Dear Editor:

In 2022 the Maine legislature, under the advisement of a group of private realtors and developers, enacted LD 2003 as HP 1489.

HP 1489 calls for priority development zones in every Maine municipality.

By so doing the Maine Legislature acknowledges that when the Commissioners decided not to include short-term rentals in the study, they made unregulated short-term rentals the defacto default zoning ordinance for the entire State of Maine.

The Maine Legislature called the zones “priority zones” but the zones are intentional communities designed by the state to house the segment of the workforce employed by a business, or performing essential services that a community can’t do without. The unit size described by the Boothbay Regional Development Corporation does not permit working space.

A priority zone is a general category that by design, accommodates variations. The state-defined priority zones do not accommodate self-employed, remote workers businesses in a home (except short-term rentals, which are accommodated by the default zone)

The state’s priority zone is clearly intended to be a concentrated housing zone, suiting developers of “production housing”, which is not the way rural Maine was historically developed.

While the legislation prohibits the municipalities from saying anything about community character, it is a plan to alter the community character of the entire state, across the state, by the state.

The intentional community codified in HP 1489 is unsuited to the remote workers, businesses in a home, and the self-employed, at least as it is being developed locally with spaces described as half the square foot per household as is the standard for comfort. Working at home requires space to work and hear one’s own thoughts.

A diverse society needs alternative intentional communities so that cultural diversity will not be zoned out of existence in Maine.

I am proposing a workers-in-residence intentional community, and I am seeking at least three other adults to collaborate on writing a proposal to be submitted to the Foundation for Intentional Communities website. It’s a start. We could be leaders in creating a new kind of intentional community.

Susan M. Andersen

Boothbay