Oxbow Plantation residents vote to deorganize
Residents of the Aroostook County town of Oxbow have elected to disband their local government.
Twenty-one of Oxbow Plantation’s estimated 53 inhabitants showed up for a special town meeting the night before Thanksgiving and voted unanimously to deorganize, join the unorganized territory of Maine and rely on the county and state for public services.
If the state approves the plan, Oxbow voters will have to weigh in again in the November 2016 general election, and among other duties will have to pay off about $57,000 for its share of the 5-year-old Ashland District School, said Steven Sherman, the town’s first assessor.
Oxbow, one of several junctions to the North Maine Woods west of Route 11, has been facing the same challenges as many other rural Maine towns, said Sherman, who also serves in other government capacities and runs a tree farm and gift shop.
“Taxes continue to go up and we’re losing population incredibly quickly,” he said.
In the 2010 census, Oxbow’s population was estimated at 66. Town officials surveying residents last year counted 53, more than half of them older than 50.
In 1994, Oxbow residents voted 21-9 against deorganization, but this time it’s different, residents said, because of the tax burden — a mill rate of $23.50.
Before Oxbow can deorganize, the state Legislature has to approve the plan and the town needs to cease to own property, Sherman said, noting that new owners will have to be found for the community center, which housed a grade school until 1967. A local church may take over the community center, the county would likely take over two cemeteries and the state will take over a boat launch, he said.
How much more residents will have to pay before an expected drop in their taxes remains unclear, depending on whether the town has any debt, including the $57,000 school obligation, going into deorganization.
“The state could finance our debt, if we are carrying debt at the end of deorganization,” Sherman told residents at the meeting, relaying information he said he obtained from a state government official.
Oxbow was settled in 1842 by Elias and Samuel Hayden, pioneers from Somerset County who poled up the Aroostook River three years earlier, according to the Oxbow Historical Society. As more settlers came and started mills and farms, Oxbow was organized as a plantation in 1870.
