Nearly three years after Drew Plantation ceased to be a town, the community is still in need of a shed to store salt used on local roads during winter months.
Drew, a small community in Penobscot County, had an outdoor salt and sand pile when it deorganized in 2023 and joined Maine’s Unorganized Territory. The pile could cause environmental damages and is not approved by the Department of Environmental Protections, so the county can’t use it.
Instead, it may have to build a new shed that could cost $750,000, Penobscot County Unorganized Territory Director George Buswell said.
It’s one of the few steps still lingering after Drew’s transition to the Unorganized Territory, a rare process that last happened in Maine in 1993. It can take two years from when a town starts deorganizing to when it becomes part of Maine’s Unorganized Territory. Drew’s experience could inform other communities that are considering disbanding of what they can expect in the coming years.
Small towns in Maine are struggling with small pools of candidates running for positions and searching for lower taxes, leading some to look to dissolving as a possible solution. Maxfield, a town of 89 residents outside Howland, is in the middle of the disbanding process.
Residents said the town is going through the process because elected officials are aging out of their positions and they can’t afford their taxes or repair the town’s roads with the tax money they do have.
Maxfield’s tax rate is roughly $23 per $1,000 in property value, or $2,300 for a property valued at $100,000.
But disbanding doesn’t necessarily mean property owners will pay less in taxes.
During the 12-step process to dissolve, Maine Revenue Services reevaluates the property in the community. Maxfield has not had a revaluation since 2006, which may lead to large jumps in property values, especially after Unorganized Territory residents saw a spike in taxes last year.
That looming revaluation makes it difficult to predict how much residents will pay in taxes after disbanding, compared with what they paid while part of a town.
“That’s a big, scary thing for a lot of a lot of taxpayers, because there’s no way of answering that question: Will my taxes go up and down? You can’t answer that question until you do the reevaluation,” Buswell said.
There are almost always things that come up after the final vote that need to be solved, Harold Jones, state fiscal administrator for the Unorganized Territory, said, because “this is very much an unknown for them.”
Where to register a car, vote or speak with an elected official are the types of questions that typically come up for residents after the final vote, because the town office is no longer a “one-stop shop” to provide those answers, Jones said.
Instead, community members will go to the county’s Unorganized Territory director or county commissioner, who should be able to answer questions, Jones said.
Otherwise, despite the infrequent nature of a town disbanding, it’s not hard to add a new community to the Unorganized Territory, Buswell said.
Expanding services by adding contracts for plowing and new roads to a maintenance list are simple, partially because contracts in place are generally carried over, Buswell said.
But it can be difficult to find the funding to maintain a new community’s roads or infrastructure, he said.
To avoid burdening county taxpayers with a large bill in a single year, Buswell said he tries to build up reserve accounts over multiple years to pay for projects like a new salt and sand shed or road maintenance.
Accruing the funding over multiple years lowers the tax growth, but means problems aren’t immediately addressed the moment a town disbands, he said.
“The problems would have to be solved, whether it be street signs or roads. Anything that wasn’t kept up by the town, we are expected to take care of those all equally, the same way in all of our townships,” Buswell said.
If Maxfield were to join the Unorganized Territory, the town roads that have been affected by ongoing washouts and aren’t up to county standards would likely be improved as part of a two- or three-year plan, Buswell previously said.
While small things may crop up after the final vote, the town and residents will have all of what they need, even if it does take time, Jones said.
“I would consider it like moving. When you move, you get a bulk of your stuff together, and you’re like, there, I did it. But you always go, ‘Well, I gotta go out. I don’t have dish soap, I don’t have salt and pepper.’ There’s always these little things that tend to pop up,” Jones said.