'Flat is the new up'

By JDS/Piscataquis Observer
I blame it partly on the half-pot of coffee I drink most mornings, and partly my distain for bad music and commercials on the radio, but I end up flipping between six or seven radio stations during my daily drives between Old Town and Dover-Foxcroft.
One of those radio stations that is programmed in my truck is the Maine Public Broadcasting Network out of Bangor. There are times, mainly around elections, when I become a political junkie and MPBN is my fix. I still turn to the station from time to time, though the election season is over, just to get a new perspective on local and national news.
During the afternoon news hour, a commercial came on for a National Public Radio program that was going to discuss the new slogan for businesses in 2009: Flat is the new up.
Flat is the new up: it’s one of those cute little taglines that are found in urban culture, like “black is the new red” for fashion, “A-Rod is the new Bonds” to talk about steroids in baseball (by the way, what a fool. It’s a good thing that A-Roid chose the Yankees instead of the Red Sox all those years ago), and “50 is the new 40” when it comes to age.
Basically it’s a hip way to redefine a situation. A July 16, 2008 column by Daniel Gross in Newsweek researched the phrase and found out it has been around for a number of years. If you Google “Flat is the new up,” you’ll get 36,100 responses, which means the slogan is catching on.
So what does it mean? Well, think of it like a roller coaster ride. After falling down 30-40 feet, the moment the car levels off seems to be a more reassuring feeling than that big freefall. In reality, with the economy taking a big hit and people in every walk of life in this nation seeing the pocketbook thin out to varying degrees, “flat is the new up” means a good year will be defined by holding on to what we have instead of losing more and more of our assets.
As I drove south on Rt. 16 that day from the Milo chip mill toward LaGrange, I began to think of how that line applied to our neck of the woods. In Piscataquis County, the line takes on a more meaningful definition when you look at some of what we have here: some work but climbing unemployment, schools, and hope.
There have been a number of headlines in recent months about how the lagging economy has taken a toll on one of Piscataquis County’s historical employers — True Textiles (a.k.a. Guilford of Maine, a.k.a. InterfaceFABRIC). Layoffs have already been handed down to roughly 90 people at the plant, and an uncertain future has left many more wondering if they are next. Everyone hopes the cuts are over, but no one can answer for certain if that’s the case.
Now, just because True is going through this turmoil doesn’t mean all of Piscataquis County is hurting in the same way. That being said, it’s hard to ignore one of the mainstays of the region battling in the midst of the recession.
So how does “flat is the new up” fit here? If employment numbers stay flat, that means no one else has to lose their jobs.
The slow economy is taking a big bite out of Maine’s budget, which in turn means nearly every aspect of the state budget seems to be on the chopping block for cuts — and that includes schools. The governor has proposed flat-funding schools at the 2008 rate for the next two years (there’s an instance where our slogan doesn’t work). That, coupled with the financial penalties all five area school districts will face for voters not approving consolidation referendums, is leading to major financial challenges for districts.
Two area school districts, SAD 68 in Dover-Foxcroft and SAD 4 in Guilford, have proposed addressing these challenges by possibly closing elementary schools in Monson and Parkman, respectively. Part of that reason for those closures has to do with declining enrollments; the other declining revenues.
This is the reality of consolidation, something that was going to happen down the road in the RSUs or AOSs throughout the state after the dust settled. There was no way just shaving administrative budgets was going to save $34 million as the governor proposed. A school board official once told me a reduction of teachers and facilities was going to inevitably be the answer.
Parents in Piscataquis County cherish their local schools, especially elementary schools, and it will be hard for these towns to give up their schools. If school officials can find a way to reduce budgets without closing schools, then staying flat will truly be an uplifting thing for many parents.
What’s that leave us with? I’d say hope but it’s hard to imagine there’s much of that around, even with the economic stimulus package through Congress and on the president’s desk. It won’t be an end-all, fix-all, but that package is a step in the right direction for turning this economy around.
Maybe it’s flatness that we can look forward to in 2009. As long as job losses are kept at a minimum, doors stay open at schools and businesses throughout the region and the state passes a budget that doesn’t gouge the taxpayer any more than what is already demanded of them, then maybe we can level out a little bit this year and look forward to a brighter future in the coming years.
“Flat is the new up.” It’s not just an urban buzzphrase anymore.