Van Buren Town Manager Luke Dyer (left) speaks with graduate students at the Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in 2024. The students helped design aspects of a historical walking path in the town. (Courtesy of Scott Schmidt)
VAN BUREN, Maine — Budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration would cancel funding for a program that has created national connections and funding opportunities for rural towns in Maine and throughout the country.
The 30-year-old Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design program is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which Trump has targeted for elimination in his budget proposal.
The news comes as institutions throughout the state were notified earlier this month that their grants were being terminated because they do not align with the Trump administration’s priorities.
Nationally, the NEA’s CIRD program receives $650,000 every other year spread out to about 20 communities across the country. Communities selected by CIRD are not directly awarded money, but instead given access to national experts who will help with improvements focused on arts, culture and improving economic growth.
Stephen Sugg, special projects manager at the Housing Assistance Council, said they learned last week that there is no longer funding for the CIRD program. He said hundreds of other National Endowment for the Arts grantees have recently received similar notices.
“They essentially said that they have new funding priorities,” Sugg said of the reason given for the cuts.
CIRD focuses on communities of 50,000 or fewer. While a relatively small amount of funding is set aside for communities selected to be a part of the program, Sugg said some CIRD communities have gone on to raise millions of dollars for local work.
Van Buren and Ellsworth both received the grant in 2023, and Van Buren Town Manager Luke Dyer has called it “the gift that keeps on giving.” Even though the town’s time with the grant has concluded, the northern Maine border community is still seeing new opportunities as a result, he said.
“There’s nothing that could take its place,” he said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind program. I don’t know how they can really think that this is something worth cutting.”
Most notably, the CIRD designation led to the town collaborating with Drexel, Georgetown and Clemson universities on multiple projects, including the creation of 10 to 12 bronze art pieces for the town’s historic pathway. Dyer said this project would have cost the town around $60,000 if it had pursued it through traditional means.
The town later collaborated with Clemson University students on a project to revise its brochure, which had not been updated for nearly 50 years, and to promote that its electricity rates are far below the state average.
Last fall, Dyer won a statewide award for spearheading the town’s economic development and revitalization efforts. He attributed much of the town’s recent success to its involvement with the CIRD program.
And now, the university collaborations that started in Van Buren are spreading to nearby communities throughout Aroostook County. Most recently, Georgetown University graduate student Grayson Viar, who is also the university’s digital media associate, wrapped up a rebranding project in Van Buren.
At the same time, Scott Schmidt, a professor at Drexel, Georgetown and Clemson universities, said a similar project is wrapping up in the nearby town of St. Agatha and that he is also in talks with the town of Mapleton about collaborating for a rebranding project.
Dyer said it is nearly impossible to put a dollar value on the CIRD program. The most recent project happening as a result of CIRD for Van Buren is a collaboration with a Drexel architecture class in which students provided 20 different renderings envisioning how the municipality’s old town office building could be transitioned into a business incubator and meeting space.
For this project alone, Dyer said the architectural research and design work would have cost at least $1 million.
Dyer said the town council has written letters to Maine’s congressional delegation, asking it to get this funding reinstated. He’s hoping that Van Buren can be used as an example to show how other Maine communities could benefit from the program.
CIRD plans to appeal the decision to defund the program while seeking money from other sources.
