Municipal Building & Fire Station
One January 7, 2005, the Town of Greenville’s Town Office and Police Department moved across the street from their home at the 45-year-old facility at 10 Minden Street to the newly-completed municipal building. After 15 years of planning, the Town found a new home for its Town Office clerks, Town Manager, Code Enforcement Officer, Meeting Hall, and Police Department. The property at 7 Minden Street – a former residence abandoned for many years – was purchased by the Town in the fall of 2003. The Town was able to finance the purchase, demolition, and construction of a new 3,100 sq. ft. building on this site with the benefit of reserve account funds, left over funds from the construction of the new public works facility in 2001, and the borrowing of $150,000 toward the project. Although the project had some unexpected added expenses, there were enough funds left in the reserve account to not only pay for the purchase of some new office equipment, but also to provide the majority of the funds necessary for the first-year’s debt service on the building project. This facility adds a great deal of professionalism to the operation of the Town, and brings us into compliance with a number of state and federal requirements.

This move to a new facility leaves the majority of the old municipal building to the fire department (some storage space has been retained). The most pressing deficiency left in the old municipal building is the heating system. The forced-air furnaces located in the truck bays have failed periodically in the past but have always been “caught” by the full-time employees working in the building. Now that the building does not have any regularly-scheduled employees working within it, there is the risk that the furnaces will go out during a cold snap and freeze the pumps on some of the fire trucks. While we are looking into a “red light” notification system when the furnace goes out, we recognize the frequency of break down warrants replacement of the system. Funds have been built into the proposed FY05-06 budget to replace this heating system.

Airport Improvements
Some improvements have been made in the past year at the airport, and more improvements are planned for the next two years. The MDOT and the FAA funded the majority of the cost of purchase of a new front-end loader and snowblower in 2003, but the Town had no place to store this equipment at the airport. The MDOT and the FAA, to secure their investment in this equipment for our airport, paid for 97.5% of the cost for construction of a two-bay garage for the Town’s use at the airport. The Town’s total cost for this new facility was less than $4,000. Other improvements planned for this year include the beginning of the reconstruction of runway 14-32 (the long runway), which will include many related program aspects, such as removal of trees and vegetation which have encroached the safety zone; replacing our beacon with a more efficient lighting system; and raising the ends of the main runway to improve line-of-sight for planes taking off from either end. The total cost to the Town this year for all of this work will be approximately $73,000. The total cost of the project – 97.5% of which is paid for by the MDOT and the FAA – will be in excess of $5 million. Piscataquis County, at our request, is assisting the Town of Greenville with our local share toward this project, recognizing our airport a valuable piece of regional infrastructure. Folsom’s Air Service – our fix-based operator – is planning to complete several improvements this year as well, including a credit-card fuel system and a new T-hangar with space to rent. All of these improvements will result in increased airport activity and may open the door for business growth within the community.

Greenville Business Incubator
Another facility we constructed this past year is the Greenville Business Incubator. More information on this facility and its purpose appears elsewhere in this report: this was a collaborative effort with multiple public sector funding agencies driven by the Town, the Composites Technology Centers (CTC) Corporation and the Piscataquis County Economic Development Council (PCEDC). The purpose of this 10,000 sq. ft. facility is to lease space to manufacturers to create job and to strengthen their businesses. We have already leased about 60% of this space to a furniture maker from Abbot called Maine House Furniture, inc. Maine House will add several employees to their staff over the next three years, and we hope eventually they will exit our facility and create an even larger business in our community. We continue to work with the PCEDC, the CTC, the State of Maine, the Greenville Steam Company and others to attract new businesses to the Greenville Business Incubator and to our community, all in an effort to create new and better jobs. The total cost to the Town of Greenville for the construction and maintenance of this facility has been $0 to date. The debt service on the facility is in the name of the Town of Greenville, but is expected to be paid for through the revenue produced by tenants within the Incubator.

Road Improvement Project
A final piece of infrastructure we are trying to improve is our road system along the so-called “five-mile square”. Due to the presence of major construction and paving operations at the airport this summer and next, we have been able to secure a quote to improve Varney and Scammon Road this summer for less money than estimated last year or the year before. To finance this road work, approval to secure a general obligation bond will be sought at this year’s annual Town Meeting. Other communities such as Monson, Sangerville, Dexter, and others have made use of bonds to pay for road projects in the past: the cost of improving major road systems is more than most communities are able to appropriate in a given year. The Town of Greenville receives $27,000 per year from the MDOT’s Local Road Assistance Program and all of this is used for paving projects. The Town has not previously added to this paving budget, and as a result, our road systems have been neglected. Some of our roads, such as Scammon, have not been built to modern engineering standards, and therefore are much harder to maintain. The proposal to borrow funds for this project and also utilize this year’s MDOT funds for road improvements would result in the following roadwork being completed:

Varney Road: heavy shim and overlay of pavement over full length, with 12” of gravel and geotextile fabric added at the bottom of the hill as the road intersects with Scammon before paving.

Scammon Road: grinding of the road surface over the length of the road (except the test section); adding 12” of gravel and surfacing with binder and overlay of pavement.

Cemetery Lane & Franklin Place: grind out rough section of pavement on Cemetery Lane; add shim and overlay of pavement on rest of both roads.

Eveleth Hill: shim and overlay part of this road to match in with Route 15 (lakeside).

Parts of East Road, N. Birch St., Walden Farm Road: Apply geotextile fabric and cover with 8” minimum gravel.

Property Revaluation
The current gap between our state valuation (based on current actual sales figures) and our total assessed value (based on a 2002 land value study and a 1991 full revaluation) is currently $81 million. Our current ratio of total assessed value to state valuation is 80%, which will result in a reduced value for our homestead, veteran’s and tree growth program exemptions. This means property owners in these categories will receive less benefit because our values are too far reduced as compared to actual sales.

The process of valuing property in a municipality is a complicated matter which requires professional oversight. The Board of Assessors has for years employed a professional contractor to calculate and to maintain our property records. By law, changes to these values to correct for market changes may only be done if ALL properties are considered. In 2002, ALL land values were considered, and changes were made in these base values to better reflect current trends. Even these 2002 adjustments are now out of date due to the rapidly accelerating growth in property values in our community. The Board of Assessors have agreed to hire RJD Appraisals – the company we currently use to maintain our records – to conduct a complete property revaluation beginning this fall and concluding in the fall of 2006. This is an effort intended to correct the discrepancies between our value of all properties and the actual value of these properties as reflected by actual sales. The expected result is that those property types which are currently selling for the highest prices will gain the most in value through the revaluation process. Those property types which are valued the closest to actual sale values will change the least. We predict a substantial increase in the total assessed value of the Town of Greenville, which will result in a reciprocal decrease in the mil rate.

For years, the difference between property values and actual sale values has resulted in an increase in cost to ALL Greenville taxpayers. How? This has occurred because the high state valuation continually causes erosion of our state aid for K-12 education, forcing the Town to pay more locally just to maintain the same level of service at the school. The high state valuation also drives upward our share of the Piscataquis County budget we pay through the county tax. Both of these effects increase the total amount required to be raised through our tax commitment. After cuts are made in the budget to the extent deemed appropriate, the mil rate is raised to compensate for this loss of revenue and this increased cost (school funding and county tax, respectively). For years, this has occurred, and everyone has paid a larger mil rate than would have been the case had our assessed value more closely mirrored the state value. The argument can be made that everyone who pays the mil rate who has property which is not appreciating in value, or not by much, has been subsidizing the tax burden of those property owners whose values have been rapidly appreciating. The revaluation is a “re-sorting” of tax burden to more accurately reflect market forces and to more equitably distribute the tax burden based more closely on actual value of properties. This work will conclude in the fall of 2006 and the public will have many opportunities to discuss these changes to values with our agent to the Board of Assessors and to the Board members themselves. We are going to make every effort to ensure the public is informed of this process, and that the process is as fair and equitable as possible.

Economic Development: Tourism or Industry?
There has been a great deal of discussion in our community of late regarding the direction the community is heading. The release of recent studies such as the Piscataquis County attitudes toward tourism study completed by the Margaret Chase Smith Center at the University of Maine, and the nature-based tourism study nearly completed now by Fermata, Inc., both show that there is potential for growth in the nature-based tourism / outdoor recreational sectors in the Moosehead Lake area. In addition to these studies on tourism, the work of the Governor’s Forest Products Conference and follow-up groups; the Maine Future Forest Economy Project; and our own Piscataquis County Economic Development Strategy all point to the need to encourage growth in the forest products fields in our region. To paraphrase a story often told by our own Tony Bartley, Piscataquis County Commissioner, an economic development strategy conducted for Greenville in the early 1990’s answered the question of whether we should seek to develop industry or tourism within our borders. “The answer was to have a little of both”, Tony is quick to tell those asking.

Not much has changed in this strategic analysis conducted by Eastern Maine Development Corporation in 1991: study after study shows the need to have a diverse mixture of land uses, economic sectors, business types, and recreational opportunities to keep our local economy vibrant during both good times and bad. Our 1999 Comprehensive Plan identifies desirable ways in which to grow our local economy with the following three stated goals:

“1. Promote an economic climate which increases job opportunities and overall economic well-being. (State goal).
2. Increase business and industrial activity to provide quality jobs, environmentally sound industries, and diversification and expansion of the tax base.
3. Focus economic development efforts on Greenville’s strengths in natural resource-based industries, such as forest products, tourism, and recreation, and in the retail and service sectors.”

These stated goals are consistent with many other studies and initiatives, such as those previously mentioned. Other studies from outside of Maine show that areas which benefit from the presence of industry AND the presence of service-sector jobs related to tourism do better in the long-run than do communities with interested focused primarily in only one sector. There is strength in diversity, and it this strength which the Town of Greenville, and indeed the region and the State, are all seeking through various efforts informed by the aforementioned studies. What are some ways in which the Town of Greenville and our community are advancing these interests? Here are some examples (certainly not an exhaustive list):

• The Town seeks to promote visitation to our downtown area through the development of the Greenville Gazebo Concert series, an initiative started by the Town of Greenville in conjunction with the business community, the Chamber of Commerce, and North Country Healthy Communities. The series attracts hundreds of residents and visitors to the Gazebo every Friday night (weather permitting) for 6-9 weeks each summer. The series will begin its fifth year this July 8, 2005.

• The Town seeks to promote manufacturing growth by seeking and receiving designation as part of the Penquis Pine Tree Enterprise Zone, a status which allows new investment by manufacturers to receive a long list of state tax incentives. This designation was a competitive process won by an effort coordinated by the Town of Greenville and the other communities in Piscataquis County (and two in Penobscot County) through the PCEDC and Eastern Maine Development Corporation (EMDC).

• The Town seeks to attract snowmobilers to the area through purchase, operation, and maintenance of equipment necessary to maintain roughly 70 miles of ITS snowmobile trails in the Moosehead Lake Region. The Town hosts this program, which is run through hundreds of hours of volunteer efforts and many in-kind donations by the Town and the business community, as well as countless hours by the volunteers at the Moosehead Riders Snowmobile Club. The cost to the taxpayer for this program over the past eight years the Town has run it has been $0.

• The Town seeks to attract investment in the wood products and the composites fields through the creation of a business incubator facility. The $1 million (and more) required to complete this 10,000 sq. ft. facility came from a host of public sector funding sources, plus a general obligation bond from the Town of Greenville. Already one wood products manufacturer has signed a lease for use of part of this building, and more interest is being heard by other manufacturers. The intent is to help strengthen new or expanding businesses in the manufacturing field, to increase their likelihood of long-term success, and to create permanent, year-round jobs.

• The Town has created and run several new special events, managing the funds for the operation of the events and using the Town’s blanket liability insurance policy to cover these events, making them possible. Such events so created in recent years include the Gazebo Concert Series (July through August), the Fourth of July Parade and Fireworks, the Moose-on-the-Run 5K Road Race and 1K Fun Run (second Sunday in October), the 100-Mile Wilderness Sled Dog Race (late February). In addition to collaborating with many businesses and organizations such as the Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce, the Town also serves as a partner with other organizations to deliver their own events in our community such as the Ricky Craven Ride for Charity (late January); SnoFest (February); Forest Heritage Days (second week of August); International Seaplane Fly-In (weekend after Labor Day in September); Holiday Celebration and Inn Walk (mid-December). The Town makes every effort to help promote activities which promote the community as a great place to live and a great place to visit.

• The Town participates in local, county, regional, and statewide economic development planning ranging from creation of local strategies for increasing portions of our population (“Greenville at the Crossroads” March 2002) to development of the Piscataquis County Economic Development Strategy (2002) to development of the Advanced Technology Development Centers program for the State of Maine to commentary on legislative policy groups such as the Maine Municipal Association and the Maine Service Centers Coalition. The Town of Greenville also has representation on the newly-formed Piscataquis County Tourism Task Force, which is focused on developing an implementation strategy for many of the tourism development strategies previously completed for our area. The Town has been a founding member of the Piscataquis County Economic Development Council, having had its current and previous Town Manager each serve in leadership positions within this organization. The Town works diligently to put our community’s best interests forward at multiple levels.

The Relationship Between the Town, the School, and the Hospital
These are just some of the ways in which the Town of Greenville seeks to meet its stated goal of developing a vibrant and diverse economy. As Town Manager, I work closely with our School Superintendent and our President of C.A. Dean Hospital to try to promote economic growth in our area which will result in positive outcomes for both the school and the hospital. There is a symbiotic relationship between all three of these entities: the demise of any one of these three will ultimately result in the demise of all three. For example, should the local school close and our students were to be bused to another school district many miles away, there is a predicted out-migration of professionals who work at the hospital, resulting in both difficulty in filling certain professional needs at the facility, but also decreasing the potential customer base for the hospital. Likewise, should the hospital close, a great number of students would leave our school system as their families would likely move to find work elsewhere. If both of these institutions were to close, the Town would lose large sections of its population to out-migration, and it would become very difficult for businesses to find workers or to find reason to expand or to locate here. It is imperative for our future that both the school and the hospital remain in tact: the resulting change would be very dramatic and detrimental to our community, in my opinion.

Changes to the Moosehead Lake Region
As we move forward with promoting economic development on multiple fronts, we must also confront the reality that our “home” is changing. The woods and the water we have known for generations are changing before our eyes through the work of forces beyond our control. With good planning and foresight, this change in land use, land value, land ownership and recreational and industrial activities across the region can be managed and directed to our community’s benefit. When a single landowner out of our community changes the use of a piece of land, the effect is typically benign, and the likelihood that the landowner will seek a way in which to benefit the public is slight at best. When these independent actions occur again and again over time throughout the region, the result is a changed landscape with little to no regard to the public’s well-being. This is the other side of private property rights, the same rights our forefathers fought and died for since the Revolutionary War.

When a large landowner comes forward with a comprehensive view of the future of the region, and offers many opportunities for public benefit in addition to private benefit, the region should count itself lucky as this has not been the case traditionally in our area, nor in any other section of the Maine Woods. The current large landowner with such a plan before the state’s Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) is Plum Creek, and the opportunities imbedded within its plan I believe will benefit the public for years to come. The concern that many have with the plan is that it shows us a vision of what will change over the next 30 years: the reality is that such change – in some form or fashion – will occur with or without the implementation of this plan. We should welcome the public opportunities offered by this private landowner and use our resources to maximize these benefits moving forward. Long lists of other recent land sales and subsequent development in the Maine Woods do not include any such opportunities for the public. I truly hope the community members will make an effort to educate themselves regarding the details of this plan, and comment on it as requested by LURC over the next few months. It is important to make an informed and educated opinion on an issue of this size and magnitude: please do not let the media or your neighbors form this opinion for you.

The Appeal of the Greenville Community
The Town of Greenville is a great place to raise a family, which is why my wife and three children live here and why we send our children to school here. There are almost limitless opportunities for outdoor recreation right outside our front door. Every trip to the store, down the sidewalk, to a school ballgame, or even to the landfill is filled with meeting people you know and people you are glad to see. It is important for our community to be seen by others as a great place to live, work, and to raise a family: such designation will result in the in-migration of young families and professionals to work in our stores and businesses, to populate our schools, and to enrich our community. Family-oriented opportunities are being developed throughout the region and within our school system through the leadership of such groups and individuals as the Evergreen Enrichment Collaborative, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and our own School Superintendent, Dr. Steve Pound. Together, we can offer unique and highly-desired educational and outdoor educational opportunities within our school and community. I urge all members of our community to learn about these efforts, to offer their own ideas, and work to better our community. Greenville is a great community, and one which is made stronger by those who believe in its future. Please help by getting involved in our community and by continuing to make great things happen.

Great Work Made Possible by Many Capable Hands
Whatever the Town of Greenville is able to achieve for good service delivery, creative community projects, or infrastructure and program development is made possible through the work of our capable staff. All of our departments have valuable employees, all of whom regularly take on many tasks above and beyond their intended work load. Efforts such as the design and opening of the new municipal building; last year’s Citizen Appreciation Day; the first-ever Household Hazardous Waste Cleanup Day; our quarterly newsletter; and many, many business development efforts such as the lunch and lecture series and familiarization tours for potential new businesses all have been made possible through the extra work of our professional staff. Among these many dedicated employees, our clerks Roxanne Lizotte, Cindy Hanscom, and Bethany Gaudet stand out as regularly making the “impossible possible” and enriching every effort in which they participate. As Town Manager, I could not complete the work I do without the work of all of our dedicated employees, especially our clerks.

Thank you all for the opportunity to manage our Town.

Respectfully Submitted;

John Simko
Town Manager