Email exchange with Senator Stacy Brenner

Regarding her attempts to block a multi-decade transportation plan across 4 towns in Southern Maine.

Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2025 5:04:46 PM
To: Brenner, Stacy <Stacy.Brenner@legislature.maine.gov>
Subject: Losing my vote

This message originates from outside the Maine Legislature.

Hi Stacy, just wanted to let you know that I've voted for you so far due to your social values, which I share. However shared social values are pointless if you aren't working towards a more sustainable community and economy at the same time.

I do not agree with your current efforts to block transportation and environmental fixes for the travel congestion our district experiences. As a farmer I would expect you to better understand that Smiling Hill's winter trails have closed specifically due to the constant congestion related pollution in our neighborhood.

Saving the Smiling Hill complex is going to involve actually fixing regional transportation infrastructure and organization across several towns. Your shortsighted and performative efforts to blame our turnpike authority instead, get us no closer to any results and waste a great deal of taxpayer money.

It's sad that you have put in all this effort to ruin the hard work of others, while not moving towards any solutions yourself, and instead pushing Gorham's environment and economy towards decline from continued gridlock and delay.

I respect you personally but I can't support politicians that put Nimby special interests ahead of local residents.

Josh

On Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 20:57 Brenner, Stacy <Stacy.Brenner@legislature.maine.gov> wrote:

Josh

Thank you for your note and for sharing your thoughts. I’d be happy talk further about my rationale for supporting this conversation at the state level. It is precisely because of my values around climate, economy, and community that I am in support of this conversation.

I hope you will continue to stay in touch to share your thoughts.

Warm regards,

Stacy

Hi Stacy- thanks for responding! I'm happy to talk more about this topic whenever it works for you, although I understand you must be pretty busy and very sick of hearing about it.

I respect that you are trying to help our environment by opposing the project, and I would agree with you that road expansions are never known for their green attributes. It makes apparent sense why we keep hearing that a halt to further urbanization in the Smiling Hill area will be good for Southern Maine's natural habitats and associated societal values.

Unfortunately Smiling Hill's ecotourism businesses are already publicly struggling and experiencing seasonal closures, even without any expansion by the Turnpike Authority either now or in the foreseeable future. It's an interesting sidenote to this entire debate, that saving Smiling Hill's property has not equated with saving Smiling Hill's viability despite numerous claims to the contrary.

This is EXACTLY why I think blocking highway and transit improvements to the western suburbs, will worsen our environment instead of improving it. Spread out gridlock is already here throughout both Scarborough and Gorham- and the Smiling Hill area is already polluted (both with PFAS and emissions) to the point businesses are failing.

A fully funded, comprehensive transportation solution that allows increased density and walkability among the existing shops and residences of the South Gorham / North Scarborough community, while also using a lead state agency with a successful partnership history serving numerous public transit lines, is a more environmentally friendly proposal than certain special interests want Mainers to believe. The previous decades of pollution, congestion, and industrial zoning throughout this corridor are already clearly taking their toll- and I object to any claims that waiting further decades for the necessary local capacity improvements across transportation modes, will meaningfully benefit Maine's working farms, enhance our open space and fresh air, or curb low density regional sprawl.

The pervasive inability of green planning advocates to leverage community livability concerns with turnpike financial strength to ensure the creation of a robust, transit-oriented multi-modal corridor following the established planning process in existence for decades previously, should be cause for concern. The use of MTA funding sources and project property acquisition for additional walking trails, bike paths, and public transportation connections, in addition to creating a high-efficiency regional road network with a lower emissions profile, should allow far more improvement in neighborhood environmental quality, than reactively attempting to pack even more uses and travelers onto the existing overburdened local ROW.

All future travel efficiency gains in this neighborhood will still necessitate eminent domain seizures and increased lane-mileage even without the use of new real estate, not just to smooth vehicle travel but also to provide the sidewalks, bike paths, and transit stations that we all understand will be aspects of a successful fix. In addition, any funding mechanism chosen for financing this hypothetical alternate project, will be in fact LESS equitable for Mainers because it will burden every state / town taxpayer en masse, instead of wholly relying on direct user fees as with our turnpike budget.

Preventing all MTA acquired right-of-way from consideration to help implement any future travel solutions in the neighborhood, seems extraordinarily shortsighted and unnecessary. Total environmental preservation of an area that includes numerous existing urban users like landfills, fossil-fuel power plants, and trash incinerators, for the ostensible sake of another property that itself also hosts multiple commercial and retail sites- is a clear misreading of basic green planning concepts, and is more reflective of a branding or marketing campaign than any cohesive effort to maximize protected acreage for Maine's wild / agricultural land.

Ironically the duplexed section of Routes 114 and 22 in question, was just closed down for a multiple-months-long repaving project that did not add a single walkable or bikeable component, within just the last year. Suggestions that these miles of brand-new citizen-funded asphalt be again closed and immediately torn out AGAIN to add further roundabouts, passing lanes, sidewalks, and bus terminals, do not seem financially sound, and ensure any existing-ROW corridor fix will waste a great deal of taxpayer money even before construction starts, along with ensuring chronic travel delays and air pollution from a near-constant construction process over the better part of a decade or more.

Traffic counts are increasing throughout the area even as residents have begun avoiding the most heavily congested sections of the corridor. Community walkability and bikeability is currently suffering throughout the more distant and urbanized sections of Gorham and Scarborough like South St and Payne Rd, due to continued town and state inability to implement previously approved transportation plans. It is a lie to claim that the heavy traffic and pollution in the area only affect users of the 22/114 corridor, and not every resident of Scarborough and Gorham, along with several other towns.

It is also incorrect to pretend that transit and vehicle improvements in this neighborhood will only benefit weekday commuters to the Portland Peninsula, and only help improve average travel times by a few minutes. As anyone who actually lives along these roads can explain, traffic jams frequently occur even during weekends, holidays, and times outside of traditional banking hours- not to mention some regularly congested areas along the corridor are not part of any direct path to/from Portland, implying many of the trips crowding our existing local highways are unrelated to daily "average" peninsula commutes.

Attacks on Turnpike Authority management are a continued distraction preventing good faith resolution by local regulatory and electoral bodies- as is backroom collusion by legislative and municipal representatives to coordinate their piecemeal planning disruption, with efforts to weaponize our oversight processes using partisan rhetoric. Attempts to artificially restrict, promote, or control existing right-of-way and eminent domain uses, both on state and town levels, clearly indicate an unwillingness to collaboratively focus on a comprehensive corridor-wide solution that improves efficiency across all travel modalities and affected jurisdictions, despite near universal recognition among stakeholders acknowledging the neccessity of such a resolution.

Recent setbacks in the legislature should encourage regional mobility skeptics to prioritize workable solutions over recycled rhetoric and performative paralysis. Empty victory declarations against state agencies, that still enable repetitive travel delays for all users and continued emissions growth throughout the corridor, make our shared environmental objectives seem valueless, arbitrary and artificial.

There is no more time left to kick the can down the road, with backstabbing insider deals substituted for leadership- congestion and pollution are both already harming the area's heritage and future. Any elected representatives who want my vote again, should focus today on fixing regional transportation problems for all Mainers- instead of picking winners and losers amongst our towns and neighborhoods while pretending growth and urbanization are somehow optional choices rather than daily facts, for the many thousands of their neighbors living within ten miles of our state's largest city.

Thanks for working so hard on this issue and I apologize for the delay in my response. Perhaps even if superseded by current events it can give you some helpful context, as you consider various Maine legislative committees' current opposition to turnpike planning restrictions and punitive budgeting.

Josh