By Wayne E. Rivet

Staff Writer

It has been a busy first three months for Nicole McKeith as Bridgton’s new Community Development Director, learning her new surrounds while tackling a host of projects including work and coordination of a new Comprehensive Plan.

The News sat down with McKeith and posed the following questions:

Q. Tell us a little about your background?

McKeith: I am originally from Montana. I just moved here in May. My husband grew up in Sweden. So, we are living in Auburn right now. We’re building a house in Sweden next year. So, I am very new to New England. Trevor, my husband, was out in Montana. He started ranching and then was doing wildland firefighting. We met through Facebook actually. We both are very outdoorsy. So, we started rock climbing and snowboarding together. Then, we talked about coming to Maine at some point because he’s an arborist. There are more career opportunities out here for his business. We landed here, a little sooner than expected, but here we are.

Q. How did you get interested in this line of work?

McKeith: My interest has more been in local government. My undergrad and graduate degrees are in Political Science and Public Administration. I love how local government functions. At a very young age, I was curious about government and how government functions. When I graduated from college, it was in the middle of the recession, so that kind of rolled into getting involved in Public Works and Code Enforcement, building and development zoning. I’ve always loved housing and construction, which led me to affordable housing development. So, there’s been bits of pieces of all sorts of community development kind of mixed throughout what I’ve done. I was previously working for a nonprofit in Portland doing affordable housing development. I decided location-wise that Bridgton was just going to be a better fit.

Q. What was the lure to seek the Bridgton Community Development Director job?

McKeith: It was the fact that you get to work in a small town. I’d never worked for a small municipality before. The fact that the job has a little bit of everything, I call it like, kind of a leftover role just because I get to work on so many different things and I like to be busy. I like to be challenged. I like to learn and grow. So, I really like getting to work on economic development planning, CDBG and just so many things that encompass community development. I’ve visited here a lot before we moved, and I think Bridgton is just such a cute, charming town with such a great character. I’d really love to be a part of that.

Q. Some people might be a little intimidated by having a number of things on their plate, but you seem to actually enjoy it.

McKeith: A hundred percent. I know they say you can’t multi-task all at once, but I love to multi-task. I like to be busy. I like having varying challenges at once. For sure.

Q. When you took the job here, what was your approach?

McKeith: I feel like you should learn a position before you try to make any big changes, and that includes relationship building. That’s been really important to me — relationship building in the community as well as staff, co-workers and committees. I’ve been focused on just growing those relationships. Just getting to know the culture of Bridgeton and the community.

Q. Early impressions?

McKeith: Diving into the Comprehensive Plan was kind of like drinking from a fire hose. I had to do a lot of catching up because they’ve been working on it for a year. There was a lot of public engagement done before I came on that I’ve had to catch up on. I think what I’ve learned is people really love Bridgton, but what they love about it is the natural resources. That charming character, the community. And from what I’ve mostly heard, they don’t want that to change. They want to protect that. The Comprehensive Plan is a growth management plan. We have to balance that with any growth that could happen. Because I like to say growth is coming, so we should prepare for it. We should be proactive instead of reactive. That’s really hard. There’s a lot of folks here that have lived here for a long time and they don’t want to see that change. We can’t necessarily stop it.

Q. What is the best way to balance growth and maintaining a town’s charm?

McKeith: I mean that’s tough. I think having a really solid Comprehensive Plan is a first step. It outlines the next 10 years of growth. We’re working with consultants right now, Berry Dunn, and they are experts at this. I think the number one step is looking at everything from like a thousand-foot view instead of getting stuck down in the weeds. What are the priorities? What do we want Bridgton to look like two years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now? And then, dive into the details. What should the ordinances look like after that? What needs to happen to the Land Use code? What does recreation infrastructure look like? We’re trying to find that balance. We have a lot of varying voices that come to those (Comp Plan and Open Space) meetings that we’ve heard from public engagement. Trying to find that middle ground, we’re not going to make everybody happy, but trying to find that middle ground to protect what Bridgton is will be the ultimate goal.

Q. How good has public engagement been so far in this Comp Plan process?

McKeith: There have been numerous things that have been done before I got there. Since I’ve been there, there have been two rounds of mailers. Some people want to look at things via mail. Some people want to digest information via e-mail. So, we’ve tried to address all of that. There have been two rounds of mailers that have gone out that have like QR codes. We’ve had public workshops that people can come to. They’ve done what’s called Meeting in a Box where people can go around the community and have different meetings. There was a survey put out, which we got like 670 responses, which is really good. That’s the highest that our consultants have had at all. It’s like 10% of the town’s population. We have our task force meetings that are open to the public. We actually have pretty good public turnout from those, as well. We also have a website. People, if they don’t want to come to a meeting they can just put comments down on the website. I’ve been out in the community having meetings just like this. Letting folks know like, Hey, we’d love to see you at these Comp Plan meetings. If you can’t come, here’s a website. Forward it to our staff. Take a look at it. Just trying to get the word out and make it digestible for people.

Q. What’s coming up that people should know about?

McKeith: I’d say the biggest next thing is be watching for is a draft of the Comp Plan, which will be coming out in the spring. We are trying to wrap up some of that public engagement so that the consultants can actually draft the plan. Then, we’ll put the plan out for public comment. We’ll have to work on a plan for public engagement for that. We will obviously have it up on our website and try to get the word out so people know. It is going to be a big document, but we’re trying to look at examples from other towns and make it user friendly to read.

Q. The Comp Plan is on the front burner, but what else have you been working on?

McKeith: One of the big things is we also manage CDBG, which is the community development block grant. We get an allocation from the county. It covers an infrastructure project and usually two public service projects every year. There’s open application for that right now. We anticipate certain folks applying but if there’s any other nonprofits that want to apply for that, they can. We’re more than happy to work with nonprofits who might be interested in that. The CDAC is in charge of scoring. Applications are due June 6. We’re also doing a lot of grant research for any type of funds that can help the town in any capacity, whether that’s improving infrastructure or other projects. There are other issues coming up like affordable housing, which I will be speaking on at the next Select Board meeting, as well as short-term rentals, which the Planning Board will be holding a workshop on. The latest numbers I’ve seen is 42% of all homes in Bridgeton are second homes and 7% are short-term rentals. That’s like 300 to 500 right now. That’s about 50% of our housing stock that is inaccessible to residents to live here. I found the numbers pretty shocking. It’s going to be a fascinating topic. I’m very passionate about housing. I know people are very interested about housing and specifically affordable housing and what that means and what that looks like. I’m hoping the executive director of the Maine Coalition of Affordable Housing can come in and talk to us, and then maybe a developer can also shed some light on what it will take. So be on the lookout for those next. Any housing is helpful, at this point.

Q. Finally, what have been your biggest challenges thus far?

McKeith: Running all the committees. I run quite a few. Just remembering everybody. Making sure that the committees are productive. I don’t like meetings just to meet. This is not a good use of everybody’s time. What are we doing here? What are we getting? What are we accomplishing? So that’s been fun. Public engagement piece is tough, trying to get people involved and get into the committees is really tough. We have a lot of people that serve multiple roles, which is great, but we’d love to have more folks onboard.