A town in Penobscot County is taking the next step toward dissolving next month.
Maxfield will hold its first vote to continue the deorganizing process on Dec. 15 after a petition gathered enough signatures from residents this fall.
The vote is the second of 12 steps to deorganize — the process in which a municipality ceases to be an independent town and becomes part of Maine’s Unorganized Territory.
Maxfield is one of three towns in Maine this year looking into joining the Unorganized Territory in the coming years, but is the first to go to a vote. A lack of businesses, young residents and engagement in the town’s Select Board pushed residents to circulate a petition in October to start the deorganizing process.
The petition garnered 50 signatures in a town of 89 residents.
The meeting was moved to the Howland Community Center because the Maxfield town office isn’t able to hold everyone who may show up, Maxfield Select Board Chair Marjorie Sage said.
State and county officials will explain how disbanding works at the meeting and what will happen in the event the vote gets approved or denied, but they don’t have a say in the vote and cannot try to sway voters a particular way, Penobscot County Unorganized Territory Director George Buswell said.
“We just tell them about it. We can’t persuade them either way,” he said.
State and county officials have been at previous meetings to explain the process as well, Sage said.
The town doesn’t know how many people will come out for the vote, but Sage expects people to attend no matter which way they think it should go.
“There might be some people that might be against looking into it. [The vote] is not even saying we’re going to do it. It’s saying we’re going to look into it, pursue it and get the information that is needed,” she said.
If the vote passes, a five-person Local Committee for the Deorganization of Maxfield will be formed at the meeting. Three seats will be elected at the meeting and the other two seats of the committee will be filled by a municipal officer nominated by the other officers and a school board member nominated by the other school board members.
The five members will need to be closely involved in the process to be able to continue toward disbanding, Sage said.
“It does seem like whoever these five people are going to be, they’ll have to be very dedicated to get this information and get it back to the state,” Sage said.
If the vote passes, the committee could have more than a year of work to prepare the town to dissolve, Buswell said.
The next steps include paying off any debt the town owes or is committed to, like a school budget, and planning for its time in the Unorganized Territory, culminating in another town vote to approve disbanding.
If residents reject it at any step, the town can’t take up another petition to start the process for three years.
The town will do a secret ballot vote, Sage said.
“We have learned we’re better off to do it on paper. That way you don’t have hard feelings in a small community on how you vote,” Sage said.
Drew Plantation, with a population of 26, was the last community to disband in 2023.
