In the rolling hills west of Presque Isle, the towns of Mapleton, Castle Hill and Chapman are each distinct communities with their own rich agricultural histories and small town charm.
They’re also not.
Since 1992, the towns have shared the same budget, town office, town employees, website, fire department, highway department, recreation department and community services under an interlocal cooperation agreement. Among Maine municipalities, no one shares better.
Now — with the help of a graduate student at Georgetown University — they’re rebranding the towns’ image to better reflect that cooperation and show other communities that consolidation and cost-sharing can offer benefits.
“The goal is to bring together a sense of ownership and civic pride in our community,” Sandra Fournier, the towns’ shared manager, said.
The graduate student, Holly Bolduc, knew almost nothing about northern Maine before this spring, when she began her capstone in design management and communications.
She connected with Fournier through the Rural Design Project, a collaborative initiative between several universities led by Georgetown and Clemson University professor Scott Schmidt. The project is designed to engage students in hands-on learning in rural communities by finding solutions for “unique challenges that are often overlooked in mainstream urban development practices.”
Students have worked to design public spaces for Indigenous people in Alaska and plans for an urban design center in South Carolina. But in the present, the project’s focus is Maine.
That has resulted in other partnerships around Aroostook County, as well. Over the last year, graduate students from Drexel University worked with the town of Van Buren to design art pieces for its historic pathway and on plans to transform the town’s former municipal building into a community and business space. Georgetown students designed new logos for Van Buren and St. Agatha.
It’s design work that would have cost the towns north of $100,000, all together. Thanks to the Rural Design Project, it has been free. Van Buren Town Manager Luke Dyer pointed the project’s organizers toward Mapleton, Castle Hill and Chapman, so the tri-community became the next recipient of its services.
Fournier and Bolduc strategized to figure out what the towns best needed. They settled on a rebrand of their logo and website that would better capture the uniqueness of the interlocal cooperation.
“She originally was like, ‘I love this idea, it’s so unique and I really want to create a logo that is cohesive with what we have here, but also representative of each one of our communities. Each community still wants to maintain their independence in a way,’” Fournier said.
“I was like, ‘Absolutely, you nailed it. I would love to be able to work with you.’”
Bolduc put out a survey on the town’s Facebook page to engage the communities in the process — which generated about 50 responses — and interviewed two members of each town’s Select Board.
“It was a lot of research into the area, into the people,” Bolduc said.
“It was very important to get the communities’ feedback,” Fournier said. “Really see what makes these communities important to them.”
The result was three preliminary logo designs, put back out to a second survey for feedback. The latter two, considered the favorites, are centered around four quadrants, including one for each town. The fourth carries over three stars from the towns’ current logo that represent their collaboration.
Castle Hill is represented by Haystack Mountain and pine trees, Chapman by farmland and Mapleton with an illustration of a municipal building.
A revised version of the logos will be voted on by residents. Fournier hopes to have a logo decided by the end of August, with an anticipated rollout of the rebrand beginning in September and continuing throughout the next year.
“I really want it to resonate,” Bolduc said. “I want it to be impactful and help people kind of rally behind a shared identity. I feel like I get a lot of value out of doing that for people, so I hope that it has that effect.”
The consolidation of the towns’ services first began in 1947, when Mapleton and Castle Hill first shared a town manager, according to the towns’ website. When Chapman switched to a town manager form of government in the 1970s, it joined that partnership. The arrangement was formalized with an interlocal cooperation agreement in 1992 that voters renewed for an additional 15 years in 2024.
Each town has its own Select Board that considers matters specific to that town, but they combine into a joint Select Board for matters under the purview of all three.
Fournier expects that the rebrand will enhance that long-standing partnership and serve as the first step in what she calls a “refocus” as the communities look toward the future amid growth.
“Yeah, this is where we’ve been, these are the key elements that we want to keep in our communities,” Fournier said. “But this is where we have the potential of going, and the rebrand is going to help us in launching that directive.”
Her vision for the future includes creating additional housing in the towns and looking at expanding services to reflect their population. The 2020 U.S. Census found Chapman to be the only town of the three to see an increase in residents, but Fournier said she’s “not happy with the census.”
“Are you kidding me?” Fournier said. “Have you looked around Mapleton? It has grown exponentially … Castle Hill is exploding right now … At the next count I would not be shocked in seeing that we will probably be over a [combined] 3,000 population.”
So the rebrand will serve to modernize the towns’ image. It also, Fournier hopes, will bring greater publicity to their municipal model, which is unparalleled in Maine, and show other communities that it can work.
“Most of these communities are now struggling and facing budget issues,” Fournier said. “What makes us so unique is we share all of those resources … It’s through that cost sharing that we are able to bring a lower mill rate to our communities, keep our budget low as well, and still provide the resources and services that we have.”
