Portland’s Transition Trifecta

  In the movie “Back to the Future, Part 2,” my favorite of the trilogy, after travelling forward to the year 2015 and then returning to 1985, Marty McFly discovered a very different place than the one from which he left. To find out what happened to turn his sedate suburb into the chaotic place it had become, he sought out Doc Brown who dusted off his chalkboard to illustrate what had happened.

  Doc drew a straight line to illustrate the timeline of events that served to create the world which Marty had always known, then drew another line that took off from the same starting point and went up at an angle to display the alternate, less savory timeline in which they found themselves.



The DeLorean

  With the large-scale changes in the upper management of our city this year at city hall with the new city manager, at the police department with the exit of Chief Craig and the upcoming mayoral election, I feel like we’re at a starting point in the timeline of Portland’s future. The exciting (and occasionally worrisome) part is that the outcome could go either way.

  It’s really too bad for the city that Chief Craig is departing. Craig brought a level of professionalism and leadership to the position that was sorely needed. The neighborhood policing program, improving relations with folks who have moved here from away and a drop in crime are all held securely in his belt. Looking to the future, while I understand Councilor Donaghue’s concerns about hiring from within, to not do so would be to squander the great results we got from a big city professional the likes of which we may never see again in our humble abode. A new person coming in from away would naturally want to shake things up and do it his or her own way. Going with someone currently on our force who has a long term commitment to Portland and has worked under Craig is the way to go to grow on his successes.

  Mark Rees is starting soon as our new city manager. The city manager position is an example of one that needed the same treatment with regard to hiring that the police chief position received two years ago. Instead of an automatic internal promotion our council actually did the right thing and conducted a nationwide search to find the right fit. I feel really good about Rees. Typically, online posts or editorial responses to news stories lean toward the negative. In the Eagle Tribune, the hometown newspaper of Rees’ current town, North Andover, Massachusetts, reactions to his departure were those of sadness and well wishes. One comment that stuck with me in particular was along the lines of “We lost the only person in town hall with any common sense.” That’s exactly what the ‘doc’ ordered here.

  As to our future mayor, it’s still too early to tell at what angle the future timeline will pencil out to be. Two percent of the population seems to be running, and although they’re all out with their various slogans and position statements, no one is yet leading the pack for me. But in this case, no matter the outcome, having an elected mayor promises to be a good thing for Portland that, due to the lack of power the mayor will have, at the very least shouldn’t create the nightmare version of 1985 from the movie.

  So, no matter what horrible things happen around the world or in our country in the future, Portland’s timeline, courtesy of this transition trifecta, is looking bright. It could still go either way, of course, but that is what is making these times in which we live exciting ones to be a Portlander!

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the head paperboy for The Portland Daily Sun)

K-9’s, Casco Bay High and Graffiti, oh my!

POLICE DOGGIES AT PORTLAND HIGH

I see there have been some “behind the scenes” discussions on allowing police dogs to roam the halls of Portland High School looking for students that are the end-users of the drugs police are failing to prevent entering the city. An award-winning bad idea, we may as well skip the K-9‘s and go right for the promotion of the environment the dogs would create and install iron jail bars on the windows of the school.

See, when you treat a human being, which is what the kids that attend Portland High School are despite adult attempts at treating them anything but, like criminals, the result will be a student populace that will act out as such. The fault for the perceived drug problem at the Portland high schools lie not with the students who posses the drugs, but with the police department that allows the sale of said drugs on the street. Because the department has failed in that regard, the obvious scapegoat is the most vulnerable one: a person who has little recourse in a juvenile criminal system set up to ruin rather than improve the lives of kids buying the drugs that shouldn’t be here in the first place.

Allowing doggies to roam the halls not only disenfranchises end users found in possession, but also students who want nothing to do with the drug culture that are forced to, in 1939 German parlance “show their papers,” and in this instance “omit their scent.” At least with the newly installed iron jail bars in the windows, all students would know upon gazing at the building before entry that the system is one that is out to get them, whether they’re high or not.

CASCO BAY HIGH SCHOOL

In last Friday’s Daily Sun, I saw that Casco Bay High School received a glowing report from the “second best” and less expensive accreditation firm Great Schools Partnership. I have been a student at a High School going through accreditation with the high-class firm New England Association of Schools and Colleges and while the “Partnership’s” process might be more thorough, I would tend to doubt it.

At Kennebunk High School in 1994, the school was up for accreditation and needed to have a team of people come visit the school for two weeks. Teachers spent a month leading up to that time cleaning their classrooms, putting up displays that served to excite the visiting education “professionals,” and beat into the student populace that not only had we better behave, but that the visiting evaluators would be talking with a small group of random students and that it would be appreciated, if we were selected, to offer positive anecdotes about the school. Seeing as how that was going to be a stretch, we were even offered small “cheat sheets” as to what we might say. Going the extra mile the school, having removed stall doors in the rest rooms to deter smoking there, put them back on for the very special visit.

Did Casco Bay High School resort to these sorts of shenanigans to get their glowing report? It’s happened before. Is it the exemplary place of learning that was outlined in this independent report? Probably not.

GRAFFITI REDUX

Congratulations to the city council for getting the Suslovic Graffiti Law passed. It was toned down a bit, removing the language that insisted a building owner in the city submit a plan for removal of graffiti if said owner was victimized because the police department and city failed to prevent it from happening in the first place. I suppose the backlash from homeowners was a little more a council with three mayoral candidates on it could take. The amended ordinance fines homeowners only if the city has to remove the markings. I wouldn’t expect a major increase in revenue from the fine with the city in charge of removal, as they’re unable and unwilling to remove graffiti defacing city property as it is. I was a little disappointed, as I was looking forward to submitting my plan to the city if I were marked. It would have made for an entertaining read.

I would have even run it here.

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the circulation manager for The Portland Daily Sun and can be found online at spoffordnews.com)

Things Aren’t Going Well

   Things are quickly deteriorating around the world despite the main stream media’s contention that the major concern facing our country is the future of a horny New York congressman’s tenure in a governmental body that over the last 20 years have performed acts against us more corrupt and heinous than a few pictures of Weiner’s underpants.

   What started as a neatly packaged uprising in North Africa amongst people marketed to us as radical Muslims, but are really just people on the same planet as you and I who happen to pray to a different god, has now jumped north across the Mediterranean Sea to countries with people who have a lot more in common with us in appearance and lifestyle.

   People in Greece have taken to the streets to oppose vast austerity measures the Greek government needs to implement in order to satisfy their debt to the European Central Bank, the European equivalent to our privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. The people there are angry at the prospect of their government’s having to pay back, at interest, money irresponsibly loaned to it to inflate their economy and lifestyles beyond their natural means. The movement is being billed to us here as a simple uprising. Locally, in Greek newspapers, blogs, twitter feeds and on the streets it is being discussed among the people as a revolution ever as strong as what we witnessed in Egypt.

   The collapse of the European Union doesn’t stop in Greece. Just yesterday, the Irish government, in response to people demonstrating there, rebuked the European Central Bank’s demand that instead of default they accept loans to prop up their banks and insure their investor’s large monetary position in them. The troubles in Spain and Portugal continue as well. In Germany and France, the countries that have been propping them all up, people have begun to protest any additional monetary assistance for the “PIIGS.” With the continuing unrest, which will only grow when this spring’s worldwide drought starts to interrupt food supply and energy shortages there continue to crimp growth, the disintegration of the European Union is now less theory and more realistic outcome.

   Across the globe in China, even with the information barriers set up to keep internal affairs under wraps, news is starting to trickle out from Reuters and other international news agencies that huge protests and “serious rioting” is beginning to break out in large Chinese metropolitan areas. People involved in these protests aren’t holding placards; they’re bombing government buildings and fighting police. China supplies all our plastic pumpkins. Get yours now before supplies run out.

   Japan’s troubles continue unabated. Three reactors at the Fukushima plant are still in a state of meltdown. Even in the most civil society on earth, people there have protested the continued use of nuclear power, resulting in the shutdown of not only Fukushima but other nuclear reactors in the country. Enough power capacity has been permanently lost to stifle, if not stop, production of most products that support everything technology-based in the world. Simply put, I wouldn’t expect to see an IPad 3 anytime soon, if ever.

   Here at home, we’re told everything is fine. Sure, there are some problems, but people in government are working on it and certainly will have them fixed and the country back on the road to prosperity in no time. But are we still believing the same government that brought us to Iraq to extinguish WMDs; Told us the bailouts would jump start things for us when they simply preserved the wealth of others; Insisted in the early 2000’s that the best investment a family could make was in real estate because values would could go nowhere but up; Implied that we would return to due process for our enemies by closing military detention camps, ending torture, and bringing supposed combatants to trial in an open court of law?

   I’m not.

   We would be in the same predicament as the rest of the world right now if it wasn’t for the wars we manufactured under false pretenses but under the reality that we needed to send our men and women in to Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya for oil to fuel our economy. We would be in a hole deeper than all the “PIIGS” combined if it weren’t for the private bank that issues our currency propping up markets and raiding our treasury to throw money at the big banks. How long is the rest of the world, equally starved of energy and suffering financial turmoil, going to allow us to continue to wreck sovereignty in the name of the American way of life? How long are other countries going to allow us to “take it all” for ourselves killing whoever and destroying whatever lay in our path?

   Tensions are building everywhere, and the civil unrest that is spreading around the globe will find it’s way here when the people of the world, including the American people, take a stand against the corrupt federal government. We’ve all allowed it to go on too long and now it’s beyond repair.

   It’s time to prepare for that reality.

(Jeffrey S. Spofford is the circulation manager for The Portland Daily Sun. His column appears Fridays.)

Can you feel it?

Can you feel it?

When I was a teenager in the early portion of the roaring 90’s, I had a feeling deep in my gut that things were not going to end well for the great social experiment founded so long ago by the brave men we call our forefathers. I would read the news of the day, talking about how the country’s debt was starting to rise by what then was considered to be unconscionable amounts of money but now seems only like a drop in the bucket. The music of the nineties was certainly no help. Depressing, warning of social inequality and even driving artists to self medicate it away with others going even further and ending their lives.

I had only a small group of friends who shared my belief that the system was something not worth giving yourself to in order to fuel the machine. It was a hard time, the 90’s, to be pessimistic about the future state of world, national and local events. The decade featured the greatest technological, social and governmental advances in human history. Certainly, above all, there was prosperity like had never been seen. Eventually, I even gave in and joined the party, moving to a large metropolitan area and joining an internet firm that blossomed like any other company with a dot com, net or ‘communications’ in their suffix.

Then, of course, I was brought back to the reality I hid from even myself in the early part of 2001 when the stock market rebuked the internet firms that were based entirely on the dream philosophy “if you build it, they will come.” I dropped back out of the system. Soon after of course, 9-11 happened – and the massive decline that most certainly was based on the speculative bubble had a new alibi to blame in terrorism. I watched in amazement as our government ramped up the war machine. Sold to us as patriotic revenge, but really to hide the fact that our country’s Madoff-esque ponzi scheme was coming to an end, the wars served to secure our “non-negotiable” interstate driving, prop up the big bank-manipulated markets and to distract us all by keeping us in the dark about what our future held.

But even then things still seemed like they might be okay. I consciously put the illegal wars in the back of my mind. Real estate seemed to take off and people I knew were making more money than ever before. Sure, it was proven that Colin Powell knowingly lied to justify war before the world at the United Nations – but it was okay. We were still able to drive to the supermarket at less than two bucks per gallon for our cheesy poofs and to Florida for thrill rides at Disney. Who was I to argue when people my parents’ age were able to pull hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity from their homes to retire early, and my contemporaries were able to buy their first home by simply filling out a form and getting the keys to a four hundred thousand dollar cape on an eighth of an acre. Sure, the 00’s didn’t feel as great as the nineties, but they were close enough for comfort. The can had been kicked just far enough down the road to keep us sedate.

Then came the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and soon after the real estate collapse. Suddenly, the can met a dip in the road and started to roll backwards. Panic set in, but to our rescue came the marketing campaign of the century. It was one of hope and change; a campaign that seemed to honestly address all of the issues that were plaguing our country and one that promised to make it all right. I bought it lock, stock and barrel. I registered as a democrat. I waited in line in front of Portland High School in the cold wind and snow to cast the vote I believed was going to make everything better and make the 90’s return. Ultimately, I was let down – but I wasn’t surprised.

Now, things are worse and the prospect of returning to even the semi-okay days of 2006 are zero to none. Instead of leveling with us about what’s really going on, our leaders insist that the good times are just ahead. It turns out that they’re lying to us.

The indisputable facts are that our national debt can never be repaid; The worldwide demand for oil has now officially surpassed supply; Massive worldwide droughts this spring are going to cause a global food crises come fall; The Fukushima nuclear plant’s three meltdowns are worse than Chernobyl, have eliminated 40% of the electricity capacity in Japan and have effectively shut down the world’s 3^rd largest economy causing a massive shortage in the industrial pipelines that supply everything technological; And there are trillions of dollars in credit default swap options that can never be covered – more than in 2008. Basically, we’re in the beginning stages of global systemic and economic collapse.

So locally, I smile when I see community gardens. I rejoice when I hear of the establishment of local currencies. I get excited for projects that are creating affordable lodgings in the form of a hostel. I greet public transportation plans with open arms. But when our local leaders are still throwing money at the past with their various TIFs to build mega centers, posh lawyer quarters and airports that won’t be utilized only to turn around and forecast increases in revenue, I know even the people leading Portland are buying the government’s story. But I’m getting the sense that the people that live here aren’t. So, can you feel it? I can.

Let’s find a mayor who can, too.

The future is now at Brentwood Farms Community Garden

   I saw the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in Portland and with the past staring me right in face, I saw the future. Upon leaving Evergreen Cemetery via Brentwood Avenue Sunday, I stumbled upon the Brentwood Farms Community Garden.

   The garden was a like a photo straight out of the history books. There was new fence built of bark-on posts, a scarecrow, two tipi-like structures fashioned from sticks stood at either end of the entrance and the pathways were topped in rough tree bark. It reminded me of the recreated gardens at Plymouth Plantation or Sturbridge.

   The garden was filled with people young and old. Community members were gardening together and having a seemingly good time doing it. The scene was all too perfect, and an example of exactly what needs to be happening on unused city-owned property – food production.

   The garden is located on a piece of land that is technically part of Evergreen Cemetery. Unused for many years, some very ambitious people from the Deering Center Neighborhood Association banded together to create a community garden where families would be able to grow their own food. The garden was established last year and quickly filled up. Seventy-five families, all paying a yearly maintenance fee of $35 per year have completely filled the allocated space, with many more on a waiting list. The families that were lucky enough to get a plot have done a great job cultivating their crops, with every bed weeded and sprouting one thing or another.

   You would think that with food prices soaring and an uncertain future for the agro-business that uses expensive and soon-to-be scarce fuels to not only fertilize but to transport food, that anyone in their right mind would consider this garden to be nothing but a good thing. As it turns out, you’d be wrong.

   I discovered that the garden was not alone when it came to having a group of volunteers who were passionate about the 2 acre parcel. It seems that Evergreen Cemetery also has an organization, friends if you will, that look out for they consider the best interests of the city-run treasure. They call themselves The Friends of Evergreen Cemetery.

   It seems that once the garden started to take off last year, the ‘friends’ took exception to the garden using abutting property that was slated for their “precious.” A plan was drafted to incorporate the land into the cemetery. It’s a great looking plan, too. There are evergreen plantings with asphalt sidewalks that swerve through the whole parcel. Basically, if you love Evergreen Cemetery like I do, you’d love what you’d see. Sadly, the plan has the same positive economic outlook as the city. We’re rapidly approaching a time where we can’t afford to have acres of unproductive lawn and the associated maintenance costs.

   A meeting held early last month that included the Deering Center folks, the friends and the Public Services department read like a cat fight. The first portion of the meeting was spent trying to get everyone to agree to not go to the media, and then flip flopping in the name of transparency. It was then decided that the friends should take all information regarding their plan offline until a later time – which they tried to do, although you can still see it. But the thing that was the most telling thing about the meeting was the assertion by the friends that “since the 1855 Howe Plan; all of Evergreen has been developed in parcels, in part, as the city aggregated land to expand Evergreen. So, historically, the Brentwood Master (the friends’) Plan is entirely consistent with established city practice.”

   In other words, the friends are saying “this is the way we’ve always done it.” But in the future, the way we’ve always done it isn’t going to work. The Deering Center Neighborhood Association deserves the support of the city and all of us for the work they’ve done in building community with a realistic nod to that future – a future that will necessitate the need for locally grown food. You’ll even have a chance to voice that support in person this Saturday, June 11, when the Brentwood Farms Community Garden will have an open house for us to come see what they’ve accomplished. The open house starts at 10am.

   See you there.

Mavodones: The ‘hair’ apparent?

   The cameras were rolling and radio microphones were properly modulated. The 75 cent newspaper that provided a generous forty-five thousand dollar ad gift to help create the new elected mayoral post even showed up. Rosemont was all abuzz Tuesday as the great white hope – The captain that was sure to pilot our collective ship to the promise land of 1998 economics, chamber of commerce socials and smiling group photos on the society page decided, after months of leaving us all holding our breath, to run for the newly created elected mayor seat.

   And why not? Sure, 11 people had been in the race up until the point Nick Mavodones took the created-just-for-him stage, but they were all long shots in the eyes of your corporately sponsored local media. Perhaps we were just wasting our times here at the Sun and over at outlets like The West End News and Bollard even mentioning the others. I’m guessing you don’t think so, though.

   Mavodones was presented to us as a candidate whose only electoral concern was in a two-way race for “Best Hair” with WCSH’s Pat Callaghan. Nick was molded in the stories filed by the newly interested media as the guy to beat. However, the media were stuck in the same old winner-takes-all campaign mindset. The new ranked-choice system will fix that right quick this fall. In a race with 12 people, a number that is sure to grow, he’s not so inevitable.

   As the press conference began, it became clear to me that Mavodones was as backward a thinker as most of our political leaders today. He gave us the usual lines of helping business grow, preserving the social net, improving education and etcetera. Basically, he gave us a look at the progress of last fifteen years, indicated that everything would remain the same and that we would grow on those successes.

   Mavodones, like our leaders at the state and federal levels, is either in total denial or is willfully misleading us about our future. Everything is about to change. Economists from around the world are predicting at best a deep “double dip” recession and at worst a total collapse of the global economic system. By the end of this summer, you will see evidence that the slide we rode downward in the fall of 2008 was only the beginning of a massive change in how the world economies, and indeed, our little economy here in Portland, work.

   We need a leader to guide Portland, which is in a unique position with an equally unique population to succeed if there is a total collapse, to come from a place where he or she is informed enough to level with us about what is really going on, and how we are all going to work together as a community to work toward an economy that doesn’t rely on outside forces and money. We need a mayor to talk to us about a sustainable Portland.

   The 100 year old model of infinite growth on a finite planet is coming to an end sooner rather than later, evidence of which will certainly appear during the first term of our new mayor. The mayor needs to lead the way to create a new type of safety net – one that doesn’t throw printed, worthless money at the disadvantaged, but one that ensures we are all able to eat when energy crises put a halt to the 1400 mile trip the food we’re currently eating takes. We need our mayor to find a way for people to get from Riverton to downtown when gas either becomes too scarce, or too expensive for us to attain. We need our mayor to mold this sustainable city into a model for other troubled cities to follow in the tough times just ahead.

   You’re not going to get that with Mavodones, or the other two city councilors currently running. Not when they’re voting to build 80 million dollar expansions to the Jetport when airline travel will become out of reach for most due to fuel cost and/or scarcity; Not when they get excited about new buildings in Bayside that feature parking garages for the cars that won’t be there and retail shops that will never be occupied; And certainly not when they insist that they don’t need to cut positions and services because of a made-up increase in revenue that just isn’t going to happen based on the way things are now or used to be.

   So for me, Mavodones is anything but the heir-apparent for this job, nor is he my pick for best hair in Portland.

   No one can beat Pat Callaghan’s “touch of gray” perfection.