Katahdin area meeting to create vision

MILLINOCKET – While most people head off this morning to their everyday jobs, 86 residents of East Millinocket, Medway, Millinocket and Woodville will converge at the Stearns High School gymnasium in Millinocket to begin a new job as “visionaries.'”

For 32 hours – spread out over four days – the committee of residents will grapple with issues facing their region: everything from intertown cooperation to local economics to the slow decline in the area’s population and school enrollments. The goal is to make more of the resources they have through collaborative efforts.

Dubbed the Katahdin Area Planning Conference, today is the point when residents decide what they want out of their future, according to Michael Kelly, a facilitator for Wiscasset-based Advanced Management Catalyst Inc., a consulting firm.

In recent months, the bankruptcy of Great Northern Paper coupled with a 30 percent unemployment rate have created a challenging time for 8,500 people living in this four-town area, Kelly said. The conference is an opportunity for the region to turn that around and tap its potential to become a vital center of growth, he said.

“My leap of faith is that everyone in those communities wants a thriving region that’s a joyful place to live,” Kelly said. “The process is about helping these people discover how to create that for themselves.”

While the word “consolidation” isn’t always well received in the area, the conference will focus, in large part, on the possibility for collaboration or integration of services between the communities, he said. Public safety, recreation, town administration, public works, education and economic development all have been discussed during informational meetings over the last five weeks, each time with residents offering collaborative options that enhance existing services while saving money.

From the possibilities of forming a single, unified school district to sharing contracts for police coverage, Kelly made assurances that the process is not about the towns sacrificing individuality.

“Some people are worried about losing community identities and I don’t know where that’s coming from,” Kelly said. “No one has to do that.”

Participants will begin today by deciding how far in the future they want to establish a vision for the region and what they want it to look like. The kinds of industries located in the region, the role of town government and the nature of the educational offerings all could be facets of their vision, Kelly said. After establishing objectives to enable that vision, the committee will decide which are priorities and develop a plan of action.

Using a method that has worked for companies such as Xerox and Maytag, Kelly and his team first applied the vision concept to the town of Limestone a decade ago during the closure of Loring Air Force Base. In less than a year, the population there dropped from 8,000 to fewer than 2,000 and the local economy nearly dried up. With the aid of a vision, some strategic planning and heaps of persistence, residents gained approval to start the Maine School for Science and Mathematics and attracted businesses and money-injecting events such as the Phish festivals. The process left the town arguably more robust than when the base was there, Kelly said.

But like it did at Limestone, Kelly’s consultant team is only present at today’s conference to ask questions and guide discussions. Where the vision and the region go is up to the people, he said.

“There’s no miracle to this,” Kelly said. “People just have to want to roll up their sleeves.”

Committee member and Medway Selectmen John Farrington is hopeful the conference may find cost-sharing methods with financial benefits for all of the towns. Likewise, a unified vision for the region also could yield important benefits, but the extent probably won’t be clear until the conference ends next weekend, he said.

“A person, a business or an organization has always got to have goals they’re striving for and I think that’s going to come out of it,” Farrington said. “We’ll have to wait and see what those goals are going to be.”

The process is likely to hit a few bumps, according to A. Keith Ober, vision committee member and interim superintendent for schools in the four-town area. The learning curve of an organization usually includes a small increase followed by a sharp plummet, Ober said, where in the first couple days, participants may get discouraged and feel they’ve only made things worse. But those that stick it out to the end have the potential for serious progress, he said.

“This conference has got the power or the potential to make tremendous change,” Ober said Wednesday. “It’s almost like starting all over again.”

The Katahdin Area Planning Conference will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Saturday, as well as Friday, Sept. 19, and Saturday, Sept. 20. The conference is open to the public, who may submit questions and ideas to conference facilitators.