BIDDEFORD — During a jam packed, five-hour-long Biddeford City Council meeting last week, outgoing Mayor Alan Casavant presided over the body one last time.
Councilors moved forward on a long list of priorities, including killing a measure that would have barred dogs from going off-leash in Clifford Park, swearing in Fire Chief Lawrence Best, adopting the city’s first ever Climate Action Plan, allocating money towards the neighborhood center Seeds of Hope, and holding a first reading on the city’s proposed Inclusionary Zoning ordinance.
Early in the evening, the public and the City Council heard from speakers who thanked Casavant for his service. State legislators Henry Ingwersen and Marc Malon, School Superintendent Jeremy Ray expressed their gratitude, as staff did staffers for Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and Senator Angus King, who read remarks on behalf of their bosses. City councilors also thanked him for his contributions and leadership.
During a recent interview with the Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier, Casavant said housing will be the biggest issue facing incoming Mayor Marty Grohman. It’s no surprise, then, that he and the City Council spent multiple hours discussing housing in various capacities at his final meeting.
The councilors spent considerable time discussing unused Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money, funds administered by the federal U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD).
According to Jessica Wilson, Biddeford’s community development coordinator, $750,000 in CDBG money given to Biddeford went unspent towards it’s original purpose of supporting affordable development. The city was unable to use the money towards a project that would be able to comply with HUD’s timeliness requirements, she said. CDBG money is intended to support housing and economic opportunity needs for low and moderate income Americans.
In order to use the money before it was too late, the Biddeford’s Citizens Advisory Council asked the council to use the funds towards infrastructure projects. The CAC is a body that works to take advantage of HUD’s Community Development Block Grant.
The biggest portion of that $750,000 will go towards the York/Laconia Riverwalk Sidewalk project, a sidewalk construction project that will give pedestrians safe passage along York and Laconia Streets and through the Lincoln Mill so they can reach the Pearl Street Parking Garage from Main Street.
The motion passed.
Cat Bates, the chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee, expressed displeasure with where CDBG funds were allocated ahead of the vote. “I’m speaking in support of this motion for the sake of timeliness, but want to note for the record that the CAC has at no point been enthusiastically in favor of using CDBG funding for the York/Laconia sidewalk project.”
According to agenda materials, city staff recommended this course of action to the CAC.
“While this project is in keeping with the letter of the rules and had been approved by HUD, it toes the line of benefitting primarily low to moderate income community members, (given that the project is) located in an area of robust market rate development,” Bates added.
Councilor Julian Schlaver of Ward 5 echoed this sentiment. “I don’t think it’s benefiting the people we’re targeting with this fund,” he said of allocating the money towards the York/Laconia project. “It’s a very large amount of money (to spend on a sidewalk project) when we have people sleeping on the streets and we have people who need support.”
Other councilors, including Councilor at-large Doris Ortiz, expressed the same. Ortiz said she wished the city had been able to come up with a place to put the money that was closer to the spirit of where the funding is supposed to be allocated, even if putting it towards a housing project wasn’t possible.
One community group also received CDBG funding. Roughly $75,000 was allocated towards the organization Seeds of Hope, which provides community members with free meals, clothes and household goods, and other services. The move passed unanimously and enthusiastically. “I’m a thousand percent in favor of this funding,” said Councilor Bobby Mills, immediately prior to the vote.
Vassie Fowler, the executive director of Seeds of Hope, addressed the council and thanked them for their support — but said that she was looking forward to more support and was disappointed by the move to use CDBG money towards a sidewalk project.
“I feed a 100 people a day on pennies in a kitchen that was put in a basement of a church in the 70s,” she said. “Alan said ‘do the best you can, you can’t be all things to all people, but do the best you can,'” she added, invoking comments made by Casavant earlier in the evening. “I don’t think we did that here tonight in my opinion.”
Towards the end of the meeting, the council again tackled housing. They passed a first reading of multiple measures to comply with LD 2003, a state law aimed at lowering barriers to housing construction in Maine, and voted through a first reading on an Inclusionary Zone ordinance that the city has been working on for months. To be enacted, these changes must be voted through a second time.
To align with state LD 2003 requirements, the council voted on two proposed changes pertaining to accessory dwelling units — a separate residential unit erected on the same property as a free standing single family home — and green lit a proposed ordinance amendment that would allow higher density when constructing low and moderate income housing projects in certain zones. Also as part of LD 2003 compliance, the council voted to add specific definitions for Affordable Housing development to the city code.
Inclusionary Zoning, a policy that mandates all new development must support the creation of affordable housing units, has been a city priority for many months. It was among the key recommendations put forth in late 2022 by the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force, an ad hoc committee convened to come up with ways to support housing production and mitigate housing challenges.
As of the Nov. 1 Planning Board meeting, the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance would govern properties in MSRD1 and MSRD3 zoning districts “and any undeveloped residentially zoned properties.” Anyone constructing housing in these zones that has eight units or more would be required to have 10% of those units marked as “workforce housing units.” If a developer opts out of building affordable units, they can instead pay a fee — $100,000 per workforce housing unit not constructed — into a newly created Housing Trust Fund that supports affordable housing development in Biddeford.
The council voted it through, with an amendment that stipulated workforce housing units must be affordable to a household earning 80 percent or less of area median income, instead of 100 percent of area median income.
The City Council will vote for a second time on Inclusionary Zoning and all the changes to comply with LD 2003 at an upcoming meeting in December. Councilor Liam LaFountain told the Biddeford Courier he expects these items to be on the Dec. 19 City Council meeting agenda.
The meeting also adopted the city’s first ever Climate Action Plan, guidelines for Biddeford to reduce its carbon emissions and become more resilient in the face of the climate emergency.
“The Climate Action Plan is the culmination of a three-year effort led by the Biddeford Climate Task Force and informed by resident feedback each step of the way,” according to a press release from city Spokeswoman Danica Lamontagne that went out Monday.
The Climate Action Plan provides a roadmap for the municipality to reach city-set targets including a 62.6% reduction in absolute emissions by the year 2030, and reaching net-zero emissions 20 years after that, according to the release.
Multiple young community members spoke in favor of the plan.
Kiara Frischkorn, a member of the Biddeford Climate Action Task Force and a survivor of multiple extreme weather events, addressed City Council and urged them to adopt it.
“The people in this room today are youths who are very concerned about the future that were going to inherit,” Frischkorn said, referencing the over two dozen people who had shown up to the meeting.
“As someone who experienced what a climate fueled disaster does to a small town, that’s something I never want to see for Biddeford … If we want to do something for the youth of tomorrow, I strongly implore you to approve this climate action plan,” Frischkorn said.
City Council approved the plan unanimously, prompting cheers and applause.
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