Gouldsboro residents will decide whether they want to establish a Coastal Planning and Protection Reserve Fund at the town meeting on the evening of June 11. This post explains how the town will utilize the funds placed in the reserve fund if citizens vote to establish it. It also explains why having such a fund is necessary.

What is the Fund For?

The FY 2026 Budget: An Emphasis on Planning Ahead

The Coastal Planning and Projection Reserve is part of the town’s overall effort to become more deliberate in its plans to keep its roads, buildings, and equipment up-to-date and able to meet future needs. The Select Board and Budget Committee recognize the need to look ahead ten years to smooth out spending while also ensuring that roads, equipment, and buildings are in good repair and meet residents’ needs.

Annual maintenance costs for the town’s assets are included in the annual budget. However, trying to pay for items like fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars in a single year results in budgets that fluctuate wildly. Further, if the item or improvement costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, it is not reasonable to try to fit such an expenditure into a single year’s budget unless money has already been set aside or the town secures a loan.

This is not a new idea. Gouldsboro voters have been setting aside money in reserve funds for many years. What is new this year is a greater focus on reviewing all the funds together to ensure that the town addresses all its capital spending needs and that the necessary funds will be available when needed.

Purpose of the Coastal Planning and Protection Reserve

Article 28 of the Annual Meeting Warrant reads:

To see if the Town will vote to establish a Coastal Planning & Protection Reserve for the purpose of paying for infrastructure improvements related to storm damage and resiliency and to raise and appropriate the sum of $75,000 for the Coastal Planning and & Protection Reserve.

There are two parts to this warrant article. First, it establishes the fund, and then it puts money into it. If voters agree to this, the $75,000 can serve two purposes:

• Provide funds to serve as the local match for new proposals that the Coastal Resilience Committee plans to submit within the next twelve months.
• Provide an initial payment into a fund that can grow over the next few years with continued public support. As the fund grows, it will become large enough to support construction in addition to planning.

More specifically, the town has the opportunity to submit a proposal this summer for additional resilience planning for roads and harbors that are vulnerable to storm damage. If the proposal is funded, we estimate that the local match will be between $10,000 and $15,000. If an additional grant opportunity emerges in the spring of 2026, the town could again use the fund for the required match. We anticipate that at least $50,000 will remain in the fund after the town has met its matching requirements related to new grants. That money will serve as the initial investment toward building a reserve large enough to support infrastructure construction and improvement projects. As I explain below, a reserve fund of several hundred thousand dollars is necessary to support construction and significant improvements to the town’s coastal infrastructure.

Why is the Fund Necessary?

What Gouldsboro Has Done To Date: Planning

Early in 2021, Gouldsboro began examining what it needs to do to prepare for sea level rise and larger storms. Gouldsboro’s Vulnerability Assessment and Action Plan was the first tangible outcome of that work. Creating the Vulnerability Assessment had a minimal impact on the town’s budget because Gouldsboro received funding from NOAA, the Maine Coastal Program, and the Island Institute that covered most of the cost.

Over the past two years, Gouldsboro has begun to address some of the highest-priority vulnerabilities identified in the action plan. For example, engineers, ecologists, and GIS specialists are currently working on engineering designs and environmental permitting aimed at replacing the flood-prone culvert near the junction of Corea Road and Francis Pound Road in Corea, thereby keeping the road above water in all but the most extreme storms. Another example is the project the town initiated this spring to identify necessary investments in town-owned facilities in Bunkers Harbor, Prospect Harbor, and South Gouldsboro. This project aims to align these facilities with the evolving needs of each harbor and prepare them for the impacts of sea level rise and storms.

Gouldsboro is funding these projects using grant money from the state’s Coastal Resilience Partnership, the Maine Coastal Program, and the Municipal Planning Assistance Program. These programs provide support in the range of $50,000 to $75,000. Grants of this size are well-suited to planning and early-stage design work. They typically require a local match of 10% to 20% of the requested amount. Gouldsboro was able to provide the required match without drawing on funds from local taxes because it had received money from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a federal program established to aid economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moving from Planning to Construction

Project costs will increase as the town moves from planning and early-stage design to final design and construction. The estimated cost for final design and construction to elevate the road and replace the culvert near the Corea Road/Francis Pound Road junction is in the $400,000 – $500,000 range. Estimated costs for harbor improvements that emerged from our conversations with fishermen in Bunkers, Prospect, and South Gouldsboro are similar: Each is likely to cost several hundred thousand dollars.

Finding Support for Construction

In past years, the Maine Department of Transportation offered grant programs that helped small towns like ours with projects such as culvert replacement and improvements to municipal harbor infrastructure, such as wharves and piers. For example, in 2004, Gouldsboro utilized a grant from the Small Harbors Improvement Program (SHIP) to cover much of the cost of building the town pier in Prospect Harbor.

Such a funding opportunity may emerge in 2026. Because the grant-funded work the town is undertaking this year will cover the initial design and permitting, Gouldsboro will be ready to apply for funds to cover a significant portion of the cost of replacing the culvert at the Corea Road/Francis Pound Road junction. Such larger grants often require a more significant local match, often in the range of 20% to 50%. If the overall cost of raising the road and installing a larger culvert were $500,000, Gouldsboro might need to provide $100,000 to $150,000 of that amount. The purpose of the Coastal Planning and Protection Reserve Fund is to enable Gouldsboro to accumulate such an amount over time, rather than having to raise it all at once.

Looking Forward

Creating and funding the Coastal Planning and Protection Reserve Fund is not a one-shot thing. I have identified some near-term work that the fund would enable, but there is still more to be done. The town’s conversations with fishermen a few weeks ago identified other projects that the town needs to design and fund to avoid the kinds of damage to boats and harbor infrastructure that were seen last January. The Coastal Planning and Protection Reserve Fund provides Gouldsboro with a methodical approach to addressing those needs year after year, rather than reactively after a storm event.