Milbridge, Jonesboro & the Sunrise Trail

I've had input from a few different group on the byway project over the last day or so. Yesterday, I made it for part of the Sunrise Trail Coalition meeting at Helen's restaurant. I was able to give very quick overview of the byway project and how promotion of the byway could fit in with the Sunrise Trail (which crosses and abuts the proposed byway route in a number of location). Folks at the meeting seemed very receptive to the idea; and I got a couple hits on the survey.

I wasn't able to stick around long though because I had to scoot down to Milbridge to meet with their Selectmen (Eric Beal, George Brace & Michael Domrad). I was a little surprised at the turn-out for the Selectmen's meeting (20 people or so). I was on the agenda just after a discussion of the assessors review, which I quickly learned is the hot topic in Milbridge these days.

In general, the Selectmen (and folks in the audience) were very receptive to the idea. The Selectmen seems to like the idea of have Milbridge as the western terminus of the byway; and very much liked the idea of using a byway to bring more exposure and visitors to the region. They did have some questions about the level of funding (municipal) need to support the byway designation. Given the nature of byway projects and the multiple partners involved, local match for project costs will be dispersed -- and are a little ways down the road. In any event, I don't anticipate it amounting to much in the way of local tax dollars. For some municipalities designation may even help qualify them for grants to undertake projects that they are interested in anyway, but don't have the funds to look at doing right now (see Jonesboro, below).

Lewis Pinkham (Milbridge Town Manager) also asked about the byway brand, and whether or not this project might be branded at the "Roosevelt Byway." At this point, I'm not thinking too much about the branding, but it's another option to add to the list.

Tonight I met with the Jonesboro Selectmen (Michael Schoppee, Mary Wilson, Jim Varney). They put in a new park along Route 1 last summer to celebrate the Town Bicentennial and Jim Varney had contacted me (via Jim Fisher) to find out about grant money for signage and other improvements at the park. I'll be working with them separately on that project. But I took the opportunity to get some feedback on the byway concept. They seemed to like the idea. They liked the concept of hugging the coast as closely as possible (e.g. Route 187), but questioned why the byway couldn't go down to Roque Bluffs. My response is that as part of the byway management we would certainly be looking to use signage, maps, information kiosks and other methods to get visitors down to Roque Bluffs, but that designated route itself has to follow numbers roads.

They had some good suggestions for historic themes to build into the byway story. Notably they wanted to see me include the Revolutionary history in the Machias area (and Hannah Weston in Jonesboro), as well as making sure to build in a focus on forestry and shipbuilding industry along the proposed route. (Those are two of the themes they would like to develop at the Town park). They generously provided me with a copy of a book put together for the Town's Bicentennial with a lot of local lore and photos to help get me started on working that into the byway proposal.

So I guessed I'd best be off to do my homework...