MMA Annual Convention Featured Speaker, Hannah Pingree

The Urgency of Building Resilient Communities
Hannah Pingree, Director of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future and co-chair of the Maine Climate Council, talks about the urgent importance of community action, planning and investments to build resilience to impacts of climate change following the devastating winter storms of December 2023 and January 2024. In response to these storms, Governor Mills proposed and authorized the largest recovery support package in Maine history -- $60 million for working waterfronts, business recovery, and public infrastructure projects -- and launched an expert Infrastructure Rebuilding and Recovery Commission to help develop Maine’s first long-term plan for safeguarding Maine communities and people from climate effects like extreme storms, flooding, and storm surge. Hannah will talk about the need for state, regional and local partnerships to address this challenge and efforts underway through her office to support lasting investments in Maine communities, such as through her office’s landmark Community Resilience Partnership program, which in two years has grown to include more than 225 Maine cities, towns, and tribal governments.

Transcript

Hannah Pingree at MMA Convention

Rebecca Graham: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to potholes and politics. Tech's local main issues from a to Z. I'm. Your host, Rebecca Graham, and we are dropping a special episode. This week that comprises the speech that was provided by. Hannah Pingree at MMAs annual convention last. Week. For those of you that attended the convention. Invention. 

We really enjoyed seeing you and had some really great conversation. with fabulous municipal officials. The convention always. Is a highlight for the advocacy office. It, uh, Reminds us of why it's so important that we keep. Municipal government at the heart and soul of. Everything that we do. The theme of this year's convention was unstop. Stoppable. 

And it was about harnessing the resilience and Hannah's. Anna's speech was talking about building resilience in communities as well. Well, as the programs that are being built at the [00:01:00] state level 

to have a more proactive role to. Benefit municipal government. , there's a lot. That has to be built and there's a lot of work to get done. And. , the strength of resiliency is going to be coming from that local. Level informed by local professionals. And. And those who know best about their communities and their community. Needs. So I hope you enjoy the information that. Hannah shared with everyone that attended. 

And,, we look forward to.

Speaker for this morning, Hannah Pingree, who will talk to us about the urgency of building resilient communities. Hannah Pingree is the Director of the Governor's Office of Policy Innovation and Future and Co Chair of the Maine Climate Council. She served in the Maine Legislature for seven years with roles that included Speaker of the House and House Majority Leader.[00:02:00] 

Her career has focused on addressing long term challenges. For Maine, such as climate change, energy, housing, workforce, and economic development, federal infrastructure investments, and supporting children and older Maine people. Please join me in welcoming Hannah Pingree.

Got some slides. There they are. Well, good morning. How is everybody? Good. Alright, are you awake? Are you, good morning out there! Good morning! Alright, good job. Good job. I see you. I am here to speak about the urgency of increasing resilience in Maine's communities, especially to extreme storm and weather impacts.

I'm going to talk to you today about the importance of strong partnerships between state and local governments and the need to accelerate our efforts together, especially as the [00:03:00] world changes rapidly around us. The state has advanced plans, policies, and funding to support climate and resilience work, but it cannot be done without the key partnership of communities.

That partnership requires trust and collaboration. And a critical ingredient is inspired local leaders. And I'm thrilled that I'll highlight a handful of those leaders today. And just to keep you in your seats, I'm excited that I get to finish this speech today with a special surprise announcement on behalf of my boss, Governor Janet Mills.

So first I want to start this morning by thanking the staff leadership of the Maine Municipal Association. Especially Kathy, Kate, Rebecca, Peter, and all the MMA leaders who drive this organization. We've had an incredible partnership during Governor Mills time in office, working together on everything from COVID grants, homelessness challenges, to climate resilience.

Even when we have disagreements, we discuss concerns thoughtfully. Kate DeFore is, DeFore is the first person who really cemented the word partnership in my [00:04:00] mind, for how the state needs to view its work with communities. Thank you, Kate, for being a great partner. And thank you to all the leaders in this room, especially Kathy, for all you do for your communities and for Maine.

So to start a quick overview of where I'm coming from, Diane did a good job, but I just want to quickly tell you that I have one of the coolest jobs in state government, leading the Governor's Office of Policy Innovation and the Future. My boss, Governor Mills, created this office in 2019, following the advice of writer Kurt who said every government ought to have a department of the future.

A lot of people think that means that our team, including Sarah Curran, who's with me here today, should be wearing spacesuits. But really our office, known as GO PIF, brings together our government agencies at all levels, communities, regional groups, and partners. to ensure that our progress doesn't get stuck in government silos.

We seek to advance solutions to long term challenges through the work of the Children's Cabinet and the Cabinet [00:05:00] on Aging. We manage cross agency work on opioids recovery and response, housing and homelessness, and the state's workforce challenges. We help to coordinate the state's approach to funding opportunities, like the main jobs and recovery plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and other economic investments.

And the largest part of our team focuses on the challenges and solutions related to climate change, including resilience. So we're here to talk today about advancing community resilience, especially in the face of storms and increasingly severe weather impacts, which is just one of the many challenges that our cities, our towns, and tribal governments are facing today.

It's important to acknowledge the events, the extreme weather events of the last week in the southern part of the United States. The loss of life, the severe devastation is heartbreaking. So many of us are searching for how we can help. We all know folks who are trying to connect with friends and family in these deeply impacted communities.

I am sure you, like me, are shocked by what one [00:06:00] storm can do to highways and bridges, downtowns and homes. And watching those impacts motivates us to redouble our efforts here in Maine. The comments we hear in the news media, especially from North Carolina, sound familiar to things we've heard our own neighbors say here in the last year.

Things like, I thought we were safe from these kind of events, these impacts inland, especially away from the ocean. We've never seen a rainfall event like that before, or even imagined it was possible. We thought we had more time to prepare for these kinds of changes. I'm going to start today with a few photos of the impacts our state faced last December and January.

I know many folks in this room know exactly what three storms in a row brought our state because you saw it firsthand. In the span of just a year, from December 2022 to December 2023, Maine saw six federal disaster declarations, far more than any year in our state's history. The two January storms upped the number of open disasters that MEMA was managing to a record [00:07:00] of eight declared federal disasters.

So I'm going to start in my hometown, an island of just over 400 people called North Haven, off the coast of Rockland. The storms of January 11th brought the destruction of many wharves and boathouses, it washed out roads and driveways, it swept significant debris into the ocean, and it eroded feet of shoreline.

I know the same story could be told up and down the main coast. The storm also threatened the very heart of our community, a 150 year old family owned boatyard called J. O. Browns, a business that serves as far more than just a home for boats. Browns runs our only fuel pump, the only home heating oil delivery business.

They provide ferry rides to the neighboring island of Vinalhaven where our male lady crosses each day. Their wharf provides a spot for fishermen to unload. And Browns is among the many island gathering spots where you can always find local gossip. I'm sure everybody in this room knows a place like this in their own home.

The storm of January 11th brought the greatest flooding the yard has ever seen. [00:08:00] Water inundated the entire shop. Ocean water buried the gas pump, significantly damaging the pilots. It busted out walls and doors and completely twisted a heavy, newly built wharf. And still, after the storm, many in the family saw it as a miracle that the storm didn't take the whole shop out to sea.

After the storm passed, the forecast for the next storm on January 13th came into focus and the entire community was called to save Brown. People showed up with jacks and chains and tools and snacks. They were there to literally help prop up the building and chain it down, and to start taking away debris.

The scene was incredible, with the only competing boatyard sending staff down to help, the island school kids pitched in, and over the course of the day, it seemed like the whole town was there. By the morning of the 13th, the senior family member, Foy Brown, felt they had done all they could do. Through the afternoon of the 13th, as the second storm arrived, everyone in town held their breath, unsure if the old historic building was going to survive a second hit.

After [00:09:00] the storm passed, Browns did survive, and the whole community was greatly relieved. Foy said, it worked. It worked because the whole town turned out for us. It took a complete replacement of the gas pump to get it back up and running. The town had no gas for about a week. It took months of repairs to get the business back up and running.

The Browns family knew that they were lucky that time, despite hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. The family now grasps that they may not be so lucky the next time, and Brown is starting to make long term plans for how their business can be rebuilt. long term resilience. They know that to survive, they must change and move some parts of their business to higher ground and find ways to adapt.

I know this story could be told over and over, from Rumford to Hallowell, up and down the coast, from Kittery to Machias and everywhere in between. Here are just a few pictures of the challenges these storms brought to our state.

I'm sure that many of you recognize some of the places that that, where these three storms hit. [00:10:00] So obviously we saw extreme riverine flooding, uh, in many of the riverfront communities. I know Kate is from Hallowell. This is downtown Hallowell during the December 18th storm. We saw significant working waterfront damages up and down the coast.

This is a commercial fishing pier in Stonington. We saw a loss of significant private coastal business infrastructure. This is Five Islands. Numerous flooded roadways. Significant roadway damages, especially in inland Maine. Entire communities are cut off. I don't know if you've seen this picture before, but this is literally the snow plow that ran back and forth as long as they could across the Deer Island Causeway to get rocks and debris, um, out of the way so that people could continue to cross.

We saw bridges and culvert damages that also cut off communities. This is Route 145 and Strong. Impacts to downtowns, trails, roadways, electricity, and wastewater infrastructure. This is a [00:11:00] picture, uh, that was brought to us of Bethel Village that shows you just the extreme impact in their downtown and what it means, obviously, for a relatively small community.

Bethel also saw extreme tourism infrastructure damage, mudslides, huge impacts to Sunday River. We also saw impacts to major employers and their property. This is the spinning mill in Skowhegan that's working on an economic redevelopment project. And obviously, what many people in Maine saw, flooded homes, had secondary impacts, like basement oil spills, and long term mold damage.

So that brings us to what resilience is, and while I like the word, resilience is definitely an overused word, and I'm, I'm not going to help that today, I'm sorry. I googled the definition, and I was first delivered a graph of the increase of the word, the use of the word resilience, from 1800 to 2019. I have [00:12:00] no idea how they do this.

But as you might guess, it was a hockey stick shape, and while we could all be overusing this word, it is not shocking, because it is the right word for these tumultuous times. So the definition of resilience, this is what I found from the Oxford definition on the internet. The capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties, toughness, the, it also shows the definition of the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.

elasticity. It gives the example, nylon is excellent in wearability and resilience. So you can consider yourself as tough or like nylon, whatever you prefer. But to me, these are the definitions that resonate with what we have seen across Maine communities and leaders. Climate resilience is a concept that is used to describe how well communities, infrastructure, and nature are prepared to manage or bounce back from certain climate hazard events, whether they be storms or floods or fires.

To increase climate resilience often means we are reducing climate [00:13:00] vulnerability of people and places. That can include infrastructure changes like building, raising buildings or roads. In Maine, we love to upsize culverts. Or it can also include policy actions like ordinances that prevent construction of new homes and floodplains.

Climate resilience is also strongly related to adaptation because we have to do both. We have to strengthen the capacity of a system to withstand climate events. Adaptation and resilience are often used interchangeably, even though they are not quite the same. Resilience involves a more systematic approach to absorbing change.

Adaptation is any action or process that helps people, businesses, infrastructure, nature adjust to new conditions. So climate actions can look like managing our infrastructure to make it more resilient to future storm impacts. It can include raising roadways or raising the height of waterfronts. It can also mean adapting our economy to changing climate conditions, whether that be a warming ocean, droughts, or increasing rain events.

Our state's [00:14:00] economy is very much driven by natural resource industries, fishing, farming, and forestry. And of course, tourism is dependent on a clean economy. So adaptation to a changing environment is crucial to our communities. and our state's economy.

So I'm very proud that in the face of such shocking damage last winter, the state advanced an unprecedented package to support recovery and rebuilding with a major theme of resilience. Governor Mills proposed emergency funding in the legislature just weeks after the storm. The funding passed and supported working waterfront rebuilding, infrastructure recovery and adaptation efforts, and business support.

Governor Mills recognized that FEMA funds won't cover private but essential working waterfronts. She also learned that in many cases, FEMA funds wouldn't cover the efforts to build back better. Today, nearly 60 million has been committed across the state. All these little dots on the map. You can check out the projects in detail at main.

gov slash [00:15:00] flood. I know every person in this room knows that these efforts, and every one of these dots, requires talented leaders willing to get the work done. At the local level. Partnering with businesses and state agencies. And I'm excited to talk about some of those leaders today. And I'm very happy that the first person I'm going to embarrass is in this room, sitting in the front row.

The first is Shiloh Lafreniere, the town manager of J Maine. Many of you know Shiloh as a member of the MMA Executive Committee and a talented town manager. Shiloh has been battle tested by event after event, and she has led with intelligence and compassion. Her community's largest employer, the Pixel J Mill, was thrown into chaos in April of 2020, just a month after the pandemic hit.

The mill's central digester exploded, soon resulting in the loss of several hundred jobs and a huge hit to the town's tax base. Faced with economic calamity, Shiloh and her team have diligently worked with the state to support new options for the mill. [00:16:00] Shiloh has also been on the front lines of managing extreme and targeted climate events.

On June 29, 2023, a rainstorm lasting just a few hours dropped an estimated 6 inches of rain across Jay and parts of neighboring towns. This extreme storm resulted in substantial flooding that led to damages to more than two dozen roads, including Route 4, Route 133. The storm also damaged the local rail trail and town sewer lines.

Shiloh faced millions of dollars of damage. She needed to become an overnight expert on FEMA reimbursement and the endless forms, reporting, and paperwork, as well as the project management and funding streams that she and her team would be required to manage to get infrastructure rebuilt. As she does this work to rebuild, she read this spring also to serve as the municipal representative on the Governor's Infrastructure Recovery and Resilience Commission.

I visited a local road that was still impassable in Jay with Shiloh this past summer. It's actually in the slide on the right. And I know she'd be happy for me to [00:17:00] report that this road is being rebuilt this week. Right? She's getting the job done.

So when I asked Shiloh what resilient means to her community, she said the ability and the capacity to handle these disasters. I think this has to be a collaborative effort at all levels. We need the ability to incorporate new ideas into planning our infrastructure repairs and replacements. We need capacity in all communities to do this work, from the smallest to the largest.

Shiloh was proud that her select board and community recognized shortly after the storms in 2023 that they needed to rebuild Jay's destroyed infrastructure back better than it was before, even if FEMA wouldn't pay for it. She said, by far the easiest and least costly process is to just replace what is damaged.

However, our community recognized that this was short sighted. Shiloh is a true leader on resilience. She's a long term planner. She engages her community and she gets the work done and her leadership is truly making a difference. [00:18:00] I also want to highlight the dynamic team of Kathleen Billings and Linda Nelson from Stonington.

Kathleen is the longtime town manager and Linda is the economic development director. Stonington is one of the most significant fishing ports in the state and is an island connected to the mainland by a causeway and bridge. The causeway is often known as one of the most vulnerable portions of roadway in our state.

It's the subject of a major DOT resilience project. To know Kathleen and Linda is to love them. They've both been tireless in their commitment to improving their community, and they've demonstrated it again and again. I know they, like many of you, lay awake at night, worried about the future, what changes it will bring, and scheming new ideas.

Stonington has worked closely with our office. They've been dogging and going after state and federal funds to make the island more resilient. Their community saw tremendous storm damage in January, but the work they had already done and had underway did help stem some of the losses. Through their efforts, Stonington has secured significant funds to raise [00:19:00] critical local roads that are vulnerable to high tides and sea level rise.

They've used state and federal grants to get the work done, doing the impossible task of raiding funds that is usually so elusive. In partnership with Deer Isle, Stonington also got a federal grant to install a ground mounted solar array next to their business incubator and community center to save energy for the town.

And on top of their local work, Kathleen has volunteered as a member of the claimed Maine Climate Council's Coastal and Marine Working Group. She provides the perfect insights at the right times. telling it like it is. Linda is cut from the same cloth. She's currently serving as the co chair of the Governor's Resilience Commission, and she speaks passionately about the needs and challenges of Maine's small towns.

Stonington is now pursuing unique public private partnerships to secure vital pieces of their working waterfront. They've highlighted how storms have made waterfront vulnerable due to damage, but also how these events can cause owners to give up. When they long time waterfronts can gentrify and turn into [00:20:00] summer homes.

Meaning the loss of access to the ocean forever. Kathleen worries about losing to gentrification and to big condos and corporations that can make a circus of the waterfront. Then we lose access to the valuable coast for fishing, she says, and current and future marine economic opportunities. When I asked Kathleen what keeps her hopeful, she said, the January 10th and 13th storms were the worst time of my life.

The devastation was horrible. I was affected personally because it just kills your soul. So many people were shocked and you have no answers. I'm guessing just like the leaders in Western Maine. I hope we can all work together to make Maine a better place. Plus, I don't expect you to say this in public, but I am, but you and I have just enough piss and vinegar to forge ahead.

That is leadership. Even today, I've had, she sends this to me in an email, I've had every freaking thing that can go wrong, but tomorrow is another day. That is my medicine and hope. I'm not going to give up. I don't know [00:21:00] any other way to describe our efforts here. I'm blessed with outstanding town employees that I can't do without.

They make me proud how hard they dig in for this island and town, even though we probably don't pay them enough. Kathleen said it about as clearly as it can be said.

So I'm going to take a step back. I know there aren't many left in this room, hopefully, and around our state who can deny that our climate is changing. The impact scientists told us were coming seem to be here and they're getting worse. So I want to talk to you a little bit about the state's climate.

Governor Mills made climate planning a priority of her administration in 2019, and she's worked since then, tasking our office with creating and implementing the state's climate action plan, Maine Won't Wait. It comes from legislative action, sponsored by Republican Senator David Woodson. Many people think climate is special, partisan.

But I will say David is a Republican who worked closely with the [00:22:00] governor and the bill to pass the Maine Climate Council passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support in both houses of the legislature. So what are the Maine Climate Council goals? We have several goals. One, we have to produce a new climate plan every four years.

The next plan is due December 1, 2024. We're required to reduce our emissions at least 45 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. Importantly, we are also supposed to ensure that Maine people, industries, and communities are resilient to the impacts of climate change. So the climate plan has four main goals.

To reduce Maine's greenhouse gas emissions, to make Maine more resilient to the impacts of climate change, the to foster economic opportunity and prosperity through our approach, and also to advance equity through Maine's response, ensuring that the most vulnerable are not left behind. So just a quick overview, I'm not going to talk a lot about emissions reductions, but it's important to know sort of the basis of our climate plan.

80 percent of Maine's [00:23:00] carbon dioxide emissions come from fossil fuels. They come primarily from our transportation and our buildings. Nearly 50 percent from transportation, 30 percent from our buildings, and then 10 percent from just our industrial and our electric power sector. So the climate plan has two main focuses.

Again, to reduce our emissions. Right now we're about 30 percent lower than 1990, so we're actually doing pretty well on our path to 2030. Um, but again, as this crumbled roadway shows, we have a lot to do when it comes, uh, to resilience. So the Climate Action Plan has eight strategies. I'm not going to talk in detail about all of them, um, but there's significant strategies on emissions reduction in transportation, in buildings, and in our energy sector.

There's a lot of hope and promise in how we can grow Maine's clean energy economy and protect natural resource based jobs, doing everything we can to protect our environment and ensure that our land is sequestering carbon to help meet our climate goals. And then the next couple are really what I want to talk [00:24:00] about today.

The Climate Council's plans to build healthy and resilient communities to invest in climate ready infrastructure and to engage Maine people. So this is our climate plan. From 2020, it had four main strategies, empower local and regional community resilience efforts, adopt official sea level rise projections, emphasize resilience through land use planning tools, and strengthen public health monitoring.

Strategy G was pretty simple. All about investing in climate ready infrastructure. So the Climate Council, I think I'm proud to say that in the course of the last three and a half years, we have taken action. The Climate Council was, plan was meant to not just be a plan that sits on a shelf, but a plan that is implemented.

So we did, uh, adopt official sea level rise, uh, projections, um, that now have been incorporated into Maine, uh, law. We also started to invest through the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund. Um, through three [00:25:00] different rounds of funding, we are now investing in climate ready infrastructure across our state.

These dots represent just the first round of that funding, the 20 million that came through the ARPA funds. Um, the legislature put another 7 million in this fund in 2023. Um, and then a lot of the, uh, recovery money that I talked about earlier, the 60 million, was invested through the Infrastructure Adaptation Fund.

Another program I'm incredibly proud of, and hopefully everyone in this room has heard of, the Community Resilience Partnership. This is a program run by our office that offers grants and technical assistance to communities across the state to reduce emissions, to transition to clean energy, and to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

So now, the program was started in 2021. Just a couple years later, we have 226 communities currently participating. Um, a huge, huge, uh, testament to many people in this room, a ton of hard work. Um, maybe I'll ask Kathy for the [00:26:00] official, but we have nearly 480 towns in municipalities in the state of Maine.

So we have a little ways to go, but we're making good progress. Um, since 2021, we distributed 9. 1 million in state and federal grants, uh, to communities across the state. So this is the big deal. We've distributed nine million in the last four years and right now we have a grant round opened that is making eight million dollars available to Maine communities.

So grants are now open to communities. We've decided to increase the grant amount from 75, 000, from 50, 000 to 75, 000. If you work with a neighboring community, you're eligible to up to 175, 000. These grants are really for whatever your local priority is, whether it's installing heat pumps in your town office, whether it's installing new street lights, or doing planning for resilience efforts.

We also have an open energy efficiency plan Uh, grant, [00:27:00] um, for rural communities who are trying to get, um, understand their energy usage and figure out how they can become more energy efficient. So you want to learn more, uh, go to maine. gov slash future. You can take a picture of this QR code. If you don't know about this program, it's very easy to enroll, and we want you as part of the Maine, uh, Community Resilience Partnership.

So right now, we're currently undertaking an update to Maine's Climate Action Plan. Um, again, every four years we have to new, produce a new plan, and this update will include many of the same goals, but we want to go deeper. We know that climate is accelerating, Maine communities have a variety of challenges they're asking us to help solve, and the state needs to dig in and do more.

So the current Climate Action Plan, hundreds of Maine people have spent about the last year coming up with new strategies. Um, I will say, recognizing her in this room, Judy East, is one of the co chairs of the, the Community, um, Resilience Working [00:28:00] Group. Um, they spent hundreds of hours, probably talked to some of you in this room, about what more do we need to do.

And they came up with a variety of strategies that are likely to be implemented, um, and incorporated into the next Climate Action Plan. I'm not going to read every word, um, but these are important. They've really focused on the need to increase local capacity for climate resilience. They know that communities are now starting to face incredibly, uh, difficult decisions.

They know that communities need to help people get out of harm's way. They know we need to expand and simplify grant assistance, increase capacity to manage storm impacts. There's a lot of talk about emergency management and the need to enhance the state's ability to prepare for and recover from natural disasters.

A lot of this work, again, happens at the community level. They focus on strategies to expand access to funding and financing for climate adaptation and emissions reductions. How do we support the long term, significant implementation projects that are going [00:29:00] to cost a lot more? They also talked about strengthening public health monitoring, education, and prevention.

Again, we know that these kind of storms are impacting our water systems, they're impacting our mental health. And again, the next strategy is about the increase in awareness and action to mental health. When we first did the plan in 2020, we'd heard a lot about young people worried about climate. But I think we now all see, after the storms may just experience, whether it's fishermen, or emergency managers, or town managers, We are all feeling the stress of what these events mean.

We all need to figure out how to take care of ourselves. So building healthy and resilient coastal communities a major focus, especially the working waterfront, some of the most vulnerable infrastructure in our state. They also talked about the need to provide technical assistance to communities. to use proactive communication and engagement to support land use strategies.

This is a much broader issue, but especially when it comes to climate resilience, we need to make sure that people are not building in those areas [00:30:00] that we know are most vulnerable. We also have a variety of other strategies in the plan. Specifically, uh, the building strategy does talk about how we can make our homes and buildings more resilient, whether that's through energy backup, uh, whether that's in focusing on the remediation of, uh, oil tank spills that often happen in these storms.

There's lots of other strategies in the plan. I'm not going to go into the details, but they talk about the energy grid, they talk about natural resource industries. Um, but I will just say that we are now on a trajectory to finish this plan. Uh, right now we're in the September October timeframe. We're still debating.

So if you have opinions, tell us what you think. Um, and again, we're going to deliver the next state climate action plan, uh, December, by December 1 of, of this year. So, I want to talk to you a little bit about funding. When we first finished the climate plan in December of 2020, the state was in a pandemic and we had no money, or we didn't have any extra money.

How could we implement the plan [00:31:00] was really an open question. And then a series of major pieces of legislation passed, and they vastly changed the landscape for state funding options. I want to emphasize for any of you who may be maxed out and think that we can wait to start this work in a couple of years, the work of resilience is urgent because of what, because of what is happening in the world.

And this work is also urgent because there is money now to support your community, and it likely won't last forever. So I'm not going to go for the, the full acronym soup that's on these slides. You've probably heard of many of these programs. The first one was the near billion dollar state program that came through ARPA funds.

Many of you got that. We have local ARPA funds, but we have invested those funds in workforce development, infrastructure, and helping businesses recover. The next long term pot of money that hopefully many of you have heard of is the bipartisan infrastructure law. A 10 year federal package to support transportation, [00:32:00] resilience, uh, significant funding for our broadband, energy resilience, Um, and so, these are funds that are available now, some of them are available to the state, many of them are available for communities.

Uh, the next two, I will just say the Inflation Reduction Act, you've probably heard a lot about it. Um, Inflation Reduction Act is offering some funds I'm going to talk about that are coming to the state of Maine. Um, it also has significant tax credits available, um, to consumers, to homeowners. but also tax credits available to municipalities.

And I know municipalities don't pay taxes. So they've developed a new provision called Direct Pay, where municipalities can get 30 percent back from the IRS for investments in clean energy, in EV charging, um, in certain geothermal projects. Um, so these are a big, big deal. If you haven't heard about them, Google them.

I'm sure MMA will provide more information for you. So just one of the programs that came out of the IRA is the NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge. [00:33:00] Um, I will just say I'm very proud of our team, Sarah Kern in this room and Judy East and others, um, helped to put together with lots of other state agencies, DOT, DMR, DEP, um, an incredible grant.

Um, and Maine won just a, just one of eight national awards, a 69 million award to our state to spend the next five years investing in climate resilience. And I will just say that this 69 million is not going to be holed up in Augusta. The vast majority of these funds will go out to communities through additional grants through Community Resilience Partnership, through grants from DOT, and other entities.

We also have five years of funding at the local and regional level to support, um, specific capacity for regional governments to help you all, um, with what you want to make happen. So again, super proud of this grant. It's a big, big deal. Lastly, uh, I want to talk just quickly about the Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission.

We know that more needs to be done to prepare for the storms ahead. [00:34:00] The winter three storm punch convinced Governor Mills that we needed to ensure that the state's recovery was successful. We needed more minds to advance a thoughtful plan for the future. We were inspired by a commission in Texas that convened after Hurricane Harvey.

Texas doesn't like to talk about climate change, but they passed a plan that talked a lot about future proofing Texas. and they produced a plan to help Texas do just that. Maine's commission has several goals. It's required to submit its first recommendations on November 15th ahead of the legislative session.

The commission has gone on the road to Stonington, Old Orchard Beach, and Saco, Rumford, Mexico, and Jay, Rockland, Machias, and lastly Caribou. Up in Caribou at a meeting of several rustic municipal and regional leaders, I met another inspiring town manager that is working day and night for his community, Luke Dyer from Van Buren.

Luke is a former police chief who, after many years of service, decided he could bring something to his broader community and he hasn't looked back. [00:35:00] While I was visiting, he told me about the Van Buren Resilience Initiative that is bringing community vibrancy and economic recovery to his town in every way they can.

As part of the Resilience Initiative, the town is installing bike racks, walking trails, and signage to support other modes of transportation, planting trees and plants to support green space, building a community greenhouse for local food production, and implementing green stormwater infrastructure to manage increased precipitation.

This is all part of an overarching Complete Streets program in partnership with the Maine DOT. The Van Buren Community Garden Project is the reinvention and reuse of 3. 2 acres of green space Located in Van Buren's downtown village. The area, a former cul de sac neighborhood located on Grand Street, wrapped by Violet Stream, was entirely lost in a flood in 2008.

A group of homes were lost and the community still feels the pain of those events. Collaborating with members of a small grassroots organization, Luke proposed the creation of a community garden [00:36:00] that would include two large greenhouses and 10 raised beds to promote food sustainability and engage seniors to help curb loneliness.

The program was funded through a community resilience partnership grant and the town council with enthusiasm approved the match to make this project a reality. Luke isn't here today but he wrote to tell me that the greenhouses are being delivered. Today, Luke said that for Van Buren, resilience is the community's ability to adapt, rebuild, and thrive through creative revitalization, preserving our heritage while embracing modern solutions.

Luke worries that Van Buren's ability to withstand future challenges like severe storms and economic disruptions may be hindered by outdated infrastructure and limited resources, making it crucial to invest in systems that prevent, protect Van Buren in the long term. I'm also thrilled to feature someone who is likely to also be a familiar face to some of you in this room, Kendra Amaral, the town manager from Kittery.

Kendra has been a community leader in [00:37:00] planning, resilience, and so many proactive efforts in her town. She took part in the Southern Maine collaborative process with fellow York County leaders to develop a unique local climate plan that she's now working across multiple sectors to implement that plans to increase resilience on her working waterfront, through housing and transportation access, infrastructure projects, and through an innovative electricity grid improvement.

Just a few resilience recommendations from Kittery's plan include directing new growth to areas with existing infrastructure and low flood risk, Advancing low impact development practices. Providing community education on climate impacts. Improving disaster planning and mitigation, as well as updated evacuation routes.

Modeling the impacts of sea level rise on local water and septic infrastructure. Promoting resilient building designs and hazard disclosure for property transaction, transactions. Kendra told me that resilience has many meanings in Kittery. She said, resilience includes being a community that can adapt [00:38:00] and thrive in the face of a changing climate, but it also includes being a community that is home to the next generation of Mainers.

with affordable housing options and public transit. Both of these two needs for resilience tie directly to our endangered working waterfront. Our working waterfront is threatened by climate change. It is challenged by Maine's aging population and incredible gentrification pressure. Like other towns I've mentioned, Kendra and her staff and elected leaders have left few stones unturned when it comes to getting the resources to get the work done.

She's the lead partner of large federal grant to bring energy efficiency upgrades to middle income applicants. She has multiple coastal resiliency projects underway including road and stormwater upgrades. She's also focused on evaluating the long term viability of a public wharf and pier that serves commercial fishing and recreational boating.

Kendra says that what keeps her hopeful includes the resources that are being available, made available to make projects happen. She said, we are experiencing success and proving that Kittery is [00:39:00] very, a very capable mid sized community and worthy of the resources that only usually go to cities for these projects.

We have a great deal of confidence in our ability to implement climate strategies, aka, she calls it, the kiddery way. Our plans don't sit on shelves collecting dust. We are hopeful that there is a real desire to protect and preserve what makes our town and region a wonderful place, and that such a passion will propel us forward in the years to come.

So the last municipal leader I want to mention today is another person who defined resilient leadership, the former Machias Town Manager, Bill Kitchen. As some of you may know, Bill sadly passed away unexpectedly last month. He leaves a huge hole in Machias and Washington County, after making a big impact in just his three years leading the town office.

My office worked with Bill on four major resilient projects in town, including the challenging Machias Dyke Bridge project, a marsh restoration, a downtown flood protection project, and planning for the town's [00:40:00] wastewater treatment plan. Bill was focused on all the urgent needs to help his community respond to the increased flooding and their future risk.

I met Bill several times and his boundless energy, optimism, and determination was infectious. His love for his community and his belief in its future, the future of Washington County, drove him. A New Center Maine story about Bill's life featured selectman Ben Edwards who said, Bill opened his eyes to the beauty of a town he had been living in for most of his life.

It continues to inspire him to give back to his town as a select board member. Just the shift in perspective he gave, that big things can be done in small places by small communities. Bill in this photo is giving a tour of downtown Machias this past summer to the Governor's Resilience Commission. He showed us where Machias Town Office had stood before the January storms and floods forced them to move.

We heard from Bill how important it was to engage his community in resilience work. He was motivated to work with everyone he could, from [00:41:00] other area town managers to his town public works and fire department. He also highlighted that he needed invested partners from the state. at the table to help consider solutions to his town's toughest problems.

So we'll, with Bill, Bill's message about the need for state collaboration, I am so thrilled to conclude with one last state highlight and even a piece of breaking news. Governor Mills cares deeply about the needs and challenges of Maine's communities. The governor heard clearly about this need from the Maine Municipal Association, and now, with a positive vote from the Maine Legislature, the new Maine Office of Community Affairs is now in effect.

The Maine Office of Community Affairs will be a one stop shop for communities. Acknowledging that at a time of challenge, it is a time of challenge but also of opportunity. Several state programs are slated to be transferred to this new office in the state's biannual budget this coming spring. The new state resilience office as part of the NOAA [00:42:00] grant will start up in the main office of community affairs, I'm going to call it MOCA, this winter.

We are not wasting time getting going. We know we must get to work today. So I'm very excited that the community leaders in our state will be the first to know some exciting news.

And that is, I am very pleased to share that later this morning, Governor Mills will announce the appointment of Samantha Horn of Reedfield to be the first director of the Maine Office of Community Affairs. As a long time community planner, policymaker, and natural resource expert, Samantha brings deep experience with communities across Maine, especially rural Maine.

She knows the challenges they face and the time and effort put into solutions. Samantha has spent three decades focused on policy, planning, and science. that recognize the inherent connections between resilient communities and the environment. Samantha has a graduate degree in wildlife and fisheries conservation, and she had a nearly [00:43:00] 20 year career leadership in the roles in the state's planning and natural resource agencies, including more than a decade as the head of planning for the Land Use Planning Commission.

That's a lot of planning. Samantha's experiences have shown her the power of creating policy with a deep involvement of those most affected, with a strong base of information built by participants. I asked what makes Samantha hopeful for the work ahead, and she said, So much has already been accomplished.

And because people poured themselves into the work, going above and beyond what was expected or required, amazing products and networks have materialized. from the correct collective and generous work of many. I'm hopeful because Maine has momentum. And with the resources that are now available, we can build on that foundation of passionate work and do truly remarkable things for our community today and into the future.

I believe Samantha Horn is the perfect fit for this important role. So I'm going to ask her actually to come up here and say a few words. So please join me in welcoming Samantha. Samantha Horne to the stage.[00:44:00] 

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you, Hannah. That was a very generous introduction. I appreciate it. Maine is a place where people pour their hearts into their communities. The spirit of caring for our neighbors and working hard to leave our community better than we found it is part of who we are. As our challenges have become more complex and urgent, we're finding new solutions.

The financial and technical resources available to communities today to address resilience are unprecedented, and they come from a broad spectrum of organizations. As you have just heard, the offerings at the state level are growing exponentially because of the efforts of the Mills administration. [00:45:00] Over time, those important new resources have added more complexity in some state programs, making them difficult to navigate.

We have heard loud and clear that there are too many programs and too many points of contact for communities to sort through. We have also heard from communities that some key services need to be better supported. The Maine Office of Community Affairs, or MOCA for short, as Hannah mentioned, it's a great acronym, right?

Was formed to make it simpler for communities to access services and resources. That are right for them. Our first job is to listen carefully to the needs of communities of different sizes and cultures all over the state, and then bring grants and technical assistance services together with fewer points of contact and meet communities where they are, whether that is a large community with substantial paid staff or a small volunteer led [00:46:00] community where the bandwidth for projects is limited.

By working with our partners, government at all levels, including travel governments. private industry and NGOs, regional councils, and professional associations, MoCA will look at the world through the eyes of Maine's communities and change the way state government services are deployed so that we may better serve you by making it easier for communities to invest in their own resilience.

Maine will be stronger for generations to come. I'm so impressed by the energy and accomplishments of the Mills administration in recognizing the need to invest in the resilience of Maine communities and making that investment happen. And I'm honored to be asked to lead the effort to take the main office of community affairs from concept to reality.

Many of the staff that will be part of this new office have been my colleagues for years. I know them [00:47:00] to be talented and dedicated. We will work together to make this a seamless transition and to keep the needs of communities foremost in our minds. What I ask of you as leaders in your organizations is that you keep the channels of communication open and work with us as partners.

I very much want to learn from you and I invite you to share with me your stories, accomplishments and priorities. I'll be here at the conference for the rest of the day. So if you have a moment, please say hello. There's no better time than the present to start talking about our future. And thank you to the Maine Municipal Association for hosting this conference and for giving me a few moments to speak.

I have a feeling that the MMA staff and I will be spending some quality time together in the coming months. Now I'll turn it back over to Hannah. Thank you all so much.[00:48:00] 

I'm all done now. Uh, so we actually have a few minutes for questions and Peter's got the microphone. It's like, Oprah. So, um, hopefully you will direct most of your hard questions at Samantha, who now is uh, in the hot seat. Um, but I'm happy to try to answer any questions, uh, or hear anything you all have to say.

Sure, she's asking for the QR code, and I can definitely find that.

God, a lot of slides, sorry. There we go. Great.

Amy is here. Emergency management has done a really good job at our December 18th flooding. We [00:49:00] were all over the news as well as a cohort over at Jay and worked with Shiloh and Jay and worked with Maria over in Wilton and trying to come up with a couple of things that we identified as being real weaknesses after that storm.

One was how do we notify the public and having some kind of easy way, um, To, to get that out there because there's a lot of programs for public notification out there. Things like these roads are closed or you know, avoid this area altogether and this is going to be closed from here on out or evacuate your homes now.

So we've been looking at how we can maybe collaborate on some notification systems, maybe think outside the box on that. But that's an area where we kind of could use some help in getting some solutions that That don't cost so much money because it's, it's a big investment for towns and I mean, Farmington's the biggest in Franklin County, but we're certainly not the richest town out there as well.

But another thing that EMA did that I thought was really great, and I [00:50:00] kind of put this out there as a, uh, something to keep in mind. A couple of months ago, we did a tabletop exercise and the folks from NOAA came in. And we had all of the agencies that would be working together in our area because it truly is outside of your own borders.

It's going to be every town in the region that's affected. We all come together, and we're all affected at the same time, so they pulled together people from not only the towns, but also from the various agencies that help, so state police, CMP, all of the agencies that come together, the hospitals, the hospitals, And we did a tabletop exercise on what would happen if a hurricane came through and we had another major flooding event.

And I think the brainstorming that happened there, as well as the thinking, you know, this is five days out, this is four days out, you know, when do you start your notification efforts and your planning? I think that was really, really helpful, and if we could extend that to a broader scale, uh, I think that would be really great for the [00:51:00] future.

Yeah, thank you. That was a great comment. I hope everybody could hear what was said. I think the picture I showed of Bethel The same picture could have been shown at Farmington. Everyone saw that McDonald's underwater, you're downtown underwater, so thank you for all the work that you've done. And I do know, uh, when we were in Rumford with Shiloh and others with the Resilience Commission, we had EMA folks from Franklin, Somerset, um, and Oxford Counties and heard many of the things that you just highlighted.

Um, I will say we had a, uh, Resilience Commission meeting yesterday. The idea of the commission is to figure out exactly, um, questions like yours. What do we need to do to prepare for the next storms? What do we need to do from an emergency management perspective? How do we better support communities who are trying to grapple with this?

I will say the events of North Carolina we've all heard a lot about communications. You know, everyone texting, cell phones don't work. In those storms in December and January, we had some towns, you know, utilizing Facebook. And other people said, well not everybody's on Facebook. Well, everybody's on Facebook in my town.

We all know that we need better [00:52:00] communication systems. So, your point, um, the, the exercise that you did and the need for a statewide, um, at least advice, if not a solution to communications during extreme weather events and then in the follow up is absolutely one of the things we're thinking about. So, if you come up with any great ideas, let us know.

Otherwise, we are also working with MEMA. with the federal government on, on what's happening in other parts of the country. Obviously, Florida, Texas, other places really have this down. So, um, I will just say communication is, I think, one of the top issues we've heard about, um, especially in the immediate aftermath, um, and how we can provide solutions is, is exactly what we hope to recommend, um, some ideas on.

So, thank you for that. Adding

more funding for [00:53:00] small towns that Oh, just hold it a little closer. Sorry. Uh, funding for smaller towns, Durham, that's where culverts are failing. Um, small towns of 700, 000 don't have the funding to redo culverts and FEMA's money doesn't come quickly enough. Yep. Um, and they don't have the money in their budgets to replace 100, 000 worth of, you know, road closures.

Um, I know CRP doesn't help with that, but is there any thought to putting money into those? Because those seem to be, um, the biggest expenses for those communities in those storms. Particularly our rural area that we cover has, you know, a thousand people in each town. Just not enough money. And what town are you from?

Um, I actually work for COGS. Great, but just we cover Somerset and Kennebec County and the amount of culverts that failed and had to have roads We have some that still have roads closed because they didn't have the [00:54:00] funding Quick enough from FEMA and Don't have it in their GA Yeah No, that's a great question.

Hopefully you could all, uh, hear, but how do we help towns, especially with culverts, especially small towns, um, as they rebuild from that? And I think that's exactly what Shiloh faced in Jay. Um, the state's infrastructure adaptation fund does make 200, 000 grants available for culvert projects, um, but I will say it's probably not enough money.

Um, and I'm looking over here at Samantha, but I would actually say A lot of our grant programs, sometimes they open right after an extreme event, but they're not designed, they're sort of designed for proactive. Um, but thinking about the reactive, um, I do know that FEMA has started to change some of their national guidelines about the ability to build back, uh, better, to build back larger culvert sizes.

Um, so I think we will certainly work with MMA and the COGS to think about how can we utilize that. Um, but I know that, you know, again. J is not even a [00:55:00] small town, necessarily, in Maine standards. Hearing Shiloh's stories of working on FEMA reimbursement, managing the paperwork, um, waiting for the money to come through, and that, with all these national storms, may now take even longer, um, that's not a small project, so how we fund and finance that is, I would say, a pretty important issue that we all think about how to work on together.

And I'm, I'm gonna, I won't put her on the spot, but maybe Samantha has thoughts. I would say that's That's probably an area between MEMA and the state we should be more proactive. I guess I just add that, uh, one of the things that MOCA will need to tackle pretty early, I mean, this will be a long process, right, of getting every topic and every issue into the hopper and figured out, but grants and grant coordination is a pretty high priority and understanding what needs come up suddenly and what can be planned for, I think is going to be important as we think about how to make.

[00:56:00] Forms for applying for grants more consistent across programs. Program, uh, grant cycles, uh, be lined up so that they make sense for communities. Um, so if you have thoughts, like that, I wrote it down. It's a great suggestion and great, um, question. If any of you have thoughts about how to best organize grant program structures so that they best serve communities, I would love to hear about it.

Hi, Eric Dyer. Retail Town Manager, Samantha, congratulations. Uh, and I just want to say thanks to the state for the renewed focus on local communities and putting planning at the center of that, so I very much appreciate it. Nice, thank you. Did you pay him to say that? No, and I just want to say Eric is an awesome town manager.

Did you pay her to say that? Alright, anything else? [00:57:00] Great, right here.

Hi, Laurie Smith, Kenny Bunkport. I think one of the issues we're seeing is we're seeing storm tourism from the south, people coming up during these large events and wanting to, but they don't spend money, they just get in the way. Um, and so I think, You sound like Kathleen Billings. I actually deleted some of the words she used.

Right. Kathleen is crying real estate. She, she knows what she's talking about. I think that one of the things the state can help with is kind of messaging in terms of normalizing evacuation, normalizing closures, you know, what steps the public should take because it hasn't been normal and many people want to stick it out.

Right. And I think we need more help in getting people out of harm's way in advance and having them prepared for that. [00:58:00] Thank you, good to see you, and I will say, that's probably similar to the question on communications, I will say, the Resilience Commission has done all these meetings, we saw you in Old Orchard Beach, and I think that evacuation isn't something that Maine people do very often, um, they're used to it in certain parts of Florida and Texas, but for Maine people, they're, they're gonna stick it out, and I think understanding evacuation routes, understanding when we really do need to evacuate, and obviously, you know, Keeping tourists from joining us for storm events is definitely, would only make matters worse.

So, I think, um, Lori, that's a great, uh, suggestion, and I think it's a good thing, uh, to think about in the context of this Resilience Commission. So, thank you.

Anything else? Alright. We'll pass it back to Diane. Thank you.

We have a little [00:59:00] card for you. And thank you so much for speaking with us. Um, yeah. Great, thank you.

So thank you all for participating in this morning's program. There's still more to learn, more people to meet, and we have a featured speaker luncheon here again at noon. Um, so, and remember if you need any help finding things, there's MMA stuff circulating. So enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.