BREAKING NEWS: SWH town meeting votes to apply for Chris's Pond, Manset dock grants
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, June 5, 2021 - In a stunning rebuke of three selectmen, more than 100 voters approved by a unanimous voice vote this morning to have the town apply for federal grants to improve the Manset town dock and the ice skating facility at Chris’s Pond.
The voters broke into a loud applause after moderator Joe Marshall announced the results. Here is the audio.
The repudiation by town voters came after the harbor committee on May 10 rejected by a 5-3 vote a proposal to apply for a grant for a $500,000 on the dock area, including constructing a small recreational space, and the select board rejected on May 11 by a 3-2 vote the pond project application despite previous board votes in support.
Select member George Jellison had said he was not in favor of the pond proposal because of his concern for abutting neighbors. But apparently he did not talk to the closest abutting neighbor who rose to support the effort and noted that the pond had enabled generations of children to learn to ice skate.
After the meeting QSJ attempted to question Terry and Jellison. Terry, who has never responded to QSJ’s emails, said the questioning was “harassment” because he is dyslexic.
The following are two previous QSJ articles on the issue:
Skating pond project still faces hurdles
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, May 29, 2021 - Kristin Hutchins is pleased that voters will have a chance to decide whether the proposed parking lot for Chris’s Pond will move forward.
But the road to that eventuality which includes affordable housing on the property is still long and fraught with potential show stoppers at various points.
Hutchins is the former chair of the select board who resigned two weeks ago after three fellow members pulled the rug from under her and others working to improve access to Chris’s Pond, where generations of children learned to ice skate on the Quietside.
Since March 23 the whims of one man have turned town government into a parliamentary jungle gym. That was when the select board first approved a question on the ballot for voters to say whether they wanted to apply for grants from the Land Water and Conservation Fund to enable better access and parking to Chris’s Pond and to upgrade the town dock in Manset.
That federal program previously helped build a ball field at Pemetic School and the veterans park in the center of the village, said Misha Mytar of the Main Coast Heritage Trust who is the driving force behind the pond project. The program requires that the grant be matched by local funding. Mytar came up with the idea of using the equity as the match. If an appraisal put the equity at $160,000, the matching grant would enable the demolition of the house and construction of a parking lot with 10 spaces. The extra space would be donated to the Island Housing Trust to build a one-family home for a qualifying year-round applicant seeking below market housing.
All was well until Black Tuesday May 11, when select member George Jellison tried to jettison that effort by leading the board to reject by a 3-2 vote the pond project despite previous board votes in support. (The night before the harbor committee had voted 5-3 against proceeding with the dock project.)
Jellison is bringing a national political sensibility to local government where previous decisions have no precedence. It is perilous because vendors, suppliers, partners and non-profit agencies can no longer trust their long-term relationship with the town.
Moreover, Jellison, who doesn’t answer calls from QSJ, doesn’t seem to understand nor appreciate market dynamics.
The blowback from voters was swift, enough so that interim select chair Chad Terry changed his mind this week on Chris’s Pond but not on Manset dock. That required the original March 23 question to be amended to just a single project. But the vote to amend failed 2-2 leaving the original March 23 question on the ballot.
The Chris’s Pond project started when the estate of the dilapidated house next to the pond contacted the Maine Coast Heritage Trust to ask whether it would be interested in acquiring the property.
Misha Mytar said two six-month options from August 2020 through August 2021 gave MCHT valuable time to consider the purchase.
It also coincided with one of the biggest real estate booms in history. Simply put, the property is worth more, perhaps a lot more, something which seemed to have escaped George Jellison.
In the meantime, the town will ask voters at its town meeting next Saturday June 5 this question:
“To see if the Town will authorize the Select Board to apply, on behalf of the Town, for federal financing assistance under the provisions of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, Public Law 88-578 for the development of Chris' Pond/Manset recreation improvements; and further authorize the Select Board or its designee to enter into the Land and Water Conservation Fund Project Agreement with the State subsequent to federal approval of the project.”
Former select member Dan Norwood is expected to fill Kristin Hutchins’s seat after the town elections June 8, but it would be difficult for the next board to challenge the sentiment of the voters should they approve the question. But with Jellison on the board, who knows?
That would only start the clock for a year-long process which still faces many obstacles.
First MCHT must complete the $152,000 acquisition.
The good news is that a recent appraisal puts the value higher than that. So when Jellison avers that he is worried about rising cost, the higher appraised value of the property will give MCHT a boost to seek a bigger grant. Jellison also previously said he is concerned about abutters even though not a single abutter has publicly objected to the project.
It won’t be until next year after a new round of applications are considered will we know if the grants are availing.
Here is punch list of important factors:
Voters decide June 5 whether to approve seeking the grants
Will select board vote to proceed if voters favor?
If so, will MCHT exercise its option Aug. 31?
Will Island Housing Trust be able to raise enough money to build a single-famly house on the property next to the pond parking area? If not, will MCHT proceed with just the pond improvements?
And memo to Jellison: This doesn’t require a dime from SWH taxpayers.
SWH boards, committees hostile to folks from away and women, say ex members
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, MAY 15, 2021 - This town has morphed into a Shakespearean tragedy, with the treachery of MacBeth, the internecine doings of Julius Caesar and the madness of King Lear, just for good measure.
A passel of good ole’ boys - men with self-professed local cred - are taking the town “back from those women and their fancy ideas” as one local businessman put it. The men on the select board and harbor committee dealt fatal blows this week to proposals for improved access to the town’s beloved Chris’s Pond, where generations of children learned to ice skate, and recreational appurtenances to the town-owned Manset dock.
Both proposals were spearheaded by teams of women volunteers who spent hundreds of hours over a year and a half, only to be snuffed out by the likes of selectman George Jellison, who waited for the final airing of the proposals, to vote against taking the issue to the town meeting in June.
By the end of Tuesday, the two women who chaired both boards no longer did. Anne Napier was voted out and replaced by Nicholas Madeira as chair of the harbor committee. Kristin Hutchins resigned from the select board late Tuesday night. Napier said the rotation of chairman is common.
“George Jellison has a long history of not engaging in the beginning or the middle of a process” only to vote no without much warning, said Lydia Goetze, former select board chair.
“The reason I ran (for selectmen) after I moved back in 2005 was that the public discourse toward women in town was so hostile,” said Geotze, who was on the select board for six years and served a year and a half as chair.
Denying voters the opportunity to decide on the Chris’s Pond proposal received swift blowback.
“The SB (select board) vote disenfranchised residents of the town of SW Harbor by removing a warrant item which would have allowed residents to vote on whether to apply for a grant ... a grant which would have improved year-round recreational activities used by many SWH residents, as well as some visitors, and at no cost to the town,” said Napier.
The idea for the grant came from Misha Mytar of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust - to match the trust’s acquisition of an abandoned property near the pond with federal funding to create parking and landscaping.
The Island Housing Trust, headed by Marla O’Byrne, would then build a house on the remaining lot for much needed year-round housing at below market rates.
Jane Ayres Peabody of the Conservation Committee also spoke at length at the select meeting Tuesday in support of the pond proposal.
Select member Carolyn Ball made the final presentation to the board.
It was a exemplary community effort to create a better version of what we have.
All which was met with a perfunctory, guttural response from Jellison: “I think it’s a terrible idea … for the abutting property owners. I don’t think the town should be involved in this.
“I’ve seen this plan change probably four times since February,” Jellison said, either not understanding or purposely disregarding the numerous changes such complicated projects undergo during their gestation.
Within a matter of minutes, the motion was cast and Chad Terry and Allen “Snap” Willey followed Jellison’s lead. The 3-2 vote had Hutchins and Ball in the minority.
Jellison is a veteran of municipal knife fights. He sparred with Lydia Goetze in 2017 over whether to approve former town manager Don Lagrange’s request for a 3-year contract as a part-time code enforcement officer and to make town clerk Marilyn Lowell a part-time town manager.
“It was a bad idea,” Goetze said. She was not a fan of Lagrange’s tenure nor his financial management.
She resigned as chair shortly after Lagrange’s deal was approved. She cast the only dissenting vote.
Lowell was never made town manager. In 2018, the town hired Justin VanDongen to be its town manager. The long knives were out for VanDongen from the beginning.
Goetze and others found VanDongen to be an excellent and knowledgeable town manager.
Jellison was in his duck blind waiting for the right moment. He told QSJ in his only interview in December to watch for something to happen after Jan. 12. On Jan. 26, 2021 the board voted 3-2 to fire VanDongen, three men against two women.
The timing, and the cost to the town to pay VanDongen the remaining portion of his contract through June, was driven by a fear that town clerk Marilyn Lowell would resign.
VanDongen championed many ideas - consolidating the police force with Bar Harbor and Mount Desert and the Chris’s Pond enhancements - but to no avail. He was rebuffed by the men on the board time and again.
Goetze said the men on the board repeatedly put “their personal interest” above that of the town’s.
The harbor committee, of which five members benefit directly from keeping the harbor commercially oriented, is also dominated by men.
Well intentioned citizens - led by women - who had the idea of doing something with the Hook property, a sliver of land at Manset dock which Carolyn Hook was renting to the town.
After 25 years of flaying about, Lydia Goetze said she was the one who broke through to convince Carolyn Hook to sell the land to the town. The natural extension of that purchase was to determine what to do with it.
“The recommendation for the Manset properties was to include a small green space with a couple of picnic tables … not to turn the entire area into a ‘recreational space.’ Nor was this my idea alone,” Napier wrote in an email to QSJ. “This plan, worked on and approved by the harbor committee for nearly two years, combined commercial fishing, recreational boating, kayak launching, barge access, heavy equipment loading, boat launch, parking, a new Harbormaster's office with two ADA (American Disabilities Act) bathrooms, and a small green space.
“Half of the work and all of the green space costs were anticipated to be covered by grants. Work on the plan had proceeded for nearly two years with on-going acceptance until just recently.”
The group of five men was going to have none of that. In a 5-3 vote Monday night, they obliterated the idea.
“I just want to put the brakes on what we have here,” said committee member Corey Pettegrow. “The functionality for this is wrong for this area… You can’t have excavators, trucks, boom trucks and a family with a picnic in that area. This is a busy place. It’s not even a fun place to be from now until September. My whole issue on this has been function.”
Pettegrow was virtually AWOL during the process, having failed to attend most of the meetings when the plan was discussed.
But he does speak from experience when it comes to handling heavy equipment.
He caused serious damage to an Ellsworth woman’s car in 2012 when a boat hull he was hauling snagged a utility pole in Somesville and sent it flying. The force of the unfinished boat hull catching on the overhead wire pulled the pole entirely out of the ground and turned it into a projectile, according to the Bangor Daily News.
Marlene Bennett, then 60, was driving a 2007 Dodge sedan behind the truck and trailer when the pole flew from its upright position into the roadway, police said. The force of it being pulled out propelled the pole through the front passenger-side door of Bennett’s car.
At the meeting Monday night, member Ron Weiner voiced exasperation with Pettegrow and others. “I wish somebody had raised the questions before now. I’m a little troubled we’ve gone as far as we have and not gotten anywhere. I’m really confused about it… To me, it now seems like a waste of time.”
In addition to Napier’s efforts, the grant application was written by select member Carolyn Ball.
“It was a coup” by the gang of five, said a town board member who felt some of the committee members have been particularly hostile to outsiders and women.
“There are two in particular who are very nasty toward women,” said Goetze, who is worried that the current insurgency by the old guard will discourage women and newcomers from seeking local office.
She pointed out that the Conservation Committee and the school board are the only two safe havens for women.
Goetze also pointed to the hypocricy of the “local cred versus being away” sensibility. She was born in Mount Desert. “And I will always be from away, and Kristin Hutchins is as local as they come.” Goetze’s family has been in Southwest Harbor for six generations.
George Jellison hasn’t returned a call from QSJ since December. Chad Terry has never returned a call. Snap Willey and I had a brief chat this week at the Harbormaster trailer. I gave him my card.
The select board’s dysfunction has consequences. The dilapidated town garage was a major focus of VanDongen but the select board couldn’t get a new building passed by voters. The town also has vacancies for police chief, town manager and deputy harbormaster.
At the coming June town elections, there is only one candidate running for select board, Dan Norwood, who was on the board previously for eight years. Norwood, like the other men, did not return two calls from QSJ.
Hutchins told QSJ that she agreed to step aside when Norwood expressed an interest to run again.
Which leaves Carolyn Ball as the only woman on the BOS.
Lydia Goetze wrote in a letter to The Islander in February:
“The firing of a very competent town manager by a 3-2 vote, is a local symptom of the divisiveness in our culture these days. If our town is to survive and thrive, we need residents of all descriptions — old, young and in the middle; female and male; working and retired; those who have chosen to live here as well as those born and raised here — to come together, to pay attention to the town’s welfare, to serve on town boards and committees and to talk and listen to each other for the present and future well–being of Southwest Harbor. “