HALLOWELL – Doreen Sheive could be called The Banker. Or The Overseer, The Authority or She-Who-Holds-The-Purse-Strings.

But what she really should be called is The Inquisitor.

“I ask questions. That’s what I do,” Sheive said Friday at her Hallowell office. “I question every expenditure, every penny spent.”

Sheive is responsible for the financial well-being of half of the state of Maine: the 9.4 million acres of Unorganized Territory, which includes 75 offshore islands.

Of the nearly 10 million UT acres, 7.5 million are in tree growth protection, said Sheive, UT fiscal administrator in the Maine Department of Audit.

“That leaves about a half million liveable acres with less than 8,000 year-round people,” she said.

Most of the UT is clustered in northern Somerset, Piscataquis, Penobscot, Washington and Aroostook counties. Look at a map of Maine, and the UT is squared off into neat boxes, each with a number or township name.

The names are romantic or geographical: Benedicta, Swett Farm, Chain of Ponds, Katahdin Iron, Grindstone, Lily Bay, Hobbstown, Holeb, Indian Purchase, North Surplus.

Of the 419 townships in the UT, only 128 have year-round residents.

But that is rapidly changing, Sheive said.

“In places where there is a town nearby, we are seeing booming growth,” Sheive said. And predictably, along with growth, comes the difficulty of change.

“The UT is on the cusp of some big decisions,” Sheive said. “The main question is: Are we in the business of running communities or not?”

Few people live in the UT – huge tracts of forest or island land which have never been incorporated as communities. Sometimes, the areas are so remote that even those who live there are unsure where they are, she said.

The UT must contract with nearby towns or private contractors for everything from ambulance to fire service, from solid waste removal to snowplowing.

But as more and more people move into the UT, particularly in high-priced seasonal homes, the needs and demands for service are changing. Someone still must be responsible for plowing the roads and taking out the trash.

Once home to seasonal camps or remote locations where back-to-the-land hippies, societal castoffs or hermits holed up in the woods, the UT now is home to multi-million dollar residences.

One township has a $16 million home, complete with a helipad, while massive resorts are planned for other areas.

“That homeowner paid a $75 application fee for a $16 million home,” Sheive said. “We need to begin looking at this growth from all angles.”

“We did a revaluation in the UT this year, and some of our waterfront properties went up by 65 percent,” the state official said.

The Maine Land Use Regulation Commission is responsible for all planning and zoning decisions within the UT.

“LURC has said there will be no developments approved without services,” Sheive said, which has prompted at least one resort developer near Millinocket to plan on buying his own firetruck and training all his employees as firefighters.

Within the UT, there are hundreds of different contracts, Sheive said.

“Most are with different towns and some are with private vendors,” she said.

If a UT area is particularly remote, the vendors must drive farther to provide services, and therefore the contracts run higher.

In some places, however, such as Township 10, Range 12, on the northeast edge of Moosehead Lake, no one is getting services. The area is just too inaccessible, she said.

“There is a perception out there that the people in the UT are getting a free ride,” Sheive said, because many of the township’s mill rates are so low. “But what is so hard to get people to see is that the UT taxpayers pay for everything they get. Don’t just look at the mill rate.”

Sheive said the UT is the biggest county taxpayer in Piscataquis County, for example, paying more than $1 million annually. In the past five years, the UT valuation rose by 17 percent, while operation costs rose more than 10 percent.

The UT is responsible for all education costs for UT children, she explained, without the luxury of any state subsidy. Last year, the UT education budget was $10 million for 1,100 children.

“We have six small schools, and we tuition many children to other places,” the financial administrator said.

When there is no school nearby, a student may have to be tuitioned over the border into Canada. Or the UT may have to pay rent for an in-town apartment to allow the student to live near the school during the week.

“We pay some parents to drive their students 17 miles through the woods to catch the morning bus,” Sheive said.

Sheive recently received a request from the township of Roach Pond in Piscataquis County to have the UT budget fund a local fire department, since the nearest organized fire department is 45 minutes away.

“There are only three full-time residents at Roach Pond,” Sheive said. “Who would be the fire department? Is the UT supposed to run communities?”

A bigger question, the administrator said, is the question of when in a township’s growth does it become more sensible to become a town.

“The townships of Rockwood, Taunton and Tomhegan [all located north of Greenville near Moosehead Lake] have just over 300 people, but the valuation is $102 million. The UT provides a school, a community center, a fire department,” she said.

Sheive said it is not her job to advise a township to become a town – that request has to come from the township residents themselves.

“I don’t think most people in that situation want it, as long as they are getting services,” she said.

She sees that situation changing, however, as more and more expensive residences are built, resorts are developed and their owners demand more consistent and broad-reaching services.

“I will never see in my lifetime the day when the UT will all be towns,” she said. “I do see that some townships will consolidate in the future.

“All I care is that everything is handled fair and equitably.”