Former councilor favors secession

   CARIBOU, Maine — After almost a decade of civic involvement, Doug Morrell believes that the best way to help his hometown is by cutting it in two.
Morrell is one of the five representatives designated by the Caribou Secession Committee to represent Lyndon, the name of the proposed area they’re hoping to break away from Caribou.
The secession committee formally announced their plans during a City Council Meeting on July 14, citing that the city council’s “failure to recognize the harmful effects of higher taxes is reprehensible.” Lyndon’s proposed area encompasses about 80 percent of Caribou, which is roughly everything but the downtown area, and includes approximately a third of Caribou’s 6,189 registered voters.
To go forward with secession, petition circulators need to gather signatures from half of the roughly 2,063 voters living in the Lyndon region.
As Morrell goes door to door gathering support for Lyndon’s secession, he readily and possibly unexpectedly admits that he loves Caribou.
“I feel bad that I have to get involved and talk like this, and make the negative remarks about moving my business outside of Caribou,” Morrell openly admitted. “Caribou is my home town, but as a move of last resort, I have to protect my business, my family, my kids and grandkids.”
Morrell was born and raised in the most northeastern city of the country, graduating high school as a Caribou Viking and opened a business in his hometown back in 1991, called Stainless Food Services Equipment Manufacturing.
About ten years ago, Morrell wanted to make a difference and became a board member of the Caribou Chamber of Commerce and Industry; dissatisfied with how things were going at the chamber, Morrell stepped up and became its President and, when he was still unable to make satisfactory changes, he became a member of the Caribou City Council in 2006.
“What I witnessed, saw and was involved with lead me to say I can’t just sit back and whine about it, I have to throw my hat in the circle and try to do something about it,” Morrell recalled. His first move as a city councilor was to dive right in to understanding the budgetary process. Morrell even laughed about how his wife got mad at him for taking those budget packets on vacation with them.
But Morrell quickly stopped laughing when he described the lack of progress he was able to make with the council. Though working with two like-minded councilors at the time, Wilfred Martin and Mark Goughan, Morrell said they were battling a liberal agenda.
“It was an effort to try to bring changes and ideas around, and of course being in the minority, we were voted down in everything we tried to bring forward from the liberal side of the council,” he said last week. “By the third year, there were so many scenarios where if the average taxpayer knew, I think they would be in awe how their money was decided to be spent, and the decisions and the antics of what was going on during those three years — it was just crazy.”
As the meaning of terms liberal and conservative can have different connotations, Morrell explained that his “conservative” views in a budgetary sense are based in living within ones financial means. Liberal, on the other hand, is “one who has never seen a budget they wouldn’t vote in favor of … grabbing that brass ring without looking at the consequences of their actions and feeling that the taxpayers are there to pay it.”
Morrell attempted a write-in candidacy in fall of 2010 after his three-year term expired; he was not elected, but the experience of visiting over 700 Caribou households has stayed with him.
“It was an eye opener that drove home the fact that people are having a hard time and people are struggling,” he said. “What it did was ground my feet and give me a dose of reality of what truly is the pulse of the community; it reaffirmed my convictions for a more conservative, transparent local government.”
He feels now more than ever that the role of the municipal government and the legislative body is to protect its citizens.
“Much more than police, fire and ambulance, number one is control your spending,” he outlined. “You control your spending, your mil rates stay down, your costs stay low, and we stay attractive to other people and other businesses.”
Morrell was the president of the grassroots group Citizens for Responsible City Management for about four years, and many members from that group are on the Caribou Secession Committee. The CRCM’S treasurer and secretary, coincidentally, are City Councilors Philip McDonough II and Joan Theriault, respectively; even Gary Aiken, Caribou’s Mayor, attended a couple of CRCM meetings.
In recent issues of the Aroostook Republican, Aiken has written his thoughts on secession in his column, and Morrell does not agree with what’s been printed. For instance, Aiken suggested that RSU 39 members would have to vote on whether or not to accept Lyndon into the regional school unit.
“The person stating the facts out there in the paper should be looking at his facts,” Morrell commented. “We already exist, our children are already in the school system now, and one should really do their homework before they start rattling their saber making a statement like that,” he added.
Whether it’s the municipal matters of education or ambulance and emergency services, Morrell is excited to bring those decisions directly to the taxpayers of Lyndon.
“We’re going to bring the numbers to the table, which we have done, but it’s up to the Lyndon folks who pay the bills to say they want to contract ambulance services with Crown Equipment or Caribou — that’s a decision they’ll make,” he said.
Though Morrell said the numbers about the proposed municipality are ready, the secession committee is withholding those figures until the petition has been submitted and, by law, the city council will have a mediated meeting with the Lyndon representation.
“The people within the effected community are going to have the numbers, and we feel should have a right to know these numbers prior to meeting with the city council or the rest of the city of Caribou; these numbers that pertain directly to their well being, we feel they are the ones that should be seeing these numbers first.” he explained. “We don’t have time to release our budget numbers and have to spend the next five months putting out fires because of he-said she-said, and these fallacies from the council person that are in the paper all the time,” Morrell added, mentioning that it’s not Lyndon’s numbers the city should be worried about. “The city of Caribou and its elected officials should be worried about their numbers and how it affects Caribou. Wanting our budget to spread propaganda in the newspaper — we don’t have time for that.”
A factual meeting just for citizens of Lyndon will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 3, starting at 6:30 p.m. at 154 West Gate Road. Additional information about the Caribou Secession Committee or Lyndon can visiting the Caribou Secession Committee Facebook page or call the hotline at 489-6120 or 492-7291.