The closure of its last paper mill and the high unemployment rate are among the reasons four of 11 candidates running for local government office in the Katahdin region on Nov. 4 favor a national park proposed for land near Baxter State Park, according to an informal poll of candidates.
East Millinocket candidates Hollis Hafford, Phillippe Page and Mark Scally said they favor Lucas St. Clair’s national park proposal. Harold Birt, Greylen Hale and incumbent Selectman Clint Linscott described themselves as undecided. Incumbent James Jamo did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.
In Millinocket, where three seats are open, challenger Eric Buckingham Jr. and incumbents Michael Madore and Gilda Stratton oppose the idea. Candidate Anita Mueller favors it. Incumbent John Raymond, who occupies the third seat, is not running for re-election.
“Wow,” Mueller said after hearing the results of the poll. “I thought something was in the wind.”
While Mueller was surprised several candidates supported the national park idea, her reaction was typical among challengers and incumbents. The Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce and several environmental groups endorsed the idea, but East Millinocket and Millinocket governments and residents have staunchly opposed the proposed park since entrepreneur Roxanne Quimby went public with her idea nearly five years ago. Officials in Medway, which elects its selectmen during town meetings in the spring, have said they favor a park feasibility study. An independent committee of town officials and residents formed to support the study but later withdrew its support.
Opposition to the park remains daunting. The Penobscot County Board of Commissioners, Gov. Paul LePage, the Maine Legislature, gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud and U.S. Sen. Susan Collins have opposed the park. East Millinocket residents voted 513-132 in 2011 against a feasibility study of the park.
But things are changing. The region’s largest single employer, Great Northern Paper Co. in East Millinocket, shut down in late January and laid off 212 of 256 workers on Feb. 6. In June, GNP auctioned the last paper machine used at its second Maine mill in Millinocket, which had been dormant since 2008. Two GNP corporations formed as part of the East Millinocket operation filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in September and October, leaving the Katahdin region bereft of paper mills for the first time in its history.
Quimby’s son, Lucas St. Clair, replaced Quimby in 2012 as the leading public advocate for the proposed 75,000-acre national park and adjoining 75,000 acre multiuse recreation area east of Baxter State Park.
His low-key, diplomatic approach to increasing recreational access to Quimby lands and opening of the parcel to tours designed to illustrate its feasibility as a park have earned him respect among several anti-park critics. St. Clair’s methods have even drawn the attention of independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler. Cutler, who said St. Clair has “done a good job” promoting the park, has promised to lead an effort to revitalize the northern Maine economy were he elected governor, which could include a national park.
The Katahdin region’s candidates said they hope the East Millinocket mill will be restarted, but they face a daunting question: With the mills gone, what will restore the region’s sagging economy?
“It is the only thing on the horizon that I see that would have such a profound and positive impact on the community,” Mueller said Friday of the park proposal. “There are no quick fixes or easy solutions, but it is the only thing on the horizon that has the ability to create jobs.”
“I suggest you have to go with it because of the job situation. It is work, and you have to have something coming into the area,” Page said.
“We would get more off of tourism and more jobs from a park,” Hafford said. “We wouldn’t be dependent on one industry anymore. We would have more to draw from. Right now, everything is dependent on the mill and there’s no economic development plan.”
“At this point, what do we have to lose? But I believe that it [a national park] would be good for this area,” said Scally, who measured the perceived opposition to the proposal by wagering he would be the region’s only candidate to publicly favor a park.
“I think there is a gentle turn [among residents] toward it,” added Scally, who served on East Millinocket’s Board of Selectmen for nine years. “At this point, we have to do something.”
The latest statistics available on the Katahdin region show a 20 percent unemployment rate. In the last 40 years, Millinocket’s population plunged from 7,742 to 4,466 residents while East Millinocket dipped from 2,567 to 1,723, according to 2010 U.S. Census data.
Population predictions compiled by state officials, available at maine.gov, suggest East Millinocket’s population falling to 1,525 in 2020 and to 1,430 by 2025. Millinocket is projected to lose 500 people, falling to 4,002 in 2015 and to 3,531 by 2020.
Those declines, as well as the loss of property taxes from the mills, have forced Millinocket officials to cut several million dollars from town and school budgets since 2004. In East Millinocket, officials expect a significant tax increase when their mill rate is set next month, despite cutting several hundred thousand dollars during budget writing this year.
Private studies commissioned by Elliotsville Plantation Inc., the foundation that oversees Quimby’s land in northern Maine, indicated a national park would create 200 jobs directly and at least another 250 indirectly, St. Clair has said.
St. Clair was encouraged several candidates were backing the park.
“I am finding that there is more and more support as people learn more about what this is,” he said Friday. “It follows what I have been hearing all through the Katahdin region.”
No candidate sees the park as a panacea, nor do they describe the issue as their primary reason for running or say it would be at the top of their agendas were they to be elected. Besides having no start or end dates, the proposal would need the support of Congress. Early estimates also indicated that a park would take eight to 12 years to be approved, built and begin to reach economic maturity.
Mueller, who owns a gift shop that caters largely to tourists, echoed the candidates when she said she favors anything that would bring more employment opportunities to the region. Page bemoaned the assumed lack of access to land if the proposal for a national park goes through.
“We don’t want to give up on the potential of the East Millinocket mill. We need both” a park and a mill, Mueller said.
She sees signs in Millinocket that people are changing their minds on the issue, with the number of favorable comments regarding it posted within economic development survey results on the town’s website , millinocket.org.
Buckingham, Hale, Madore and Stratton have said they oppose a park, arguing it would bring unwelcome federal authority into the region. Buckingham said he opposed a park because he said it would cut off access to the land for hunting, fishing and other traditional uses.
Other critics have said they felt the park would hamper the forest products industry in the area and create low-paying seasonal jobs. They also express fears that federal officials and park advocates would increase the size of the park until it morphed into to a 3.2 million-acre effort proposed more than 10 years ago.
“More people are talking about it [as part of this election] because they think it is something that will save the area,” Buckingham said. “It won’t.”
The park issue will not be decided on Election Day, according to Birt, who is “leaning heavily toward favoring it” but worries control of the land and the region’s economic development lies more with Augusta or Washington, D.C., than locally.
“I think you’re going to find that half the town [East Millinocket] is in favor of it and half the town opposes it, and there’s a lot of animosity between the two,” Birt said.