Millinocket OKs funds for building repair

MILLINOCKET – Over the strenuous objections of several residents and some councilors, the Town Council voted 4-3 Thursday night to support spending about $56,600 to repair parts of the Business Resource and Innovation Center building at 10 Katahdin Ave.

Councilors Gail Fanjoy, David Nelson, Wallace Paul and Matthew Polstein opted to pay for the repairs even though the town does not own the building because, they said, it represents an investment in potential business growth for the town.

“The more things we can have going on our behalf, the better off we are,” Paul said during the council meeting. “This town needs jobs.”

The former Katahdin Paper Engineering and Research Facility, the BRIC serves as a business incubation center, with several small businesses sharing office space and secretarial help. It is home to the manufacturing arm of Brims Ness, a water filtration sensor company, and the Community Press, a local weekly newspaper, among others.

Council Chairman John Davis and Councilor David Cyr objected. They said they didn’t like the idea of renovating the building not owned by the town – in this case, by Katahdin Paper – and leased to Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council, which serves as the building’s landlord.

“We would have to renovate somebody else’s building when we don’t even know if MAGIC will be there in a year or two,” Davis said. “I don’t like renovating somebody else’s building.”

Councilor Jimmy Busque said he voted against the idea because he felt it violated at least the spirit of a referendum vote last year in which residents forced the council to cut a proposed appropriation increase for MAGIC totaling $50,000 back to $25,000.

Busque rejected MAGIC Executive Director Bruce McLean’s argument that the appropriation was an investment in BRIC, not MAGIC, a nonprofit tri-community economic development organization that serves Medway, Millinocket and East Millinocket.

Resident Michelle Anderson, one of the leaders of the referendum drive, called the vote “a slap in the face” to voters who sought to limit MAGIC’s funding. The money coming from the 2004-05 budget is “a twist of the knife,” she said.

Resident Ronald Brown called BRIC a town asset because it is a 57,600-square-foot space where electricity and climate control are free to fledgling businesses. The building also has a great deal of high-tech equipment that is alluring to such businesses, he said.

The vote does not immediately appropriate the money. It will allow Town Manager Eugene Conlogue to write an amendment to this year’s budget’s undesignated fund balance that will pay for the work, repair of an non-functional elevator and the building’s closed north-side entrance.

The work will make the building more accessible to disabled residents.

Conlogue will have the amendment at the next council meeting, he said.