Like many small, rural communities in Maine, the communities of Jonesport and Beals are in need of accurate local-level data and information to help guide local decision-making. However, many widely used data sources are either inaccurate or unavailable at the local level for small communities. In 2022, the Towns of Jonesport and Beals began working with Sunrise County Economic Council, Downeast Institute, University of Maine Machias, Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at UMaine, rbouvier consulting, and Maine Sea Grant (the project partners) toward augmenting the data that are available to improve local decision-making. The project was funded by a grant from the University of Maine MARINE program.
To get started, the project partners met with a group of community members who represented a variety of interests in the communities’ local economies. Community members from the Select Board, and Planning Board, municipal committees including Budget, Economic Development, Harbor, Shellfish, and Working Waterfront, and local business people all met for the first time in March, 2022. The purpose of the meeting was to identify initial ideas on what residents want to learn more about and care most about in relation to the local economy. In addition, conversations were held with students at Jonesport and Beals high school in May, 2022 to identify questions from local youth. Finally, in June 2022, conversations were held at Moosabec Variety, Jonesport Pizza, the Town Halls, post offices, and library to gather community members’ questions more broadly. In total, conversations were held with 65 community members in the two towns.
These ideas and questions from the community conversations are an essential part of the Jonesport and Beals local economy project. The ideas contributed were related to each other in order to identify major themes. These themes include (from most commonly noted, to least common): Fishing and Fisheries; Employment and Industry; Infrastructure and Taxes, Costs, and Inflation; Housing and Real Estate; Population and Demographics.
The research team then collected data to help answer the communities’ questions and conduct an initial economic analysis. Following the completion of the analysis in spring, 2023, further conversations were held at various locations in Jonesport and Beals. During this next round of conversations, community members were asked if the analysis made sense with what people knew about their communities, as well as to identify any other sources of local-level data that would be important to review. Key themes from this next round of community conversations include the following:
● Available data track primary employment, but many community members rely on diverse sources of income.
● There was a perception that Covid-19 resulted in significant changes in local industry composition, but those may not be well reflected in available data.
● Data on fisheries landings in the two towns appear to be more accurate when the towns are evaluated as a whole, rather than separately.
● Commercial fishing licenses for larger vessels are increasing.
● There is a need to account for economic trends of seasonal residents extending their stays in the communities and the increase in remote workers.
Once the community members reviewed the data, it was determined that while the data seemed to be largely representative of the communities, there were areas where improved accuracy is needed to inform local decision making. The project team searched for other sources of data that may offer alternative insights into some of the issues encountered by the community members. This report presents the data that are available, the shortcomings of that data, and proposes a method by which local communities may be able to augment that data.
Project Partners
Town of Jonesport: Harry Fish, Erik Blackwood, Ira Kelley, Clifford Norton III, John Church
Paul Iossa, Skip Rogers, Penny Hershman, Cynthia Beauvais, Lee Guptill, Dwight Alley, David Rier
Town of Beals: Paula McCormack, Nancy Beal
Sunrise County Economic Council: Jen Peters, Denise Cilley, and Jessica Greeley, Elaine Abbott,
Downeast Institute: Dianne Tilton
University of Maine Machias: Tora Johnson
Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at UMaine: Megan Bailey
rbouvier consulting: Rachel Bouvier
Maine Sea Grant: Kristen Grant