Imagine standing on the brick walkways that line Free Street in Portland. The air hangs heavy with the scent of Casco Bay and the swarms of seagulls tending to their endless hunger. In your midst are shoppers and merchants, tourists and workers, all going about their day.

Yet, over the humdrum of city life you hear it. It is soft almost too soft to make out, but there it is again.

“If you fix it they will stay…If you fix it they will stay!”

Much like Ray Kinsella, and his magical baseball diamond in the cornfield, we were all smitten with the idea of a romanticized existence with our heroes of the athletic arena. Despite a speckled history that says that sports arenas are not the best investment for a community, we knew an improved Cumberland County Civic Center was just what was needed to keep our rapscallions of the rink in Portland for good.

Back in the summer of 2011, it was evident that without some renovations the Pirates would no longer call Portland home. The trustees of the Civic Center floated the idea of a bond for more than $34,000,000 that was payable by the residents of the towns that make up Cumberland County. This bond was never intended to fix all of the shortcomings of the arena, but we were told that this would keep the Pirates in Portland and bring in more events to the arena.

In typical bond fashion it passed and so it came to be that the Cross Insurance Center came to fruition. All’s well that ends well and the Pirates stayed at home in Portland.

Now just two years after the finishing touches were put on the center we awoke last week to the news that the Pirates had pillaged our fair county and are now leaving for Massachusetts.

We have seen this happen before. After all, the Mariners left and eventually the Pirates came to town. It feels different this time. It is different this time. There is only so much revenue to be found in having trade shows, sporting events and concerts. At the time of the writing of this piece, there are only six events listed on the arena’s website for the rest of the year. Six events.

Can those events keep the arena afloat and make the payment on the renovation bond without raising taxes on all of the municipalities in Cumberland County? Those nearly 40 home hockey games are looking better all of the time.

The loss of the franchise will hit the residents of this area hard. The cost of operating and paying for the Civic Center is nearly $3 million per year according to the proposed budget from the county. This does not include the loss of revenue from those nearly 40 home hockey games. So the operating expenses could very well be impacted.

The towns of Brunswick, Freeport, Pownal and Harpswell contribute nearly $4 million to the overall budget for the county. May we find ourselves in a position where we must now pay out more money to help stabilize an upside down budget for the arena? I don’t know and those that do are not yet talking.

Neither the trustees of the Civic Center nor the ownership of the Pirate’s Hockey Club are solely to blame for this conundrum that we all find ourselves in, but they both bear some responsibility. It has not been two years since a five-year contract was completed with the team and the paint on the renovations has just recently dried. In the future perhaps the trustees can do a better job to safeguard our investments.

Good luck to the team as they begin their new life as, perhaps, the Springfield Budget Busters. And good luck to the residents of Cumberland County as we await next year’s high school basketball tournaments as that may be the next time we set foot into our $34 million budget hole.

That’s my two cents …

P.S. It seems that there may be, over the course of the coming weeks, another interesting property rights issue involving the Town Council. More on that one as details begin to emerge.

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Jonathan Crimmins lives in Brunswick and can be reached at j_ [email protected].