McKeith

Nicole McKeith, Bridgton’s new community development director, gave a speech to the Bridgton-Lake Region Rotary Club last week, explaining her priorities and goals for the town.

The speech is part of a larger outreach campaign that McKeith has embarked upon since she started her role in August. McKeith told Lakes Region Weekly that her immediate priority is to learn the ins and outs of the community, meeting with local stakeholders such as business owners, nonprofits and representatives of the local ski mountain. She is also focused on improving the process and missions of the committees that she helps manage, which include the Community Development Advisory Committee, Ordinance Review Committee, Planning Board, Comprehensive Plan Task Force, and Open Space Committee.

“It’s really important that everything’s not in a vacuum at the town level,” she said, “so I want to create relationships with other entities in the town.”

She has been working in local government for 15 years. Originally from Montana, she began her career by serving as multifamily program manager/officer for the state’s housing department. She noted that, while on a high level the governments and regulations in Maine and Montana may seem worlds apart, her education in public administration means that she uses the same skill set for interpreting regulations from one municipality to another. McKeith moved to Maine to be closer to her husband’s family in Sweden, and served as director of housing initiatives at ProsperityME in Portland before eventually settling in Bridgton.

McKeith’s biggest project as of now is the development of a new comprehensive plan. Bridgton’s comprehensive plan, which plans out the town’s to-do list and how to manage growth, is required by the state to be updated every 10 years. According to McKeith, she came to Bridgton in the middle of the process, and Deputy Director Haley Richardson and other consultants have been working on it for more than a year.

At the Rotary Club event, McKeith said that the comprehensive plan draft will be voted on by the town next year before going to the state for approval. She also encouraged business owners who have concerns about the comprehensive plan to show up to meetings, saying that she wants to make decisions based on what the community wants.

Several attendees expressed concern about the potential development of big box stores, negatively comparing this prospect to similar developments in towns such as Windham. While lamenting that she couldn’t stop the big box stores from coming in full, McKeith did express optimism that the comprehensive plan could place them in an industrial park far from Route 302 so that they would not stick out to those driving into town.

McKeith also focused her presentation on various grants that the town had applied for. These included money for a walkability study focused on infrastructure around Bridgton Hospital and Stevens Brook Elementary, as well as a Greater Portland Council of Governments grant to conduct an inventory of climate risk of Bridgton’s infrastructure. The town also received $450,000 through the American Rescue Plan Act for a sewer extension project, and $829,350 through the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund for improving stormwater management on Mountain Road.

Several of the Community Development Department’s plans will be financed through Community Development Block grants, a competitive grant process for local projects administered in partnership with Cumberland County. McKeith noted that several sidewalks and playgrounds have been built with CDBG money, which this year will go toward the food pantry and a community navigator position, as well as an ADA-accessible playground.

Other short-term goals for the Community Development Department included a new newsletter for the town, to be launched in early 2025, and the creation of a community calendar, which will be embedded into the town’s website and display various events going on in Bridgton. McKeith was excited about this because according to her, Bridgton needed a single place online where everyone could go and see everything going on in town.