Maine Office of Community Affairs Update for MAP
The Berwick-Somersworth Bridge carries Route 9 over the Salmon Falls River.
Greetings planning colleagues, it has been a wild spring. The Maine Office of Community Affairs (MOCA) is coming together in the midst of substantial uncertainty about federal and state funding and legislative priorities. What we can be certain of is that communities and service providers around the state are eager for more connective tissue around the services, policies and funding that state government provides to communities.
MOCA has started out by standing up the State Resilience Office. With the passage of LD 1, the State Resilience Office has been officially created in statute. The funding provided by LD 1 will support a network of certified floodplain managers in each of the regions and improved flood data to support communities in making decisions about their future resilience efforts.
Primary staffing for the State Resilience Office will come from the $69 million NOAA regional challenge grant that the state received last year. Brian Ambrette has been hired as the Director of the State Resilience Office and there are three other positions for which we are close to finishing the hiring process. In addition to those four state positions NOAA is providing 2 fellows to help with inland and coastal flooding resilience. The first fellow, Noah Bezanson, started June 2nd. Noah will be working on inland flood issues. The second NOAA fellow, Isabel Nykamp, will start at the end of the month and will be working on coastal flooding issues.
Currently our support staff is part-time contract staff, and we very much appreciate their help. We are looking forward to having permanent, full-time support staff once the state budget is in effect so that we may make more progress on setting up the nuts and bolts of the office. Being a startup in State Government is challenging! The many internal systems that established departments take for granted have to be constructed from scratch. I’m getting familiar with calling for an internal service and being told it will be a few weeks because they need to add MOCA to their system. All that to say, we appreciate your patience as we try to cover all of the bases.
Once the legislature finalizes the state budget, we will have a clearer idea of when the existing programs will be moving to MOCA. The best guess at this point is late September. Staff from the “future MOCA” programs are meeting regularly to work through logistical issues and beginning to collaborate on content. It’s exciting to think that in just a few months we’ll all be together.
As you know, the legislative policy issues this year have been very difficult. We are waiting to see what happens with the housing and land use bills, which are right down to the wire. Once we know more about the result of the legislature’s activity, I’ll provide an update about how MOCA plans to proceed to implement any resulting legislation.
As a community, we have much to talk about! This fall will be an active time for policy discussions, and I very much look forward to working with you.
Samantha Horn
Governor Mills appointed Samantha Horn as Director of the Maine Office of Community Affairs in October 2024. Horn has three decades of experience in policy, planning and science, including consulting on public stakeholder engagement, policy work, and planning and siting for development projects. Prior to starting her consulting business, she was the director of science for The Nature Conservancy in Maine and worked in state natural resource agencies for nearly 20 years, including more than a decade in leadership roles at the Maine Land Use Planning Commission.
Horn has a Master’s Degree in the Human Dimensions of Fish and Wildlife Conservation from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Bachelor’s degree in biology and English literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Her interests include rural community capacity, renewable energy siting practice, and integrated policy development. Horn was formerly on the boards of directors of the Maine Association of Planners, GrowSmart Maine, and the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund.