Collaboration
and Cooperation Among
Municipalities
in Maine:
Does
Leadership Matter?
A Report Prepared by:
Will Armitage
Jim Brown
Steve Culver
Martha Kirkpatrick
Gaylene McHale
Grant Pennoyer
Al Prysunka
of the Iota Class
of Leadership Maine
May 2002
I.
Purpose of Project
The purpose of this
project was to examine the role of leaders and leadership in addressing the
ongoing problem of local government costs, which has given rise to pressure to
consolidate government services. The
focus is specifically on collaboration between and among municipal governments;
we do not address related questions about collaboration between levels of government, or between
departments within a municipality. We
did not attempt to come up with solutions or recommendations to the problem of
rising local government costs, and are not taking a position on whether further
consolidation is necessary or desirable.
The Team examined where the issue is today – where consolidation or
cooperation among municipalities is happening in Maine, what is driving it,
where is it successful and why, and in particular, the role of leaders in this
process.
In this report we first provide a short
description of the diffuse nature of the government structure in Maine, and
some historical context that is driving the question of whether consolidation
or collaboration is desirable. Next we
describe some examples of successful collaboration we have encountered, and
then examine the factors that have
contributed to that success. Finally,
we focus on the relevance of leaders and the role of leadership.
II.
Executive Summary
Among municipalities in
Maine, formal, “top-down” consolidation, along the lines of the consolidation
of school districts in the 1960’s and 1970’s, is unlikely now or in the near
future. We found very little discussion
about this and no energy for it; the consensus seems to be that there would
need to be significant monetary incentives, which in the foreseeable future are
unlikely. We did find that cooperation
between and among municipalities is a common occurrence and becoming more
so. In addition, within the last two
decades there has been a trend toward providing additional types of services on
a regional basis. This occurs most
frequently in response to functional need, rising costs, and the increasing
sophistication of technology. We
further found that leadership is key to overcoming the natural tendency to
resist cooperation as a perceived threat to local control, and to inviting
solutions that may both provide greater efficiencies and improve services.
III.
Description of Project
Maine’s government is diffuse in
structure, reflecting a long-held cultural preference for home rule and local
control. Maine has over 500
municipalities where, for the most part, local government resides; 16 counties
that perform very specific functions and have a limited role; and over 200
other special districts. Eighty percent
of Maine towns have fewer than 2000 people.
Historically some services, especially in small towns, have been
provided by volunteers. In many
aspects municipal government in Maine represents democracy in its truest sense,
with the annual town meeting serving as an important focal point for local governance.
The
continued ability of this diffuse structure to function efficiently and
effectively has been challenged in recent decades. A major effort was the consolidation of school districts that
began in earnest with the passage of the Sinclair Act in 1957. The issue of school consolidation has been
revisited several times since then. A
1995 study committee recommended that the State Board of Education convene a
task force on school consolidation, in conjunction with a review of school
construction policy so that it supports consolidation. An excerpt from this report illustrates the
complexity of this issue:
“In 1957, as a result of the Sinclair Act,
Maine undertook a systematic program of school consolidation aimed at reducing
the number of smaller districts throughout the state. It did so in order to increase the school tax base, the breadth
of the education program, the quality of instruction and reduce the per student
costs of education in school units.
“In spite of that consolidation
effort, Maine still has too many school administrative units (284), too many
separate administrative structures with their attendant staffs, and too many
education programs impoverished by a lack of resources. Small and isolated school units cannot
achieve the economies of scale needed to purchase the material and human
resources necessary to provide the high quality education Maine children will
need in the 21st century.
Recent research conducted by Professor Josephine LaPlante from the
Muskie Institute at the University of Southern Maine and University of Maine
and data now being collected for the Legislature by researchers from the
Colleges of Education at the University of Southern Maine and University of
Maine confirm that the education programs offered in small isolated school
units pale in comparison to programs routinely offered in larger consolidated
schools.
Although the data and the research
on school consolidation confirm that larger school units can provide greater
efficiency and higher quality programs and services, the decision to consolidate
is a complex and emotional matter.
Schools often serve as the focal point of the community identity. A friendly atmosphere and easy access to
staff are important characteristics.
And research shows that consolidation does not inevitably result in
improved student outcomes. As a result,
it must be recognized that while reducing the number of school units in Maine
is important, it can only be done successfully by undertaking an open and
thorough examination of the options.”
The State Board and the Department
of Education continue to review this issue, and it is still of concern to the
Legislature. This past legislative
session, the Legislature required the Department of Education and the State
Board of Education to again convene a study group to look at school
administrative unit organization in Maine in order to ensure, among other
objectives, a high level of operational efficiency.
In recent years, concerns
such as rising mil rates, increased costs and technological sophistication (for
example, with communication technology), the need or desire to jointly manage
natural resources and work together on economic development, have brought more
attention to the issue of municipal collaboration. The rhetorical question is: “do both towns both need a ladder
truck? Couldn’t they share?” This question is sometimes internally and
sometimes externally driven. In 1996
Governor Angus King authorized a Task Force to look at relieving the property
tax burden through more efficient delivery of local services and reducing
duplication among units of government.
As a more locally driven
example, the Mayors of Lewiston and Auburn charged a Commission to review
existing cooperation or collaboration efforts between the two cities and
suggest methods for increasing collaboration where appropriate. The subject of gaining efficiencies and cost
savings continues to be actively discussed, evaluated and implemented between
and among local governments. There is a
lot of cooperation going on at the local level. The
following section highlights some of the instances of collaboration that we
encountered that we think exemplify success, and the leadership qualities that
enabled it.
IV.
Collaboration: some examples
Auburn and Lewiston have found a
number of ways to work collaboratively. Most notable in this regard are the
areas of economic development, common infrastructure such as the Water
Pollution Control Authority, the tax-sharing agreements including the Airport
Industrial Park, disaster planning, and a number of informal cooperative
practices such as joint purchasing of police cruisers.
Lewiston and Auburn collaboration has a long history, starting when the
communities were first settled. In
1873, the first formal agreement was enacted with the creation of the
Lewiston-Auburn Railroad Corporation to lease rail facilities to the Canadian
National Railroad for transportation of products and workers to and from the
mills on the Androscoggin River. In the
1880’s, the communities formalized their sharing of water from Lake Auburn by
legislative action. With the end of World War II, Lewiston and
Auburn collaborated again to establish the Auburn-Lewiston Airport on an
airfield that the US Navy had developed during WWII as a back-up facility to
Brunswick Naval Air Station. Other
efforts have continued since that time and today Lewiston-Auburn have 26
agreements in place covering police, fire, public works, mutual aid, joint
purchasing and tax sharing.
In contrast to the
collaboration arising from the historical relationships between Lewiston and
Auburn, several smaller Aroostook County communities recently have established
relationships on a variety of endeavors, based on necessity. The Town of St. Agatha, responding to a
request from the Aroostook County Commissioners, now provides municipal clerk
services to nearby unorganized territories.
In T17R4, T17R5, and T16R5, St. Agatha provides all services pertaining
to elections. For residents of those
and other unorganized townships, St. Agatha maintains records of births,
deaths, and other essential information and provides vehicle registration
services.
Twenty-eight Aroostook
County communities participated as a single applicant for Community Development
Block Grant (CDBG) funding to improve wells and septic systems for low- to
moderate-income persons. The largest of
its kind in Maine, this multi-jurisdictional program addressed needs for which
the individual communities would have been noncompetitive because the numbers
of prospective projects in each community was too small. The success of the first effort induced the
communities to try for a second round of funding in 2002, which they also were
successful in securing.
An
interesting regional case involves the creation of the Central Maine Regional
Public Safety Communication Center, codified into law in 2001. This effort involved the coordination of
emergency communication services among the Maine State Police, Kennebec County
and the municipalities of Gardiner, Augusta, Waterville, Winslow and Oakland. It was prompted by the convergence of
several factors. First was the growing
concern with rising government infrastructure costs in general, and the costs
of each municipality separately maintaining emergency dispatch systems. A well- publicized fatal car accident on the
Maine Turnpike heightened public concern about emergency dispatch coordination
between state and local police. The ice
storm of 1998 highlighted the fact that there were 14 separate state and local
dispatching stations in Augusta alone.
Finally, new FCC regulations would soon require the purchasing of new
digital equipment and training, which are expected to save money in the long
term, but in the near term will require significant capital expenditures. It’s too early to gauge its ultimate
success, but this coming together of state and local public safety officials in
a coordinated regional effort is a significant achievement.
V.
Context for Collaboration
Our observation is that cooperation
is working better than the more formal consolidation for a number of
reasons. First, it is a “bottom up”
approach, enabling the municipalities to tailor the arrangement to meet their
needs. The wide variation in municipalities’
capacity, local situations, and the strong culture of home rule make a
“one-size-fits-all” approach unlikely to be successful. Leaving these arrangements to local
governments, with incentives and assistance from State government, also creates
a positive environment for local leaders to come forward. Things can be tried on a small scale, and
abandoned or adjusted with a lot less fanfare if they don’t work. For example, the public works directors for
the towns of St. Agatha and Frenchville recently recommended to their
respective town managers that joint purchasing of road patching equipment would
benefit both communities. Because both
towns needed the equipment and neither town could afford to purchase it
individually, it became a reasonable activity for collaboration. A one-page memorandum of understanding
governing maintenance and service on the equipment was quickly developed and
signed, and the equipment is being used to the benefit of the citizens of both
towns.
Larger, more public efforts, such
as the Central Maine communication center, require a lot more effort and
leadership to pull off. It’s worth
noting that one of the success factors of the communication center is that the
local municipalities have the option of participating or not, and significant
financial incentives if they do.
Collaboration to address functional need is one context for
collaboration that appears to be particularly successful. The Aroostook County towns of Mapleton,
Chapman, and Castle Hill determined that it was a more efficient use of their
power and resources and to their mutual advantage to share general and
administrative services and expenses of a joint highway department. In 1992, the towns entered into an
Interlocal Agreement governing the joint expenses of general government, insurance
and benefits, fire protection, recreation, selected “unclassified” accounts,
and reserve funds. The agreement also
described the process of administration, joint budget approval and adoption,
remedies to be employed in the event of breach of or withdrawal from the
agreement, and several miscellaneous provisions. The towns addressed the issues associated with a joint highway
department in a separate agreement, which established apportionment guidelines
and “tenants-in-common” status for the three towns with respect to real and
personal property dedicated to the joint department.
Functional consolidation of tasks and coordination is considerably
easier when the issue does not generate strong emotional responses from the
public, and considerably more difficult when it does. The public’s fear that they will suffer a
loss of emergency services is a significant deterrent to the consolidation
of police and fire services, and was a
significant hurdle for the CMRPSCC. In general, efforts to consolidate police
and fire protection services, even sharing equipment, have encountered much
more opposition, and require particularly strong leadership skills (especially
perseverance!) to make it happen. Consolidation of schools and libraries also
can be difficult for similar reasons.
In contrast, regional arrangements between and among municipalities have
worked reasonably well with waste issues.
The need for economies of scale, the complexity of environmental
requirements, the “not-in-my-backyard” response that municipalities face when
they “go it alone,” and the relative newness of the issue all make it a
somewhat easier candidate for cooperative arrangements.
However, issues of autonomy and control may lead to a proliferation of
authorities and defeat the purpose of controlling costs. The problem is that the economics of
efficiency conflicts with the emotions and desires for independence. This anti-consolidation sentiment is a
cost/benefit dilemma for the citizens of a municipality, who may want to pay
more to ensure that they will receive the services they desire. However, demographic and generational growth
may help overcome anti-consolidation issues surrounding those more contentious
consolidations by broadening the perspective and opinions of the citizenry.
By the same logic, issues that are more internal, administrative, and
therefore less visible to the public are also often easier for municipalities
to work together on. For example,
mutual aid agreements between municipalities can often work very well because
the individual departments remain visibly autonomous and retain decision-making
authority.
Most of the time, cost savings are
at the core of any successful effort to get municipalities to work
together. However, there are often
other values at stake, such as the public’s desire to maintain services close
to home. People who have successfully
led collaborative efforts have recognized the need to expend the effort to
gather solid information on the cost savings, and to be attentive to the public issues and concerns with the
delivery of public services beyond the cost factor.
Ultimately, relationships are the key to successful collaboration. People need to foster professional working
relationships based on respect.
Perseverance is required to overcome the obstacles to collaboration, but
the process can not start without willingness and trust. Collaboration is an incremental process, and
the creation of common ground between the parties will facilitate that
collaboration.
VI.
Leaders and Leadership
Everyone we talked to
emphasized the importance of leaders in enabling collaborative arrangements
where appropriate. The mayors John
Jenkins and Bob Thorpe of Lewiston and Auburn respectively, Peter Garcia, Brian
Rines, Governor King, Kay Rand, Bill Kany, Ryan Pelletier, Bill Bridgeo, Bob
Thompson, Lucien Gosselin, Mark Adams all exhibited leadership characteristics
at key points.
In Lewiston and Auburn,
collaboration and cooperation are now part of the “culture” of city government. As Mark Adams explained, the staffs of both
municipalities make collaboration and cooperation a part of their job every day
because of the structure of joint committees and meetings. This “culture” has become formalized with
joint protocols and procedures including a joint economic development protocol
for handling prospects. People from the
area with history, as well as the longevity and tenure on municipal staff are
contributing factors behind the success of Lewiston-Auburn’s persistence with
implementing their 26 Inter-Local Government Agreements. The communities take a cooperative
negotiation strategy towards collaborating instead of competing.
That is not to say that all of
Lewiston-Auburn’s efforts have been successful. In some instances, egos have become an obstacle to
collaboration. In those instances, a
lack of conviction and philosophy existed to move the agenda forward, and as a
result, the collaboration was unsuccessful.
According to Peter Garcia,
administrative staff of municipalities should not have to be relied on for
leadership on collaboration. In those
instances where collaboration is unsuccessful, the political arm of local
government needs to have the fortitude and will to push the agenda of
collaboration forward because the bureaucracy of municipal government can get
bogged down in personalities and a lack of conviction. From Mr. Garcia’s perspective, there are two
ways to implement change within a bureaucracy:
discussion, or political requirement.
When discussions don’t lead to collaboration, then the politicians need
to require the change by institutionalizing the process by ordinance. “What is good for a day, is good to
institutionalize.”
Those leaders who have
risen to the occasion have been disciplined and persistent in their
efforts. They have understood the
economics of the situation from a bureaucratic stand point but have been able
to see the “big picture” and demonstrated a public spirit and believe in the
project, both politically and administratively. Many people who have understood the need for
collaboration have given up in frustration, because the effort takes time to
build trusting relationships, as well as to overcome the many bureaucratic
hurdles that often present obstacles.
Patience and perseverance are important leadership qualities in this
context.
Vision is another important
characteristic of successful leadership.
The examples of success all had someone or someone’s who had a clear
idea of “what it should look like,” and were able to both articulate their vision
and persuade others that it will be an improvement over the current
situation. A key part of this
persuasion was having good data – particularly cost data – to back it up. Another important aspect of vision is
understanding and being responsive to the public’s concerns. If those concerns are not felt to be
understood and addressed, the effort generally fails if it is at all publicly
visible.
Finally, there were instances where
a clear statement from someone in authority who said “make it so!” was
necessary to overcome resistance and a perceived loss of local control.
Group/Team
Process:
Goals: Our
Project Team established project goals and a team charter early in the
process. Because of the expansive
nature of the issue covered within this project we frequently needed to revisit
the project goal in order to limit our focus on the issue and leadership
qualities behind the issue. Otherwise,
we frequently were deviating our focus and becoming more centered on “how to
solve the problem”. While this was
often interesting discussion and sometimes helped to further define the issue,
the solution to this issue was not within the scope of our project.
Roles: The roles within the Team
frequently fluctuated depending on which individuals were able to participate
in Team Meetings and available to perform needed tasks. While certain individuals clearly stepped to
the plate to pick up a larger share of the functions when they were needed, all
Team members contributed at some level.
Procedures: Beyond
identifying and establishing the interview list early, we did not establish a
clearly defined process or set of procedures to execute this project. We did establish a report outline and
brainstormed project presentation alternatives early on. Both products did serve as an overall
approach to this project and the final project outcomes are both derivatives
off these initial products.
Interactions: This Team had a solid working
relationship. The Team interacted well
and there were no instances of conflict or tension throughout the process. At the outset of the project we determined
that the project should be interesting for us all, educational, and fun. What was interesting to most Team members
was the lack of anxiety or driven approach exhibited by many of the “Type A”
personalities within the group. For
many, this was an instance of “leaning outside our comfort zone” – learning to
let the effort become a Team consensus vs. an individualized approach!
Appendix:
List of Resources
Interviews:
Adams, Mark, Assistant City Manager, City of Auburn, Maine,
March 15, 2002.
Garcia, Peter M., Attorney at Law, Skelton, Taintor &
Abbott, Auburn, Maine March 15, 2002.
Gosselin, Lucien B., President,
Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council, Lewiston, Maine, March 15, 2002.
King, Angus, Governor State of
Maine, February 4, 2002.
Lucarelli, Judy, Deputy
Commissioner, Maine Department of Education, December 18, 2001.
Lockwood, Christopher, Executive
Director, Maine Municipal Association, November 11, 2001.
Rand, Kay, Chief Executive Officer for
Governor Angus King, December 7, 2001.
Rines, Brian, Mayor, City of
Gardiner, Maine, March 14, 2002.
Thompson,
Robert, Executive Director, Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, December 11, 2001.coggin Valley Council of Governments; Auburn, Maine
Written
Materials:
State of Maine Board of
Education, Committee to Study Organizational and Tax Issues in Public Schools,
1995.
State
of Maine, Task Force on Intergovernmental Structure, Final Report prepared for
the Governor: Proposal to Reduce the Cost of Government through Reform of
Governmental Relations, November 1997.
A Joint Commission of the Cities of Lewiston and Auburn,
Report and Proceedings: L/A Together, October 24, 1996.
Rooks, Douglas, “Fire Services In Maine,” Maine Townsman, 2 Parts, January and
February, 2002.
Young, Kenneth C., Jr. “A New Approach to Reducing Local
Property Taxes”, Publication of Maine Center for Economic Policy, 1997.
