Sunrise County Economic Council: Creating a Brighter Future for Washington County

Washington County, Maine, is the first place in the continental U.S. where you can see the sunrise. It’s also where a group of dedicated business and community leaders have been working tirelessly for 30 years to create a brighter future for this scenic corner of the country.

Photo courtesy Machias Chamber of Commerce.

Sunrise County Economic Council (SCEC)–Washington County’s economic development entity–brings together businesses, nonprofits, municipalities, and citizens to create jobs and prosperity for an area that’s experienced decades of economic and population decline.

As of July 1, 2023, 15.6% of Washington County residents lived in poverty–the state average was 10.8%–with a median income of $51,669 (in 2022 dollars), compared to $68,251 statewide. The number of residents has also been trending steadily downward since the turn of the 20th century, and while the county has welcomed a few hundred new faces since the start of the pandemic, it’s too soon to tell if this trend will continue.

SCEC and its partners are addressing the county’s challenges from all sides–from providing education programs to children, so their parents can pursue a college education, to assisting local governments with applying for grants to revitalize their struggling residential and downtown areas, to acting as the fiscal agent for the Downeast Fisheries Partnership, a group of eight organizations working collaboratively to revitalize the area's once-thriving fishing industry.

"You can't solve Washington County's economy by just extending a sewer line or building an industrial park,” says SCEC Executive Director Charles Rudelitch. “You have to work in several dimensions at once.”

Family Futures Downeast 2024 graduates. Photo courtesy Sunrise County Economic Council.

To strengthen the area’s workforce and create new jobs, SCEC provides professional development scholarships and free job training courses, along with technical assistance and microloans to grow small businesses and help aspiring entrepreneurs become business owners. Local startups can also tap into networking and learning opportunities, and take advantage of coworking and office space, at SCEC’s new MaineStreet Business Building in downtown Machias.

While much of SCEC’s work is accomplished by one-on-one interventions, since 2016, its focus has been on scaling its impact through collaboration with other nonprofits, businesses, and governments. The Sustainable Prosperity Initiative (SPI) is just one example: SCEC partners with communities to protect and restore the county’s abundant natural resources, to support the businesses and workers that depend on them for their livelihood.

“The workforce development, public infrastructure, and the environmental restoration work is very much us with other entities, whether it's working with a town or a group of nonprofits,“ says Charles. “A lot of really complex work is being done in collaborations or partnerships.”

Since 2013, Sewall has awarded 10 Healthy People Healthy Places grants to SCEC, which have been leveraged to secure critical state and federal funds, including numerous USDA grants and the Northern Border Regional Commission grant. Most recently, in 2022, SCEC received its largest Sewall grant to date, a 36-month investment to provide technical assistance and expand broadband throughout the region.

Digital equity training. Photo courtesy Sunrise County Economic Council.

SCEC’s broadband initiative is well on its way to bringing fiber connectivity to all the Washington County communities who don't have access–currently 47.5% of households. It's already provided direct support to 21 communities (2,454 households), and is pursuing federal funding through the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to work with an additional 26 communities (4,011 households).

“SCEC takes a very holistic, community-centered approach to economic development. They see the intersections of workforce needs and job creation with fisheries and natural resource management, education, housing, transportation, public health, and climate ,” said Tom Boutureira, Sewall’s Community Partner for Washington County. “They are collaborative to the core and see that the only way forward is through partnership and trust.”

Thanks to its diverse mix of private and public funding, SCEC was able to retain staff during the pandemic and even expand its capacity. As of spring 2024, it’s grown to 34 staff members across offices in Machias, Calais, Milbridge, and Danforth. It's also halfway through its 2022-2026 strategic plan, which focuses on strengthening partnerships, particularly with municipal and Tribal governments, and expanding multi-sector partnerships, such as the Community Resilience Partnership, which helps communities prepare for the impacts of climate change.

Looking ahead to the remainder of 2024, Charles shares that his plans include making sure federal funding–currently available at its highest level in nearly two decades–continues to flow into the area for vital, local infrastructure improvements related to transportation, water and sewer, and broadband. While these investments won’t turn things around overnight, he’s confident that the sun will continue to shine on Washington County.

“Things are moving forward on workforce development, they're moving forward on fisheries restoration,” he says. “There's energy, there's partnerships, there's a community that wants to move forward, and there's funding.”