How one man holds a town hostage: Welcome to Southwest Harbor's Game of Thrones (link corrected)
OTHER NEWS: See Interactive display of cruise ship pollution
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, April 2, 2023 - The vice grip George Jellison holds on municipal governance and the resulting chaos hit a new low last week, as insults, accusations and sarcasm overtook any semblance of decorum at the select board meeting Tuesday.
You may listen to the debacle which started shortly after Town Manager Marilyn Lowell’s long-winded and unnecessary description of a proposal to rejoin Acadia Disposal District at Minute 39.
Her preamble set the tone by posing the question why SWH would ever use a template from Tremont, a lesser sibling, never mind that SWH was once a member of the collective and signed the same membership papers year after year. It demonstrated that Jellison, even after he lost control of the board, did not loose influence over the town staff.
Immediately after her presentation, Jellison pounced and launched into his objections to rejoining the district, as well as his favorite target the past three years, the proposed upgrade to the town skating pond.
Flashpoints ruled the day, verging on pettiness, as Jellison opposed even a $279 item to post seven signs marking rights of way in town.
His behavior has been wildly inconsistent, worrying some on the board and town committees that he is disrupting without real purpose.
Only a week earlier Jellison had voted in favor of a $3,000 membership fee to rejoin the waste collective. Tuesday night he tried to explain his flipflop by stating his approval of the budget item was not intended as approval of the project.
But minutes of the meeting March 21 stated clearly the addition of $3,000 was “to join the ADD (Acadia Disposal District).” That was according to Town Clerk Jennifer’s Lahaye’s account, which is now archived as an official town record.
“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 in May 2021.
At this stage, the issues were really not the point. They were merely props for Jellison’s staged grievances. With his term not over until June 30, he is still capable of inflicting much damage.
Tuesday night, he moved to add Chris’s Pond to the agenda without giving public notice. Instead he flashed a piece of paper which he claimed contained 26 signatories opposing the skating pond project. Six or seven of them attended in person and asked questions.
That a sitting select member would secretly gather support around town to oppose a project which already has been approved in principle at a town meeting is unprecedented.
This has shades of the dreary state of national politics.
It’s now a familiar playbook in public discourse unfortunately: If you repeat a falsehood enough times or is caught in a contradiction, some may believe your message to be true.
Jellison made copious use of this playbook.
Falsehood: The town has not properly vetted the proposal to upgrade Chris’s Pond.
Fact: This project has had more scrutiny than any single town project the last five years, when the idea was first hatched by Maine Coast Heritage Trust. It received the unanimous approval at the June 2021 town meeting 104-0. Two of MDI’s most revered non-profits partnered to try to build better access to Chris’s Pond by expanding its parking lot and in the process potentially rehabbing a house on the premise for affordable housing.
On Feb. 28, former select chair Kristin Hutchins and Misha Mytar, the Maine Coast Heritage Trust staff member who originated the idea, told the select board MCHT had completed acquisitions of two abutting properties with easements to allow public access and that the Trust raised enough money to raze one of the buildings because it was in dangerous condition. (The presentation starts at Minute 21:50)
The town now must decide whether to accept donation of the property at a cost of $4,600 in lost annual property taxes which everyone on the select board, except Jellison, believes is an excellent trade-off.
The QSJ has written about Chris’s Pond ad nauseam. Bill Trotter of the Bangor Daily News also did a good job of explaining the transaction last year.
Jellison did not attend Feb. 28 because he called in sick.
But just because he wasn’t present, it did not mean the meeting didn’t occur and that the agenda, which was posted publicly, did not have proper vetting.
Second falsehood: There has never been a select board the last 12 years “that hasn’t got the common courtesy to ‘Second’ a fellow Board member’s request for discussion, whether they agree with the motion or not.” The Islander reported that quote came from a Jellison email.
Fact: As recently as early February, the select board did not second member Jim Vallette’s first attempt to join Acadia Disposal District. On Feb. 28, no one seconded Luke Damon’s motion to separate two items in the town warrant. And of course, famously, two previous select boards did not second motions to authorize a no-parking zone around Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound. And they did that multiple times. Jellison had attempted at least six times to impose strict, parking bans around the restaurant at the behest of his sister who lives across the street.
Falsehood: The proposal to rejoin Acadia Disposal District was added as a warrant article “in the 11th hour” with no public vetting.
Fact: The Solid Waste Reduction Task Force promoted the idea of rejoining ADD as early as Jan. 4, 2023, saying the organization which includes neighboring Mount Desert and Tremont undertakes “cost effective, environmentally friendly, efficient and lawful management of disposal and recycling of solid waste materials.” The task force also was the first to warn the town of a proposal to erect a hazardous waste facility in the middle of Southwest Harbor without SWH having a vote, unless it joined ADD.
Task force members appeared in front of the select board twice since then. That raised awareness of the issue leading to the select board to approve $3,000 for a one-year membership which got Jellison’s yay vote March 21.
The accusation Tuesday by Jellison that this matter was a surprise led to a testy exchange between him and Vallette, a materials research consultant, who said he was offended Jellison did not respect his input to which Jellison replied:
“I think you guys don't respect my information on half the stuff I tell you. I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel. I've watched it in the last six, seven meetings and I'm tired of it.”
“So this is retribution?” Vallette asked, questioning Jellison’s true intent. No longer surrounded by reliable sycophants when he was chairing the board, Jellison is alone in his nativist views.
Jellison supporters on the board either chose not to seek re-election or lost at the polls. In June 2022, Vallette was elected along with Natasha Johnson. In November Luke Damon was elected to fill a vacancy.
The QSJ emailed Jellison for replies to the facts cited above but got no reply. Jellison has not replied any of my questions since December 2020.
Beside the exchange with Vallette, Jellison also has personally attacked chair Carolyn Ball.
“It appears Miss Chairwoman that you've had a clear bias on this project since it started three years ago and with a new conduct policy that may be appearance of conflict of interest which may not allow you to continue on with the discussion you may want to consider recusing yourself from future discussion going forward.”
Not only did Ball not recuse herself, but she seconded Jellison’s motion to remove the Chris’s Pond project from the town meeting warrant to allow debate. Afterward, she again surprised everyone by voting along with Jellison. Of course, the question to accept the donation of the land already had the necessary majority approval.
In one fell swoop, Ball diffused any claim Jellison had that this matter did not getting proper vetting and that Ball had a bias.
“I completely support Chris’s Pond and I would urge voters to support it,” she said later.
See Interactive feature showing how cruise ships pollute
BAR HARBOR - A sharp-eyed reader called attention to this interactive feature on the pollution emitted by the Oceanic Topaz, a fictional but representative cruise ship, on a seven-day journey from Seattle to Alaska, stopping at various ports.
Great coverage of the bucket of worms that is Southwest Harbor politics under Jellison . . . By the way, QSJ, in the phrase "In one fell swoop, Ball diffused any claim Jellison had etc." the word should be "defused," not "diffused" (to diffuse means to "spread or cause to spread over a wide area or among a large number of people").