NBC News to visit Centerville, Cooper

A producer and camera crew for “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw” are coming to Washington County on Oct. 18 and 19 to film a segment on the demise of America’s small, rural towns.

The television team is targeting Centerville, which gave up its town status on June 30, and Cooper, which is in the process of deorganizing as a town.

The producer learned about Centerville’s plight from a Boston Globe article several months ago. The town became a township after none of the residents said they were willing to do the work necessary to carry on the town’s duties.

That put Centerville on the national map for news, said Doreen Sheive, the fiscal administrator for Maine’s unorganized territories.

Sheive became the producer’s contact point, and Sheive steered the producer’s interest toward Cooper in addition to Centerville.

“It’s an interesting concept they want to explore, that people in Cooper are willing to give up their rights as a town, all for a lower tax bill,” Sheive said from Augusta.

“Centerville has their interest, too, because it was so teeny-weeny, as the smallest town in New England.”

As of the 2000 census, Centerville had 26 people, 12 households and six families living there. Cooper, in the same census, had 145 people, 56 households and 42 families.

Jon Reisman, Cooper’s first selectman, told the producer when she phoned him last week that there isn’t much to Cooper beyond a town hall that doubles as a Grange hall and the Cathance Lake Variety Store.

She was undeterred by the town’s description, determined all the more to tell the story of two places in Washington County where, truthfully, not much ever happens.

Cooper, which has Route 191 running through it, is 25 miles from Machias and 20 miles from Calais.

Centerville, 43 square miles of mostly forest and blueberry land, is about nine miles north of Columbia Falls and Jonesboro.

Sue Dorsey, Centerville’s first selectman for about 25 years until the town’s final meeting in June, has been the producer’s contact in Centerville.

Centerville became the ninth town in Maine to disband since the 1980s. Atkinson wanted to, but was blocked last spring by the Legislature. Drew Plantation in northern Penobscot County is about as far along in the deorganization process as Cooper.

The tradeoff for giving up town status is joining Maine’s extensive unorganized territory. There are nearly 10 million acres, mostly falling within Aroostook and Washington counties.

The unorganized territory is home to only about 8,000 people who live in 422 townships that are marked by boundaries and little development.