MACHIAS – How on Earth does a Pine Tree Zone work – and how can companies learn about its “basket of benefits?”

Those two questions had a handful of Washington County towns and businesses on the edge of their seats Thursday at a two-hour meeting with a state official, who described the state-sponsored Pine Tree Zone process for businesses that want to expand.

“Talk to your legislator,” suggested Jim Nimon, one of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development specialists on the Pine Tree Zone program that started in 2004.

A Gov. John Baldacci initiative that provides tax benefits, the Pine Tree Zone program was amended just last month by the Legislature – specifically to help companies in Washington County.

Rep. Eddie DuGay, D-Cherryfield, pushed hard for special legislation in LD 1944, which as things coincidentally turned out, will benefit some Washington County businessmen who happen to have different business relationships with DuGay.

LD 1944 represents the recommendations of the Washington County Economic Development Task Force, which was initiated by the governor and chaired by both DuGay and former Sen. Kevin Shorey, currently the chairman of the Washington County commissioners.

The task force last winter asked for two Pine Tree Zone “pilot programs,” one to benefit businesses with seasonal workers, such as wreath makers, and the other to benefit tourism and resort development that is taking place at the former Cutler Navy base.

Task force member David Whitney, a Machias business owner who employs about 800 wreath makers for a few months each year, had said repeatedly at meetings last fall and winter that his company’s inability to get Pine Tree Zone benefits, because he employed mostly seasonal workers, kept him from expanding.

Whitney and DuGay were not business partners when the task force was called together last August. But by late fall, they agreed to come together with a third partner as Wind Solar Water. The new company will work on development projects within Washington County starting later this year.

As for the tourism-related development of the Cutler base, a portion of that property is shaping up as Beachwood Bay Estates or residential condominiums. DuGay has a contract with the new base owners as one of the sales agents for the 62 condos.

More than 20 of the units have been sold since April for both year-round and seasonal use. As such, the former base is transitioning into a destination for tourists who are seeking, say, hiking and fishing opportunities for families.

DuGay’s bosses did not acquire the base property until early April – but their intentions were known to DuGay and other members of the task force last fall, when the group was meeting every other week to discuss priorities for economic development within Washington County.

Other companies in Washington County with tourism, resort and recreation development in mind will have to wait until February 2008, when the Cutler redevelopers involved with the “pilot program” report to the DECD commissioner on whether such programs have been successful in growing their business.

However, DuGay said Thursday in a separate interview that he doesn’t believe the “resort” element of the Cutler transformation will pan out and that the legislation should perhaps have been directed at all of Washington County, not just the Cutler base.

“It’s a shoe that doesn’t fit,” he said of the Cutler property. “It’s not a resort. You would have to have places for people to stay, like the Samoset.”

Both Nimon and Janet Toth, a DECD employee who works with expanding businesses in Washington County, who attended the meeting, said that the Pine Tree Zone program is “still evolving.”

It now involves 65 businesses statewide, 55 of them manufacturers. The Cutler transformation would be a first in the tourism sector.

Thursday’s meeting was coordinated by the Washington County commissioners because Shorey, its chairman, had recently gone through Pine Tree Zone certification for the moccasin-making company he owns in Perry.

He felt that other Washington County companies could benefit from the program, because the goal is to bring jobs to the area.

“I would rather see 100 microbusinesses in Washington County providing jobs than one large company,” he told the group.

The meeting attracted three curious business owners in Machias and one in Pembroke, plus town representatives from Perry, Marshfield, Whitneyville, Jonesboro and Columbia Falls.

They all said they wished they had known sooner and had more information about Pine Tree Zone opportunities. Just four companies in Washington County, Shorey’s Quoddy Footwear, Omni-WiFi of Machias, SuperTek of East Machias and Vicus Technologies of Eastport, are Pine Tree-certified.

Pine Tree Zones have been mapped in Baileyville, around the Domtar paper mill, and in Cutler, around the former Navy base property, but the businesses themselves have not yet become Pine Tree-certified.

Shorey noted that he had sat on the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee for Business, Research and Economic Development, which had crafted several business-opportunity programs, including Pine Tree Zones.

But even with that insight, he said, he didn’t know enough about the range of state-sponsored programs that are available for large and small business.

“This kind of meeting helps bring out information for businesses, because who knows about this? I didn’t know myself what there was, and I didn’t available myself of anything because I was in a position [legislator] where I didn’t think it was appropriate,” Shorey said in closing the meeting.

“But now that I’m out, I am learning more myself.”

During his years in the Legislature Shorey received two GTI grants through the Department of Labor. His company, which began in 1997, received $1,980 in 1998 and $2,733 in 2000 after his wife, the company’s co-owner, submitted two applications for money to cover the training of new employees.

Reminded of that later Thursday, Shorey acknowledged the grants saying, “It’s a citizens legislature.”