastructure
improvements and public transit.

    “I think we have to come to realize ourselves as a
region,” South Portland City Councilor Linda Boudreau said. “Any time
there’s an issue Portland needs some help with, I would invite you to
bring in your neighbors. Your problems are frequently our problems.”

    To ensure future collaboration, both councils have
elected to appoint two of their members to a liaison committee.  

    One problem shared by both municipalities is what
officials on both sides of the harbor consider an inequitable school
funding formula.

    South Portland Mayor Jim Soule, who called for the
city of South Portland and neighboring communities to secede from the
state last month, has said South Portland and other service centers
provide the majority of jobs and revenue for the state and receive a
disproportionate share of state aid for education. He has said the
current funding formula rewards those communities that are not bringing
business and industry to town.

    During the workshop, Soule said property valuation
is not a good indicator of a community’s ability to pay for education
and called for income to be reinstated as a weighted factor in
determining a municipalities’ overall wealth.   

    Soule was a member of the Rosser Commission, a
committee appointed by the legislature to make recommendations about
ways to change the state’s funding of education. In 1995, the
legislature adopted the commission’s recommendation to adjust the
formula to include household income and cost of living. According to
data provided by Soule, a year after a 15 percent weighted median
income factor was added to the formula, South Portland received roughly
$4.3 million in state aid or 20.45 percent of the total school budget.
When the income factor was eliminated in 2006, state aid totaled
roughly $4.2 million or 11.57 percent of the total budget, according to
data provided by Soule.

    Portland Mayor Edward Suslovic said it may be time
to reinvest in the Maine Service Centers Coalition, which was formed in
2001 to promote the needs of the roughly 77 service centers in the
state to elected officials, encourage networking and collaboration
between municipalities, and educate residents about the importance of
thriving service centers.  Suslovic said hosting the next
gathering of the coalition might prove helpful in bringing more elected
officials together. He also advocated for increasing the weight of the
free and reduced-price lunch program in state education aid and a
statewide 1 percent increase in sales tax, with the funds returning to
their cities of origin.

    While some councilors in both cities felt a smaller
coalition of communities may be more effective, the group as a whole
agreed there needs to be more communication with their respective
legislative representatives because they are in the minority against a
“rural caucus” in the legislature.

    “Why don’t [legislators] have any power?” said South
Portland City Councilor Maxine Beecher. “We’ve got to hear that. You’ve
got to know what the problem is before you can move forward.”

    On Jan. 5, South Portland City Councilors and school
board members brought their concerns to state representatives including
Jane Eberle (D-South Portland) during a joint workshop.  Eberle
said school officials voiced concerns about the school administrative
reorganization law and encouraged her to vote for a proposal to push
back the referendum vote on the school budget by a year, a proposal
Eberle favors.

    “I know there’s a lot of support among legislators [for the proposal],” she said Monday.

    Portland and South Portland public safety officials
also found support for their ongoing efforts to work together on
several projects of importance to both communities.

South Portland Fire Chief Kevin Guimond and Portland Fire Chief Fred
LaMontagne said they are meeting weekly as they progress in
consolidating the cities’ two emergency dispatch services into one
public service access point or PSAP, a mandate from the Maine Public
Utilities Commission that carries a deadline of Oct. 1.

South Portland began swapping over its computer aided dispatch and
records management software  Jan. 1, according to a press release
from South Portland Lieutenant Frank Clark. Guimond said they have
found South Portland’s phone system is the more advanced of the two
cities, but Portland’s computer system is the better of the two.  

    South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins said
officials hope to complete a Casco Bay Bridge emergency evacuation plan
this year. The plan would outline traffic and detours, shelters,
methods of transportation to shelters, special population needs,
incident management and risk assessment.

    “It mostly affects Cape Elizabeth, South Portland
and Scarborough as residents flee the coast using the bridge,” Googins
said. “It also affects Portland because guess where they’re going to
go?”

    Portland City Councilor James Cohen said residents
have questioned why there aren’t more sophisticated signs located on
the approach to the bridge, informing motorists of how long the
drawbridge has been up so they can seek an alternative route if need
be.

    Guimond said the technology could also benefit
public safety officials at times when ambulance drivers don’t know if
it is better to try and navigate across the bridge or treat a victim at
the scene.