IMPORTANT MEETING NOTICE:
The remaining PTTF meeting dates have changed. Please make note of the following new dates:

September 20th
October 19th
November 30th

The next Advisory Board meeting is scheduled for November 1st at 6:30 at the Guilford Bed and Breakfast.

PTFF members present: Donna Fichtner, Bob Hamer, Mike Henderson, Roger Merchant, Patrick Myers, Sophia Wilson

The meeting began with a review of the Advisory Board meeting the previous night in Greenville. It was noted that there was an implied conflict between wanting to increase tourism, but not wanting development. The point was made that people aren't against development per se, but want to make sure that we do not loose our rural characteristics. People want the ambience of the place to stay the same, but population growth is necessary to maintain essential services such as the hospitals and schools.

Development within the towns is up to the individual towns to control, but in the unorganized territories development is controlled by LURC. But LURC does not have any sort of comprehensive plan in place for Piscataquis County. The PTTF blueprint will not only have implications for the towns, but also for the unorganized territories. A piece that should be developed within the blueprint is the geographic scope of the blueprint and the relationship of development in the unorganized territories to the rest of the county.

The point was made that those who interact with visitors must be ready to explain the working forests to visitors. We are currently unable to orient visitors to the multiple values of the forest such as conservation, working forest or recreation.

Discussion then turned to the importance of "Anchor Businesses" in small communities. In the Greenville area in the 70's and 80's businesses like Squaw Mtn., The Birches and Eastern Outdoors spent $3 - $400,000 on marketing themselves and the area to the outside. This drew people to the area which benefited all businesses. At the same time the other smaller businesses in the area were spending less than $100,000 on the same efforts.

The county is far too large to depend on a single anchor. There is also a reluctance to depend on a single anchor since people are wary of larger impacts if they fail. The AMC could be an anchor as they develop their presence.

The PTTF concluded that there was a need for a statement regarding appropriate development and appropriate forestry related to tourism. These may be topics that we cannot address because we don't have the information and research available. Perhaps once the blueprint is in place there will be the opportunity to go after planning money to research the areas that we are lacking.

Other comments about AB meeting included:

• The original intent of moving the AB meetings around the county was to give more people the opportunity to participate. However, for similar efforts in the future, it might be better to locate all the meetings in the same central location to make planning easier for participants.
• Roger's presentation was more effective to get responses for the visioning portion of the meeting. The image discussion did not seem as fruitful.
• Economic issues didn't get much attention during the discussion
• The PTTF hopes that everyone from the AB meeting will be able to attend the next meeting in Guilford.
• We need to emphasize that we are committed to strengthening and growing existing businesses as well as developing new opportunities. Businesses are not well plugged into business assistance and networking.
• We want to maintain our agrarian resources and our working forests. But what in the plan will help maintain those areas.
• Developing ideas is great, but a public educational piece is necessary to begin a dialogue to bring tourism ideas out into the broader public's view.

• Sophie and Mike will draft a statement concerning the relationship of the unorganized territories to other the communities and the value of having a comprehensive plan for the organized and unorganized territories.
• Roger will craft a statement of tourism potential and the scope of the plan's framework.
• Patrick will work on the image discussion to craft an image statement.
• Donna and Roger will do the same for the Vision exercise
• Roger will work with Mark Scarano, Jim Macomber and others to start to develop resources for businesses and a way to market those resources to make sure businesses can make the most use of them.
• All PTTF members will review the documents on Organizational Development that Roger Distributed. The shorter Q&A is attached and the longer Community Organization document is available at: www.montana.edu/wwwwrdc/section1.html