As the CDC works to create protocols and procedures to handle human diseases like the Ebola virus, Maine's agricultural community is pushing for the creation of a laboratory to identify the diseases that affect farm animals and food crops - a need which they say is becoming critical. But how to pay for it? Enter Question 2 on the Nov. 4 ballot. Proponents say it's a crucial project for one of Maine's major growth industries. But others say there's just too much state borrowing going on.
The road in to the University of Maine Cooperative Extension's animal disease facility is perhaps not where you might envision it. "We're driving past it here," says Executive Director John Rebar. "When this old part of Hitchner Hall was created in the 1940s it was at the edge of campus- where the campus farm was."
Today, it's smack in the middle of the Orono campus: crosswalks, sidewalks, students scurrying past with backpacks. Imagine bringing the carcass of a 2,000-pound bull here for a necropsy to find out why it suddenly collapsed in the middle of your pasture. You just can't, says Rebar - the lab is not equipped to handle farm animals that big, a problem for Maine's burgeoning dairy industry.
And doing necropsies on animals with mystery diseases, he says, is not the kind of thing you want to do in a heavily-populated area. "That's one of our real concerns, is the fact that we need to do this diagnostic work away from the population because of the risk of someone bringing a contaminated animal to our laboratory."
Which might pose a risk to humans - for example, avian flu, swine flu, or even anthrax. The solution, says Rebar, is to construct a new $8 million space, to be paid for in state issued bonds, away from the core campus, and build it to safely accommodate everything from a duck to a draft ox.
Cooperative Extension was formed in 1914 by an act of Congress to help rural communities thrive through better farming education. After a 20th century decline, farming has again picked up Maine - one of the few places in the U.S. where the number of farms is actually growing. Between 2007 and 2012, the value of Maine's agricultural products jumped by 24 percent.
With farming once again emerging as a strong sector of Maine's economy, Jim Dill, who runs the pest control lab, says it's crucial for the state to be able to tackle new pest problems when they're found. But he says their make-shift lab space isn't equipped to deal with much. The insect identification area is a converted office, where a researcher sits surrounded by insect samples people have sent in.
"There's no bio-security whatsoever," Dill says, "so any type of a specimen that comes in here - let's say it was mosquitoes or bed bugs or something that could be carrying a disease pathogen - he should be in a secure lab."
But, as both Dill and Rebar say - and they're not joking - the "bio-security" currently available at the facility involves little more than throwing the latch on a window or closing the front door. Their bed bug colony, for example, is housed in a pink Tupperware container. The tick "lab" is another re-purposed office with a microscope on the desk. Dill says they're currently unable to do anything but look at the ticks that people send in; if you actually want one tested for disease, it has to be sent out of state.
All of this, they say, will change with the construction of a new facility. While it's hard to find much organized opposition to any of the six bond questions that will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot, bond issues have failed in the past.
"Bonding is not the answer," says Jonathan Haines, of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank. Haines says the state already borrows too much money. While the group takes no position on the merits of this, or any other, bond issue, Haines says it's just another example of a culture that would rather borrow now, pay more later.
"It's going to be debt that's accumulated, and there's going to be interest there," Haines says, "and it's going to be left for everybody else to have to pick up the tab, and you know it's not fair to future generations. It's also handicapping us for when we need to fully fund projects down the road. It's making it so we have less money." Most projects, says Haines, should be funded by the legislative budget process and not by bonding.
State Treasurer Neria Douglass says she believes the state can afford the $50 million in bonds voters will see on the ballot, including the $8 million for Question 2. And delaying on bonds would not be wise, she says, as interest rates are unusually low.
John Rebar, with Cooperative Extension, says years of previous attempts at finding funds have been answered in the same way by grant makers: Seek a bond issue. And he says without it, the service will just have to try to keep up with Mother Nature, but risk falling behind. However, it's the Maine people who will decide when they go to the polls on Nov. 4.
