Jackson Lab is Bar Harbor's 5th largest taxpayer - contrary to divisive rhetoric

JAX faces bigger problems than local internecine pettiness, as it unpacks Trump directives against elite science institutions

BAR HARBOR, Feb. 15, 2025 - The city with the most hotel rooms in the U.S. is Las Vegas, where I wasted many nights at more blackjack tables than I dare to admit.

At one time it was an open vein for wealthy Chinese from Hong Kong and the Mainland. A a result, some of the best Chinese cuisine in the world, including street food, was only a cab ride away from the Strip on Spring Mountain Road.

Las Vegas has around 170,000 hotel rooms. It has a population of about 700,000.

New Orleans, where I had the worst hangover in my life from ingesting a concoction sold openly on Bourbon Street called a "Hand Grenade," has 26,000 hotel rooms in a city with 320,000 denizens. Greater New Orleans has about 1 million people.

San Antonio, along a river redolent with smells of burnt jalapeno accompanied by rivaling Mariachi bands, has 48,000 hotel rooms in a city with more than 1 million residents.

Not many tourist towns in the world have what Bar Harbor has - an almost one-to-one ratio of hotel rooms to residents.

Last year, just before she left for the quieter confines of Tremont, Code Enforcement Officer Angela Chamberlain compiled a spreadsheet of the hotel and motel rooms in town - 3,512 - which did not include campgrounds.

If you added campgrounds, the total would have come close - if not exceed - the 5,089 year-round residents.

Pause a sec and consider the impact on taxpayers of that burden.

When Eben Salvatore of Ocean Properties declared in the Town Council chambers Feb. 7 that he didn’t know what the emergency was for a moratorium on hotel construction, I thought of Joan Baez’s magnum opus:

“If you’re offering me diamonds and rust, I’ve already paid.”

For decades, citizens paid for a water and sewer system with a capacity they didn’t need, police and fire coverage they didn’t need, road maintenance they didn’t need and cruise ship detritus they didn’t need - like the takeover of Agamont Park.

As the erstwhile sage of Cottage Street Joe Minutolo said to me and others in the bike shop before he sold it, “The guy on Ledgelawn (Avenue) does not need a 36-inch pipe.”

I found one other municipality with a similar resident-to-hotel rooms ratio - Vail, Colorado.

But Vail was a resort before it was a town, founded in 1962 as the Vail Ski Resort. It was not incorporated until 1966.

Bar Harbor was incorporated as the Town of Eden in 1796. Its founding document was signed by Samuel Adams. The town’s name was changed to Bar Harbor in 1918. Today, few residents would associate it with Eden.

Over the last two decades, the town government included other freebies in the tourism trough. Fees to hook up to the town’s water and sewer lines were eliminated. Downtown streets were washed down every morning by public works crews. Parking spots around the waterfront's Agamont Park were reserved to accommodate tour buses.

Salvatore has made it his mission to deflect the responsibility (and blame) for Bar Harbor’s current paralysis as a community onto others. His biggest target the last few years has been Jackson Lab, and he's gained a following. Former town councilor Erin Cough once referred to Bar Harbor as Jackson Lab’s bedroom community.

JAX also isn’t suing the town. Salvatore is. He is a named plaintiff in the appeal of a court decision upholding the citizens approved ordinance to limit the number of cruise ship passengers Ocean Properties may disembark. OP is also in court after refusing to apply for a permit to operate its dock.

On Feb. 7, Salvatore challenged the council to present evidence that “Bar Harbor is experiencing ongoing pressure on public facilities and infrastructure due to an increase in certain transient accommodations.”

He then pivoted quickly to JAX.

“In FY 16, the largest wastewater customer in Bar Harbor was the Jackson Lab, at 17.8 percent of the total wastewater produced. In FY 23 the largest customer was also the Lab, which has grown to 23.5 percent. That's a 32 percent increase from FY16 to FY23, which is seven years.

“Annually, the Jackson Lab produces more wastewater every year than all of the Witham family and Walsh family hotels combined,” Salvatore said.

So what was his point?

JAX uses a lot of water. And the town has a lot of it, thanks to Eagle Lake, a natural reservoir of some of the purest water in the country.

JAX is paying mightily for every drop of water it uses and treatment of all the waste water it produces.

For the calendar year 2022, JAX paid almost $500,000 for waste water treatment and $212,212 for water used in its research. But the commercial sector, including hotels and restaurants, is a far bigger user of water than residents and JAX.

SOURCE: BAR HARBOR 2023 AUDITOR REPORT

In fact, water fees are the fairest method for paying for public service. Salvatore may have done all a favor by shining a light on it and, by extension, other services which are not commensurate, such as waste disposal. Why should the guy on Ledgelawn pay the same for his two bags of garbage a week as Havana does for its 50 bags - or 500?

That’s an easy fix for the Town Council. JAX no doubt would pay its share. Would Ocean Properties?

Over the years, Salvatore has attacked non-profits, including MDI Hospital, over their exemption from property tax.

Salvatore is selective. He’s never mentioned College of the Atlantic, which during the previous administration took sides against opponents fighting a proposed berthing pier for cruise ships next to its campus.

He also gives the YMCA a pass. (He is a board member.)

So here are the numbers for Jackson Lab, as published on the town website:

JAX is the fifth largest taxpayer in Bar Harbor. For FY23, it was the largest payer of Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) - $122,832. It also paid taxes totaling $116,520 for nine properties housing employees, including $92,735 for the 24 units it built several years ago. That total, $239,352, dwarfs the next largest taxpayer, West Street Hotel (owned and operated by Salvatore’s employer) at $192,062. I had to search the town budget to find the PILOT payments which were not included in the following list of Top Ten payers by the town auditor.

PILOT payments are voluntary. There is no obvious rationale for their size, except that Federal entities like the Housing Authority ($23,518) rely on a formula. Acadia National Park’s annual payment is $45,500 and is listed under “intergovernmental transfers” in the town budget. COA has been paying a measly $8,500 a year for decades. (Think about that next time you see a police car in its driveway.)

It has become a shameful sport among the Chamber of Commerce crowd to demonize Jackson Lab, an important institution in the vanguard of the worldwide battle against cancer. These days, as JAX sorts out the confusion around Trump's assault on the National Institute of Health --and science in general - it has bigger worries than the gnats biting at its feet.

“Our leadership is actively assessing the implications of this policy change (NIH indirect costs), gathering more information, and engaging with our partners in government, academia, and industry to better understand its potential impact,” a JAX spokesperson replied to my question about its current situation.

“Ensuring clarity and transparency for our community remains a top priority, and we are committed to providing timely updates and guidance as more details emerge.”

JAX is an independent research institute, not an institution for higher education, but IHEs are among JAX best customers.

A communications ban has already disrupted meetings, grant panels and council meetings where funding decisions are made, said one researcher.

Richard Cohen, a retired judge from New Jersey and Seal Cove resident who writes a newsletter about judicial matters, sent around a report today from Bernard resident Josie Briggs.

Dr. Briggs is director emeritus of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), having spent almost 25 years in various leadership positions at the NIH.

“The loss of indirect cost support will have immediate impact for MDI. Jackson Labs
has approximately $81M in funding per year, so the cut in indirects is estimated to
reduce funds available by $20M. MDIBL (Bio Lab) has $3M in funding and is expected to lose about $500K. These numbers are considered conservative estimates. Jackson Labs will certainly not be able to absorb this without staffing cuts.”

“What is happening at the NIH has many parallels across the Federal government. The
NIH is not a unique target. The animosity seems to be driven by the same crash and
burn anti-government sentiment we are reading about daily, coupled with anger that has built on the complexities of health policy during COVID and a general anti-academic, anti-science bias,” Dr. Briggs wrote.

Feb. 7, 2025 was the same day Eben Salvatore launched his broadside against JAX and MDI hospital.

That a non-profit contributes more than $1 million in annual revenue to a town with 5,089 residents is extraordinary. But if JAX is unable to sustain its economic support, all bets are off for its contribution to the town coffers.

Is that what Eben Salvatore envisioned?