Reviving WCCOG considered by Washington County towns

The City of Eastport recently became the seventh Washington County municipality to sign on to the revitalization of the Washington County Council of Governments (WCCOG), a membership organization that operated until a couple of years ago for the benefit of its members with planning services and much more.
Under the leadership of Judy East during a 17-year run, the WCCOG provided member communities with assistance in many areas including: comprehensive planning; ordinance language; brownfields assessments; climate change mapping and emergency management planning; transportation planning; economic development; and more. East concluded her tenure as executive director in 2019 for a position with the state's Land Use Planning Commission and is now the director of the Bureau of Resource Information and Land Use Planning.
After East's departure the WCCOG lagged. Calais City Manager Mike Ellis says, "Judy East was very effective. Then it had a hard time holding things together, with COVID and it couldn't find a good fit with a director." He's positive about the possibilities of a revived organization. "It was a great organization; it did a lot, and it was very helpful to towns." Ellis notes that when he took over as Calais city manager four years ago the WCCOG "was a very active group. There was a lot of stuff going on." He lists the environmental assessment benefits such as the brownfields program and other federal and state grant funding areas that were of benefit to member communities.
Lubec Town Administrator Renee Gray couldn't agree more. "First and foremost," she says, "the WCCOG really helped with the town's 2010 comprehensive plan." She explains that such projects are essential and not easy to do without experienced guidance. In addition, the brownfields program was very important for the section of the shore where the Lubec Historical Society building is located.
Brownfield grants are made through the Environmental Protection Agency in order to inventory, characterize, assess, conduct a range of planning activities, develop site-specific cleanup plans and conduct community engagement related to brownfield sites. In 2019 the WCCOG had worked on brownfields projects for 11 years and completed over 35 brownfield assessments for sites potentially contaminated with petroleum products and hazardous substances. A total of 20 sites were redeveloped or under expansion, several assessments were pending, and others, with up to 25 already identified, were waiting for consideration.
County Manager Betsy Fitzgerald along with Milbridge Town Manager Lewis Pinkham are leading the WCCOG effort, explains Fitzgerald, having held a meeting about a month ago with a "smattering of representatives from some towns there." They plan to hold another meeting soon to assess the overall response. She adds, "In collaboration with Sunrise County Economic Council (SCEC) we're trying to bring it back. The question to towns is: Do you want WCCOG to exist and do you want to support it financially?"
The scope of the revived WCCOG would not be as it was under East. Fitzgerald expects that it would focus on comprehensive plans, ordinance language and brownfields as the core areas of work. "Towns are struggling with comprehensive plans and ordinances." Plans and ordinance language "are time consuming if they're going to be of value." Most of the county's communities rely on selectmen and town clerks for the bulk of their workload, and some towns work on reduced hours. "Towns are being asked to monitor and regulate things they've never had to do before, such as solar and wind farms, marijuana ordinances."
It's most likely that a revamped WCCOG would contract its work with other entities such as SCEC, which hired two additional employees to handle planning to fill the gap that the WCCOG left behind. SCEC partners with other economic development organizations such as the Northern Maine Development Commission and the Community Development Block Grant program on grant-funded programs.
SCEC Director of Community Development Jennifer Peters explains, "But there are other functions that a state-recognized organization [such as WCCOG] can serve that SCEC can't" because of its structure and statutes regulating certain federal and state funding streams. "We're hoping that towns are interested in keeping the WCCOG going." She explains that the biggest benefit of the WCCOG is that it is of direct benefit to Washington County communities in being able to locate and tap into the federal and state funding opportunities that communities need for bigger projects.
Getting the WCCOG up and running again will take time, cautions Fitzgerald. "There is wisdom in moving a little slower." She adds, "We need to get it right," and notes that the WCCOG provided 17 years of excellent service to its members.