China School’s Forest will be hosting two Project Learning Tree Workshops for adults in April. Each workshop will feature hands-on activities and lesson ideas for kids ages K-8. Both workshops will begin with a short introduction to Project Learning Tree and then we will head out into the forest for interactive sessions with trained facilitators. Lessons are interdisciplinary including connections to children’s literature and language arts activities. If you are an educator (formal or informal), community volunteer, scout leader, naturalist, natural resource professional, land trust member, homeschooling parent or just want to learn some great ways to teach kids about the forest, this workshop is for you. Workshops are rain or shine so come prepared for the weather. Sign up by April 8. Space is limited to 20 participants per workshop, FMI – Contact Anita Smith at 968-2255 or chinaschoolsforest@gmail.com.

Visit them on facebook at China School’s Forest – China, Maine.

Cost is $50 per participant and includes the Project Learning Tree K-8 activity book with 96 lessons, opportunities to network with resource professionals, tour the award-winning China School’s Forest and gain new skills to make nature learning fun.

Location: China Primary School, 763 Lakeview Drive, China, ME 04358.

Workshop 1 – Thursdays, April 13 and 27 (must attend both sessions) from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Workshop 2 – Saturday, April 29 from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Bring a bag lunch and drink.

by Mary Grow

The March 20 public hearing on proposed amendments to China’s TIF (Tax Increment Financing) document brought both explanations of the changes and a more nuanced view of the whole TIF process.

Voters at the March 25 town meeting, scheduled for 9 a.m. at China Middle School, will accept or reject the proposed amendment, a three-page document with an addition and a map, when they act on Art. 5 in the 56-article warrant.

Assessor William Van Tuinen said four changes are proposed.

1) China’s TIF, initially created in 2015, would be extended from 20 years to 30 years.
2) The new Central Maine Power Company substation off Route 3 would become an additional revenue source. Taxes from the expanded CMP power line, the original TIF revenue source, bring in about $260,000 a year, according to Town Manager Daniel L’Heureux. He estimated earlier this month the substation would add about $60,000 annually.
3) Additional areas in town would be available for economic development, as shown on the map. They include an area on Route 3 around the former Fairpoint building; a small parcel on the northwest corner of the intersection of Routes 202, 9 and 137 north of China Village; the newly acquired town land on Lakeview Drive opposite the former Candlewood Camps; and an area around Branch Mills dam.
4) Selectmen would be authorized to enter into credit enhancement agreements, under which an entrepreneur is encouraged to open or expand a business in a TIF area by promising a partial or full rebate of the additional taxes generated by the project. Van Tuinen emphasized that such partial tax relief is not an entitlement; selectmen decide when it would be in the town’s interest.

The point of a TIF, Van Tuinen said, is to shelter the additional property valuation created by new development, making it not count toward the state’s valuation of the town. The advantage is that the higher a town’s valuation in the state’s eyes, the more it contributes to county taxes and the less it receives in state aid to schools and state revenue sharing.

Were China not to have a TIF, for the first two years the entire taxable value of a new development would go into the tax base, perhaps lowering taxes for everyone. However, when the state caught up with the new value in two years, higher county taxes and lower state aid would offset 65 to 70 percent of the gain.

South China resident Richard Morse argued that having the full value of the new taxes for two years and up to 35 percent afterward was useful, and China should not have a TIF. He called the program “a confusing bureaucratic mess that nobody can understand very well,” a characterization with which L’Heureux sympathized.

However, the manager said, the program is competitive. If other towns have TIFs and China does not, China’s valuation, in the state’s eyes, rises in comparison to theirs, and China pays more and gets less. For example, he said, Augusta has $149 million in valuation protected under the TIF program, shifting a larger share of the county tax burden to the other Kennebec County municipalities.

“If you don’t play the game, you’re on the losing end,” the manager concluded.

Morse, unconvinced, said he thinks lower taxes are more important than the projects on which voters will decide whether to spend TIF money, citing specifically the TIF Committee’s planned fishing platforms and other improvements near the boat landing at the head of China Lake’s east basin.

Articles 6 through 11 in the town meeting warrant ask voters to approve proposed expenditures from China’s TIF funds.

by Mary Grow

Monday, March 20, will be a good evening for China residents to gather at the town office to get information on three different topics, two related to the March 25 town business meeting.

The selectmen’s meeting that evening will be preceded by a 6 p.m. public hearing on proposed amendments to the town’s TIF (Tax Increment Financing) program. The amendments, to be accepted or rejected at town meeting, include adding new areas in town as potential development areas; adding the Central Maine Power Company substation on Route 3 as a new revenue source; and extending the program to 30 years instead of 20 years.

At the 7 p.m. selectmen’s meeting, board members have invited the chiefs of China’s three fire departments and China Rescue to talk about the proposal on the town meeting warrant to appropriate funds to compensate emergency personnel.

Town Manager Daniel L’Heureux has invited a representative of Redzone Wireless, of Rockland, to the March 20 meeting to talk about potential service in town.

China Village fire chief Timothy Theriault attended the March 6 selectmen’s meeting. He told selectmen when he polled his department, all but one member – the chief himself – favored the proposed compensation.

Theriault said his main objection was lack of a plan for distributing funds if voters approve the money. Now he has learned that there will be a plan and supports the idea, which selectmen presented as a way to encourage more people to join the fire departments and the rescue unit. Based on personal experience, he believes “money’s going to make a difference,” he said.

At the March 6 meeting and in anticipation of the Redzone presentation, selectmen appointed a three-person Broadband Committee, consisting of Tod Detre, Robert O’Connor and Raymond Robert. Detre and O’Connor, and audience member Lee Pettengill, talked knowledgeably about the possibilities of competition among internet service providers for China residents’ business.

The March 6 meeting began with a proud demonstration of China’s new police vehicle by officers Michael Tracy and Tracey Frost. The 2017 all-wheel-drive Ford Explorer, plainly marked as the Town of China’s, has front-and rear-facing radar and a state-of-the-art light bar whose multi-colored flashing lights can be turned into a steady white beam to illuminate an accident scene.

Frost said the vehicle gets about 18 miles a gallon and probably can go 140 miles an hour. “It won’t with us in it,” Tracy joked. A grant plus the trade-in for the previous police truck completely paid for the Explorer, which Frost and Tracy expect should last the town 10 years or more.

In other business March 6:

• Selectmen appointed Toni Wall to the China for a Lifetime Committee and appointed board members Irene Belanger and Ronald Breton to the Regional School Unit #18 cost-sharing committee, which Belanger said is beginning its work over again. The same two selectmen represented China on the prior cost-sharing committee.
• Theriault, who is also a state Representative, said the bill he introduced to charge Kennebec Water District customers a fee to help with China Lake clean-up is dead for this legislative session. However, he said, it had two useful consequences: the water district is again supporting the clean-up effort financially, after a lapse, and water district customers have been educated about where their water comes from.

by Mary Grow

Proposed changes to China’s Land Development Code, presented as a single article in November 2016, now make up articles 46 through 55 in the March 25 town business meeting warrant. The meeting begins at 9 a.m. – if there is a quorum – Saturday, March 25, at China Middle School.

Planning board members, who unanimously endorsed passage of the articles related to land use regulations at their Feb. 28 meeting, hope dividing the questions will make them easier to understand and will allow people to reject specific provisions they dislike while approving others.

Board members plan to attend town meeting to answer voters’ questions. Codes Officer Paul Mitnik has prepared an explanatory handout, which is on the town web site, listed on the left of the main page under the title “Ordinance Revisions March 25, 2017 Annual Town Business Meeting.” Mitnik’s document starts by listing the changes covered in Art. 46 that are required for China’s ordinance to conform to minimum state standards. These changes deal with clearing vegetation and trees, docks and similar structures, campgrounds and signs.

Art. 47 deals with expansion of non-conforming structures. A non-conforming structure is a building in the shoreland zone that does not meet ordinance requirements, usually because it is too close to the water or on a lot that is smaller than the ordinance allows or lacks required water frontage.

Art. 48 deals with seasonal conversion, the change in use of a shoreland building from a seasonal camp to a year-round residence. Mitnik’s explanation says the change, if approved, would repeal China’s current rules and rely on the state’s seasonal conversion regulations to issue or deny a conversion permit. State rules, he wrote, require an adequate septic system; current town rules add lot size, water frontage and building setback standards.

Art. 49 asks voters to add a new section to the ordinance, conforming to but not required by state regulations, allowing exceptions to limits on clearing in the shoreland.

Art. 50 would repeal local regulations on timber harvesting and replace them with statewide standards.

Art. 51, Mitnik explains, makes it clear that water-dependent uses, like fishing or boating, on town or public land do not need to meet water setback standards. If approved, one effect of the change would be to remove any question of the legality of the proposed boardwalk at the head of China Lake’s east basin. The boardwalk is part of the Tax Increment Finance Committee’s recommended project for which Art. 8 in the warrant requests funding.

Art. 52, Mitnik wrote, proposes a rewritten version of conditional use standards (requirements for opening or significantly expanding a business). Currently the Land Development Code requires an applicant to prove a project will not have a list of undesired effects, negative wording the planning board has worked on revising.

Art. 53 deals with signs. If adopted, Mitnik, wrote, the new version grandfathers signs existing in 2010, exempting them from all requirements “except turning off lighted signs at night and digital signs from 10 PM to 6 AM.”

Art. 54 deals with other minor changes, mostly for consistency within the ordinance. Art. 55 amends definitions in China’s ordinance to match state guidelines and adds a definition recommended at a planning board hearing before the November 2016 vote.