KINGFIELD — Franklin County residents weighed in Tuesday night on initiating prospective zoning in unorganized territories, with several saying the focus should include more than recreation.

The Maine Land Use Planning Commission is working with regional planning and development groups in the zoning effort.

“We’re trying to become more proactive than reactive with zoning and planning issues,” Kirsten Brown-Burbank of LURC’s Franklin County subcommittee told those at Tuesday’s meeting at Webster Hall.

The subcommittee has been working with the LUPC, the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments and Kennebec Valley Council of Governments to try to proactively direct growth in certain areas of the LUPC jurisdiction, she said. There are appointed planning committees in Franklin and Somerset counties that have been meeting individually and jointly since February.

The subcommittee has identified seven categories that need to be addressed in anticipating land uses and zoning changes needed to support outdoor recreation groups. These include aesthetics, insufficient recreation trail connections, zoning-related issues, transition from opportunistic to planned recreation, regulatory coordination, changing outdoor recreation opportunity demand and information. The subcommittee also needs to make informed recommendations to the LUPC.

The subcommittee asked members of the public Tuesday to present the needs of their communities.

Dick Matthews of Phillips said the biggest need is places to stay. Plans are in the works to have an information center by Route 4, which bypasses the town center, to entice people to visit the town and its businesses.

Freeman Township resident William Gilmore said it’s great to have new businesses in the unorganized territories, but he didn’t want to see anything that would detract from the backcountry experience. He said the backcountry focus should be on recreation, with new businesses focused in towns to help generate tax revenue.

Salem Township resident Tom Dubois asked what the subcommittee’s focus was, and Brown-Burbank said it was recreational trails and tourism.

Subcommittee member Darryl Brown said he believed the focus should not just be on recreation and trails, but on other economic aspects such as manufacturing.

“We have a lot of land over here. The unorganized territories combined make up a huge amount of land mass,” he said. “To ignore a particular segment of what’s going on, I think, is really a mistake.”

“When we solely base our entire economy on recreation, it’s two seasons, I think we’re selling ourselves short,” Dubois agreed. “We want to be thinking a little bit bigger than just recreation.”

Brown-Burbank asked how sustainable jobs could be brought in for Franklin County towns.

Matthews admitted that recreation provides only a limited number of jobs.

“I think if we provide recreational jobs, people will come, but for sustainability, other types of jobs must be created,” he said.

bmatulaitis@sunmediagroup.net

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