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Mariaville Is Hancock County’s
Fastest-Growing Town
Of
the 36 towns in
Hancock
County,
none is growing as rapidly as Mariaville.
Mariaville’s 414 residents pay their taxes—the highest in all of
Hancock County—at the town hall. The only other time that
Mariaville’s population exceeded its current figures was in
1860, when there were 458 living in the town.
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Population 414
according to the 2000 census, the town had just 270 residents only a
dozen years ago, noted in the 1990 census.
That’s a 53-percent
growth rate between the decades.
The rate hasn’t
slowed since, according to First Selectman John Lacey, who said that
even more building has occurred in the last two or three years.
Drive up Route 181
north of Ellsworth, however, and one is hard pressed to see evidence
of all the new building and newcomers in town. Mariaville very much
continues to maintain that rural, country-roads look with old
farmhouses amid miles of blueberry fields and forests.
That’s because,
Lacey said, “We are a place where neighbors welcome neighbors. Ours
is a town where people are friendly.”
Still, those new
homes are going up quickly and quietly, much of it along Graham Lake
or else set well back off the main road via subdivisions.
The tests for the
town come not in traffic, but in school costs, taxes and even trash
transfer station issues.
“Our growth is
still accelerating, and that means changes,” Lacey said. “Nobody
likes change, I guess, but changes need to be made.”
Mariaville doesn’t
have its own school, sending its students to Beech Hill School in
next-door Otis. The towns split the costs of the school, and last
year, the cost to Mariaville’s residents went up 51 percent from the
previous year, Lacey said. A few years before, the growth in school
costs jumped 40 percent.
As for solid waste
issues, the town has its trash hauled away at least 50 percent more
often than it did just 10 years ago.
“Nearly twice as
many people at the transfer station means our waste stream is
accelerating,” Lacey said.
For taxation the
town, without any significant industries, also has the highest mill
rate within
Hancock
County:
.02275.
The present tax
rate for the year that started July 1 has not yet been set, as the
town is in the midst of a total property revaluation.
Lacey’s wife,
Sharon, is chair of the three-member board of assessors. The board
is working this year with a professional assessor for the first time
ever.
There are more
people and properties in town, but the business segment is not
growing, Sharon Lacey noted.
“We have some
construction people who do gravel, foundations and site work,” she
said. “And we have a few loggers, some who work locally and others
who work in other towns.
“There are some
blueberry fields here, and Allen (Co.) owns some land. But most of
the people in Mariaville work out of town.”
The Laceys,
themselves retired, are relative newcomers to the town. They had
been coming to their camp for 20 years from Connecticut before
moving to Mariaville year-round 13 years ago.
“We love living
here,” Sharon Lacey said. “People are friendly and it’s still a
rural area. We live on the lake, and the lake provides us with lots
of waterfowl.
“We had five great
blue herons out our window today.” |
