VAN BUREN, Maine — This small border town has something most other towns in Maine do not: cheap power.
Local leaders are now trying to use that to their advantage, and are starting a marketing campaign to attract more businesses to Van Buren.
Van Buren Light & Power has been operating for more than a century and sells electricity at 12.5 cents per kilowatt hour, about 10 cents cheaper than the state average. Only Houlton, in southern Aroostook County, offers electricity for less at 11.4 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the average electricity rates for 2023 listed on the state website.
A conversation between Van Buren Town Manager Luke Dyer and U.S. Sen. Angus King about the town’s electricity rates inspired them to collaborate with a South Carolina university to create a new marketing effort promoting the low costs.
“He basically asked, ‘Why didn’t I know that?’” Dyer said of his conversation with King. “I responded that we, as a whole, have not been great at promoting ourselves and the benefits of having, what we believe to be, the second lowest electricity rates in New England if not the entire east coast.”
King suggested the town create a brochure to market the community to developers who depend on using high volumes of electricity in their businesses, Dyer said. The high cost of electricity in Maine is often cited as a deterrent to businesses locating in the state.
The new campaign comes in the midst of a revitalization effort in the town of about 2,000 residents that kicked off after it received a Citizens Institute on Rural Design grant last year. Van Buren was one of 17 communities in the United States to receive the grant, which is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. While it does not have an attached dollar amount, the grant helped the town get state and national funding for future projects.
Van Buren is also working on a Village Partnership Initiative Project with the Maine DOT that will completely renovate its downtown area. And new businesses, such as Northern Maine Kolache, Co., are attracting customers from well beyond the small border town.
It will be the first time the town has created a marketing brochure since the 1970s, Dyer said. The campaign will prominently feature the local power company.
The utility is able to stay well below the state average of 22 cents per kilowatt hour by keeping their delivery overhead low, Bill Schofield, manager of Van Buren Light & Power, said.
“We have a few employees,” Schofield said. “We have older equipment. We have older poles and lines. We don’t have the best of the best equipment; we don’t have customers who want the ability to know when they’re burning power at this minute or that minute.”
The utility, which Schofield said began in 1902, consists of two full-time employees in the office and three full-time employees working outside. Altogether, they serve about 1,380 customers, including about a dozen just outside the town line in Hamlin.
The power is purchased from NB Power in New Brunswick and runs through Versant power lines to the Van Buren substation, Schofield said. The vast majority of this power is hydroelectric.
The district is excited to be featured in the upcoming marketing brochure and to help with community revitalization, he said.
The discussion with King led to a collaboration between the town and Clemson University. Dyer contacted lecturer Scott Schmidt, who teaches an information design and data visualization class, about working together to make the brochure.
Schmidt is also a professor at Georgetown and Drexel universities. Earlier this year, Van Buren collaborated with Schmidt’s class at the Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design to create about a dozen art pieces for Van Buren’s historical pathway.
The class at Clemson University is online and has five students who are in the Masters of Public Administration program, Schmidt said. Skills learned in the class include graphic and information design principles, visualization literacy, and storytelling using the appropriate tools, Schmidt said.
“It’s not about making things look pretty,” he said. “It’s more about how you can be effective in taking large amounts of information and presenting it in a way that is concise and understandable to the public.”
In addition to highlighting the town’s competitive electricity rates, Schmidt said the brochure will focus on four broad categories of activities, people, revitalization and heritage. Dyer said they also want to highlight the town’s year-round outdoor recreation opportunities, its ATV trails and the boat landing, which has become popular due to muskie and bass fishing in the St. John River.
After hosting a focus group with the community via Zoom on Thursday, Schmidt said the following morning that the next steps are to continue iterating the design and to present their work at a town council meeting at 6 p.m. on Dec. 4.
When the brochures are finished, Dyer said they will begin distribution.
“I’m certainly going to give a stack of them to Senator King, and then we’ll put them out in other locations. We’re going to put them out maybe in Houlton, at the visitor center, and some other places like that,” Dyer said.
They will also distribute a digital version of the pamphlet online.
“Having a project like this, and having the ability to use the resources of this class is super unique, and has been really beneficial to our town,” Dyer said.
