BANGOR DAILY NEWS • October 13, 2025
Residents of the Penobscot County town of Winn used to work for businesses in Lincoln or Millinocket, but mill closures there left jobs scarce. Fewer than 400 people remain in Winn. “There’s no interest in this town anymore,” Winn Selectman Robert Berry said. The town first considered deorganizing — the process in which a municipality dissolves as an independent town and becomes part of Maine’s unorganized territory — in 2023, when no one ran for select board and the town office was unstaffed. Winn is one of several communities that is considering dissolving their town governments and joining Maine’s unorganized territory instead. Deorganizing generally lowers tax rates for residents because the burden is spread across all of the unorganized territory, which accounts for more than half of the state’s land and has about 9,000 year-round residents. However, deorganizing also means the municipality relinquishes any ability to self govern.