ADDISON, Maine — Recent activity by the town’s revitalization committee has garnered $76,000 in federal stimulus funds through a U.S. Department of Energy grant offered by Efficiency Maine.
The town will use the $76,000 — which requires a 10 percent community match — to purchase a wind turbine, solar panels and LED lights for town streets and landing.
“We are thrilled,” Daria Alexander, a Revitalization Committee member, said this week. “We are such a small town and we wrote the grant in a week.”
The turbine will be placed on town land and hooked into the Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. utility grid.
“We expect this to generate enough electricity to serve the town hall and possibly other town buildings, such as the Fire Department,” Alexander said.
The two solar panels will be placed on the town hall to supplement the existing oil heat.
“We expect fuel costs at the town hall to drop at least 40 percent,” she said.
“The savings over the life span of this equipment — 15 years for the lights, 20-plus years for the turbine and the panels — based on today’s costs, should save Addison about $150,000,” she said. That is more than $100 for every resident.
The revitalization committee formed after this fishing community of about 1,200 people learned just how important a town’s appearance can be when a social service agency lost a grant because of the neighboring blighted buildings in the downtown. The town itself then lost a Community Development Block Grant for the same reason.
“We realized then what a huge impact the blight was having on the value of people’s property,” said Alexander.
Alexander said full-time and seasonal residents banded together to make a difference. The committee was formed, and once they got organized and began working, major changes began happening.
Now, Addison residents are awaiting word on two more key revitalization grants and planning to submit even more.
“We are working on planning a new fire station,” Alexander said. “We don’t even have running water at the existing station.”
Addison should also hear by mid-May whether it has been awarded a $53,000 Community Development Block Grant to create a pocket park in the center of town.
The Friends of the Church on the Hill, a national historic place, also has applied for U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development grants and other grants to restore the structure for community use.
“There really is a lot happening now,” Alexander said. “Once we began seeing the denials, we got together and created a plan to get rid of the blighted buildings and move the center forward.”
Alexander said the town has a dedicated core of volunteers and the goal is not only to make the town more beautiful, affordable and livable for residents, but also to entice others to move to Addison.