By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
    More than 20 years have passed since city councilors in Portland and South Portland have met in a joint workshop setting, but officials from both cities vowed the collaborative efforts discussed at a Jan. 2 meeting would not die that night.
    Councilors, city managers and department heads from Portland and South Portland gathered at the South Portland Community Center with the purpose of identifying projects and initiatives of mutual interest such as school funding, public safety, infrastructure improvements and public transit.
    “I think we have to come to realize ourselves as a region,” South Portland City Councilor Linda Boudreau said. “Any time there’s an issue Portland needs some help with, I would invite you to bring in your neighbors. Your problems are frequently our problems.”
    To ensure future collaboration, both councils have elected to appoint two of their members to a liaison committee.  
    One problem shared by both municipalities is what officials on both sides of the harbor consider an inequitable school funding formula.
    South Portland Mayor Jim Soule, who called for the city of South Portland and neighboring communities to secede from the state last month, has said South Portland and other service centers provide the majority of jobs and revenue for the state and receive a disproportionate share of state aid for education. He has said the current funding formula rewards those communities that are not bringing business and industry to town.
    During the workshop, Soule said property valuation is not a good indicator of a community’s ability to pay for education and called for income to be reinstated as a weighted factor in determining a municipalities’ overall wealth.   
    Soule was a member of the Rosser Commission, a committee appointed by the legislature to make recommendations about ways to change the state’s funding of education. In 1995, the legislature adopted the commission’s recommendation to adjust the formula to include household income and cost of living. According to data provided by Soule, a year after a 15 percent weighted median income factor was added to the formula, South Portland received roughly $4.3 million in state aid or 20.45 percent of the total school budget. When the income factor was eliminated in 2006, state aid totaled roughly $4.2 million or 11.57 percent of the total budget, according to data provided by Soule.
    Portland Mayor Edward Suslovic said it may be time to reinvest in the Maine Service Centers Coalition, which was formed in 2001 to promote the needs of the roughly 77 service centers in the state to elected officials, encourage networking and collaboration between municipalities, and educate residents about the importance of thriving service centers.  Suslovic said hosting the next gathering of the coalition might prove helpful in bringing more elected officials together. He also advocated for increasing the weight of the free and reduced-price lunch program in state education aid and a statewide 1 percent increase in sales tax, with the funds returning to their cities of origin.
    While some councilors in both cities felt a smaller coalition of communities may be more effective, the group as a whole agreed there needs to be more communication with their respective legislative representatives because they are in the minority against a “rural caucus” in the legislature.
    “Why don’t [legislators] have any power?” said South Portland City Councilor Maxine Beecher. “We’ve got to hear that. You’ve got to know what the problem is before you can move forward.”
    On Jan. 5, South Portland City Councilors and school board members brought their concerns to state representatives including Jane Eberle (D-South Portland) during a joint workshop.  Eberle said school officials voiced concerns about the school administrative reorganization law and encouraged her to vote for a proposal to push back the referendum vote on the school budget by a year, a proposal Eberle favors.
    “I know there’s a lot of support among legislators [for the proposal],” she said Monday.
    Portland and South Portland public safety officials also found support for their ongoing efforts to work together on several projects of importance to both communities.
South Portland Fire Chief Kevin Guimond and Portland Fire Chief Fred LaMontagne said they are meeting weekly as they progress in consolidating the cities’ two emergency dispatch services into one public service access point or PSAP, a mandate from the Maine Public Utilities Commission that carries a deadline of Oct. 1.
South Portland began swapping over its computer aided dispatch and records management software  Jan. 1, according to a press release from South Portland Lieutenant Frank Clark. Guimond said they have found South Portland’s phone system is the more advanced of the two cities, but Portland’s computer system is the better of the two.  
    South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins said officials hope to complete a Casco Bay Bridge emergency evacuation plan this year. The plan would outline traffic and detours, shelters, methods of transportation to shelters, special population needs, incident management and risk assessment.
    “It mostly affects Cape Elizabeth, South Portland and Scarborough as residents flee the coast using the bridge,” Googins said. “It also affects Portland because guess where they’re going to go?”
    Portland City Councilor James Cohen said residents have questioned why there aren’t more sophisticated signs located on the approach to the bridge, informing motorists of how long the drawbridge has been up so they can seek an alternative route if need be.
    Guimond said the technology could also benefit public safety officials at times when ambulance drivers don’t know if it is better to try and navigate across the bridge or treat a victim at the scene.