MAGIC pushes regional approach Town councilor would prefer to see Millinocket-first development plan

MILLINOCKET – A job in East Millinocket or Medway is just as good for Millinocket residents as a job in town.

That was among the messages Bruce McLean delivered when the executive director of the Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council, or MAGIC, spoke to the Town Council on Thursday night.

McLean told councilors that he wasn’t steering jobs away from Millinocket, and he gave them an overview of what the nonprofit, quasi-public economic development organization was doing to draw business to town.

Getting jobs into the area, he said, is MAGIC’s No. 1 priority.

“I want you to know that I would not decide where a business should go,” he told the council during his presentation. “I simply help them [prospective business owners] to decide. To me, it’s more important for the business to find the best opportunity for success,” wherever that is.

It makes little difference, McLean said, to town residents whether they drove to a new job in town or traveled 10 or 20 minutes to Medway or East Millinocket, MAGIC’s other client municipalities. Better that, he said, than having them drive three or four hours.

MAGIC’s regional approach clashed with Councilor Jimmy Busque’s Millinocket-first approach to development.

“As a town councilor, my first priority has to be getting jobs into town,” Busque said.

McLean came to the meeting to address concerns about MAGIC. Council Chairman John Davis and Councilors David Cyr and Jimmy Busque and Town Manager Eugene Conlogue have advocated the town’s using some of its $3.1 million surplus to hire an economic development coordinator, buy space for industrial parks and establish a loan program to help businesses.

Some took this as an attack on MAGIC, which the town pays $25,000 annually to help create economic opportunity. McLean opposes the town’s hiring a coordinator and has asked town officials to appropriate $80,000 for MAGIC. The council has yet to act upon the request.

McLean took pains to pour soothing words on the controversy, saying he came not for a showdown, but to talk. He praised the council’s work at keeping taxes relatively low and said he thought the town already had plenty of land ripe for development.

Councilors have said they feel the town needs to buy land for an industrial park because the town was land-poor, needs space for manufacturing facilities, and that several landowners were stingy with their land, a position Busque reiterated.

McLean said that while he supports getting more manufacturing jobs in town, but said that tourism and small-business growth might be more reasonable for the area. Other state municipalities, such as Brewer, have lessened their drive for manufacturing in favor of tourism-based jobs, he said.

“If we can support those kinds of businesses, we can replace the 600 jobs we have lost” over the last several years, McLean said.

MAGIC is working on a survey designed to draw college and high school graduates ages 20-40 back to town to make up for the area’s lack in that age group, McLean said. It is also working with local businesses to help them to better serve one another’s needs.

He invited councilors to meet with him in his office, where confidentiality would allow him to go into greater detail.