NEH rallies to support village workforce housing project opposed by many summer residents

Other news: Conners-Emerson ranked best school in Maine; 'mediation' in cruise ship fight explained

NORTHEAST HARBOR, Jan. 21, 2022 - In an extraordinary display of unity, a cross section of the town’s best known residents, businesses and municipal leaders is publicly supporting a workforce housing project opposed by 200 mostly summer residents who signed a petition to the Planning Board last fall.

The pro-project group include the chairs of the select board, warrant committee, economic development committee, sustainability committee, two other select members, an appeals board member and the town manager. Their competing petition had 204 signatories as of this morning.

“There can be no doubt housing affordability has made it more and more difficult for year-round residents to live and raise families in NEH,” the supporters stated.

“The health of the public school system, the vitality of Main Street, and the local economy generally face existential threats from the housing shortage.

“Increasing the stock of homes for winter residents is imperative for the survival of the community broadly, and this proposal is a reasonable and effective step in that direction.”

Other supporters include a Pulitzer Prize winner, directors of the library and nursing association, scions of some of the oldest families in town, a long-time EMT responder and virtually every broker at Knowles Company, one of the largest real estate agencies on MDI, based in Northeast Harbor.

Kathy Miller, director of Mount Desert 365, the non-profit which is planning to build six units of housing at 5 Manchester Road, said she was heartened by the support. MD365 is aiming to file its application by the end of the month at which time the Planning Board will have 30 days to schedule its first meeting on the matter, she said.

Miller first disclosed the proposed project at a Planning Board informational meeting in 2021. Neighbors immediately began circulating a petition to oppose it. That petition with 205 signatures was filed with the Planning Board in September 2022 before an application was even submitted.

Since then several signatories changed heir minds and have become supporters, saying they didn’t understand what they were signing last year.

On Dec. 31, 2022, the Quietside Journal published the names of all the anti-project petitioners and reported a backlash had started after one of them wrote a letter in the Islander drawing attention to the opposition.

Ned Herrington initiated the petition of supporters of the project.

Joseph T. Ryerson, who owns the house next to the proposed project and was an organizer of the first petition opposing it, stated in an email that many of the signatories of the new petition are not town residents.

“It would be more transparent if your petition signors indicated their street addresses as those who signed our petition in opposition to subdivisions in Northeast Harbor did. I do not really care if a resident of Bar Harbor or Southwest Harbor supports some issue that is local to Northeast Harbor.”

Fact check: The QSJ has no ownership of either petitions. But I am a resident of Mount Desert. Ryerson seems to think Northeast Harbor is its own municipality.

Ryerson continued,

“You would better serve your readers if your recent and present reporting on these petitions did not characterize our petition as being against workforce housing in the village of Northeast Harbor, the Town Of Mount Desert or the island as a whole. In fact, as you know full well, the next to last paragraph of our petition clearly states the signors are not against same. Perhaps you should ‘investigate’ how many of our petition signors are on the rolls of Island Housing Trust’s donor list. Were you to do so, I suspect the bottom would fall out of this spurious proposition our petitioners are against affordable housing.”

As one town board member, who asked not to be identified, said:

“It’s easy to say you support affordable housing when they are located in a remote place, but this group does not want working class people next door during their summer vacations.”

Other residents have called out the Ryerson group for pitting The Island Housing Trust against MD365.

In a letter to the Islander, resident Sarah March stated both IHT and MD365 were important assets and urged the town to move beyond the ”not in my backyard mentality” to achieve a greater good.

Sydney Roberts Rockefeller, one of the early key sponsors of IHT and a board member emeritus, signed the petition supporting the MD365 project.

Town Manager Durlin Lunt, who grew up in town and remembers when it was a year-round community, wrote that the petition in support of the six units of housing was “a good start, but much more needed. Increase density in NEH should not be a ‘4-letter word.’”

Mia Thompson, chair of the Fleet Yacht club and a co-owner of Knowles Company, wrote,

“Year-round housing is key for a vital, sustained, and well-rounded community. This town used to have a strong year-round population and it is missed. We should do everything we can to support and nurture it. Year-round people support the local economy, fill our schools, and take care of us. Why would we not support this effort?”

Commenting on the Ryerson Group’s assertion that condo owners who don’t own the land are less likely to care for their properties, Bill Hamilton of Somesville wrote:

“I don't know the definition for ‘Not keeping up your property.’ We've owned our house for a long time and sometimes we let our grass get pretty long. ;0)”

Retired Acadia National Park superintendent Sheridan Steele wrote the project is “a very important initiative. We need to keep our MDI communities viable and address the several serious housing issues.”

Long-time Northeast Harbor residents David Milliken, son of the late textile magnate Roger Milliken, and his brother, Roger, both signed the petition.

“I am FOR the creation of affordable housing on MDI. Thank you!” David Milliken wrote.

Conners-Emerson ranked best school in Maine despite condition of buildings

BAR HARBOR - Apparently the students at Conners-Emerson K-8 school did not get the memo that their education was being undermined by collapsing buildings and lack of support from the town.

During one of the most fraught and challenging times for secondary education - the 2020-21 pandemic year - when many in-person classes were canceled and courses taught remotely, Bar Harbor kids showed their mettle and were ranked the top school in Maine by several national surveys.

In its latest report for 2023, Niche.com, the online aggregator which has 140 million reviews and ratings about secondary schools in America, ranked Bar Harbor as the No. 1 elementary school in Maine among 306, the best teachers among 305 schools and the No. 1 middle school out of 178.

You may read it here: https://www.niche.com/k12/conners-emerson-school-bar-harbor-me/#about

Another service Schooldigger.com, https://www.schooldigger.com/go/ME/districtrank.aspx, ranked Bar Harbor No. 1 in its latest ranking, compared to all Maine schools and not just K-8. In that survey Bar Harbor jumped seven spots to overtake Cape Elizabeth since the last ranking in 2019.

A third ratings service Greatschools.org gave Conners-Emerson a score of 10 out of 10 for its standardized test results:

The rankings are certain to roil the argument that unless a new $68 million school is constructed, the quality of education will decline.

Things went down hill fast at Tuesday’s Town Council meeting after the consultant for a new Conners-Emerson school disclosed that price tag. The cost was estimated at $40 million only a year ago.

Some council members were openly startled by the “sticker shock,” especially after finance director Sarah Gilbert, at member Gary Friedmann’s request, estimated that the proposal would require a property tax increase of 28 percent, or $1,000 for the town’s median priced home.

“I don’t know how we’re going to pay for this,” said council member Matt Hochman, who said many homeowners just had a tax increase from last year’s revaluation. “Mine went up 86 percent.”

Then someone pulled out the shame card - you know, the one using children as human shields to say if you don’t support this then you don’t value our kids’ education.

The card was played by the council chair Val Peacock.

“A lot of time we talk about schools as the heart of our community. But when it comes to budgets, we talk about schools as a dream,” she said.

“We’re talking about investing in the future, the most important part of our community, which is our kids.

“We would never say that we're not going to have roads or not gonna have electricity or internet. These are fundamental parts of the fabric of our community. It's our responsibility to educate our kids.

“It is how our taxes and our budget show what we value in our community and what we care about what we're willing to pay for.”

That was a quite a statement - that Bar Harbor is not committed to educating its kids. Apparently Peacock’s definition of a school is just the bricks and mortar.

The QSJ asked Peacock for more details in two emails. She did not respond.

A former MDI educator said Bar Harbor’s biggest asset is its cohort of dedicated parents who don’t let their kids fall through the cracks and monitor their education at every step.

They are the scientist and staff at Jackson Labs and MDI Biological Lab who can still afford to live on the island. They are the professors and staff at College of the Atlantic. They are the doctors and nurses at MDI hospital struggling to stay above their mortgage payments for whom a $1,000 tax increase may just the tipping point. And they are even the municipal workers who were lucky to have bought homes on MDI when they could.

“Every other school on the island has better buildings but worse performance,” the educator said. Bar Harbor has always had a better educated citizenry than the other towns.

Conners-Emerson achieved the top rankings with the lowest per pupil cost on MDI.

FY21 data from the state education department showed Bar Harbor spent $18,807 per pupil compared with the state average of $15,648. But Tremont spent $26,964, Southwest Harbor $31,498 and Mount Desert $29,408. Cranberry Isles spent $33,816.

In the same ranking, Tremont Consolidated School came in at No. 76 , while Southwest Harbor came in at No. 19. (Someone should be asking some serious questions in those towns but that’s another story.)

Mount Desert spent $10,000 more per pupil than Bar Harbor to attain its No. 3 ranking.

The data reinforces the contention that the current Alternative Organization Structure is wildly out of whack and that a new regional approach would save all taxpayers money and result in better education.

By having every town manage its own budget, each town now must support every grade despite declining enrollment. MDI Elementary school has a third grade with only six kids.

Simply put, taxpayers on MDI are funding too many teachers per pupil per grade. Tremont, Pemetic in SWH and Mount Desert have teacher-to-pupil ratios of 6 or 7 to 1. Bar Harbor is 8 to 1, according to Niche.com. The national average is 17:1. As enrollment continues to decline, choices will have to be made and cuts to programs inevitable.

One member of an important town committee who asked not to be identified because the member has two kids in Conners-Emerson and did not want them bullied, said the proposed tax increase is “crazy” and that some parents will be forced to move off the island.

The member said there is no guarantee that Bar Harbor will be able to sustain its high bond rating. With interest rates at its highest point in decades, the town would be dooming taxpayers for decades.

So what was Peacock saying exactly when she said the town doesn’t support education? It was classic Val Peacock, who leads by emotion instead of serious analyses. She has a habit of pleasing whomever is in front of her - in this case, four advocates for a new school.

Luckily, the other council members went back to serious conversations after Peacock got off her soapbox.

Council member Joe Minutolo said after the meeting he was not satisfied that the school building committee has adequately explored all “out of the box” alternatives, especially seeing whether all the MDI towns are willing to share costs in the face of declining enrollment.

“You know what they want to build up there is a pretty amazing structure … I'd like to drive a nice Mercedes Benz that’s top of the line but it’s just not in the budget.”

“I'd love to know, what does this do for the cost per student going forward?

“It's going to be as big as a college education. If you think about it from that standpoint and people's taxes go up $2,000 a year because of that school, they can put into a college fund.”

Friedmann added, “Joe and I've been saying, ‘it's not the building, it's the faculty, the programs, and we just got to take a step back and figure out how we're going to tackle this challenge.”

Friedmann runs a consulting business for non-profits and cited comparable cost for the current addition at the Jesup Memorial Library at $450 a square foot, while the consultant for the school project put the construction cost at $700 a square foot.

Hochman said he would like to see $20 million shaved off the current price tag, adding that the school buildings were “terrible” even when he attended in 1979.

Member Jill Goldthwait ended the discussion with a requiem.

“We've got all the other needs cited by everybody tonight - an eight-ish million dollar High School project that's now up to $26 million, the sewer water infrastructure that the state has said if we don't get this done, we're going to start to be fined, the elementary school and a number of other projects happening in town. And having sat here for three years, trying to find a way where your average person can live here. We are now writing them out of this community. And that feels terrible to me.”

What does ‘mediation’ mean in town’s legal battle?

BAR HARBOR - Several Town Council members explained their unanimous vote Tuesday to seek “mediation” instead of an outright challenge to the injunction sought by plaintiffs in the cruise ships fight as “playing the long game.”

At the advice of their lawyers from Rudman Winchell, the town decided that a challenge to the proposed injunction to stay the citizens ordinance to cap cruise ship visitors to 1,000 would require, in essence, a trial in which the federal judge would have to decide, without all the evidence, whether there is enough merit to award the injunction.

If the town loses, it would could be liable for legal fees, including those of the Penobscot Pilots Association which recently joined as plaintiffs, the council was told by their lawyers. The council also was told the plaintiffs have engaged a national law firm charging $1,000 an hour.

“So our strategy is to go to mediation with the federal judge and then we don't have to have all our arguments together,” one council member said. “We just have to present our side of the case.

“He would then decide what would happen with cruise ships until the case is heard. So then that removes the liability from damages from the lawsuit as well as their legal fees. And also, it also gives us time to prepare a really tight legal defense.”

Another way to view this is that Rudman Winchell is not confident it can win an injunction fight.

Or is this an end run around the citizens ordinance, so the council may present the judge the town manager’s plan for cruise ship visitation limits of 4,000 passengers a day which the citizens rejected?

The stakes are high, and the confidence in this council to defend the town is low.

TRIBUTE: John P. Reeves

1934 - 2023

BAR HARBOR - John P. Reeves died at home on January 12, 2023. He was born in Newton, Mass on May 19, 1934, and grew up in Saratoga Springs, NY. He followed a family tradition by attending Williams College in Williamstown, Mass majoring in Physics. He also earned a Masters in Banking from the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers University in 1969.

John married his best friend Gail Harbold Reeves (10/28/36 - 8/27/21) and was then stationed in Japan for a post Korean War tour of duty. Upon his return, he started his banking career at The John T. Reeves and Co. Bank in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania in 1958.

A career opportunity arose at Bar Harbor Banking and Trust Company that found John and Gail moving their three young kids, a dog, a cat, and a keg of homemade wine to Seal Harbor, Maine in 1963. Two years later, they moved to Bar Harbor, where they remained for the next fifty-nine years.

John proudly worked for Bar Harbor Bank & Trust starting in 1963 as an Assistant Loan Officer. On July 1st, 1986, he became President, CEO and Chairman of the Board, a role he maintained until his retirement in 2004.

Dedicated to the MDI community, John enjoyed a full life dutifully committed to service. Some of his civic activities included board of director roles at the Jackson Laboratory, the Bar Harbor Town Council, and the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He spearheaded economic development work in Hancock County, was a member of the Bar Harbor Fire and Ambulance Departments and had board of director and trustee roles at The College of the Atlantic and the MDI YMCA. Fellow COA Trustee Ron Beard described John as “one of the good and gentle people who made such a quiet, positive difference in our community.”

Community development leader Gary Friedmann says, “John worked tirelessly and selflessly from 1992 to 1997 to raise money to build a new MDI YMCA. At the time, it was the largest campaign ever waged on MDI for a community-based organization that turned first to local businesses and individuals, rather than summer residents, for support. With John's leadership, Bar Harbor businesses contributed a large portion of the $3.5 million raised”.

John enjoyed traveling with his wife Gail in retirement. Together, they discovered the American Northwest, the Alaskan wilderness, New Zealand, and Australia. They sailed the Caribbean and owned a home on their beloved St. Croix Island for over twenty years, where John played tennis and enjoyed snorkeling in the clear, warm tropical sea.

John was an accomplished poet, singer, and guitar player. He loved to sing everything from 1950’s protest songs, old country western tunes, to Elvis and Johnny Cash favorites. He looked forward to his yearly fishing trip to Chamberlain Lake in the Allagash with his lifelong friends Jack Tracy and Edgar Walls and the rest of the “Chamberlain Glee Club”. He also cherished his time singing with the local group The Gospel Gents and was a daily lap swimmer at the YMCA. Later in life, he still faithfully visited the Y by completing his morning exercise routine with the YMCA’s “morning crew.”

But his favorite place was the family camp at Lower Lead Mountain Pond in Maine. There, he relished the quiet tranquility of nature, often taking solo kayak trips to view the wildlife in “Stump Cove”. Up-ta-Camp, he also played cribbage with Gail, and hosted annual family gatherings on Labor Day that have created a lifetime of memories for all involved. Fellow camp owners could often see the flickering light from the Reeves campfire burning brightly as a rousing rendition of Kaw-Liga by Hank Williams rang out across the lake.

John will be sadly missed by his children and their spouses: John H. and Stephanie, Cathy and Glen, Chip and Jill, and Alice and Dave. He was incredibly proud of his grandchildren Christopher and Mandy, John Y, Connor and Darrian, Gina, Sam, David, and Gus, as well as his great grandchildren Cooper and Addison. John is also survived by his sister, Susan Reeves Williams and niece Barbara Williams, and niece Susan Vishanoff Lester, Bob and David Vishanoff, and cousins Elizabeth and Jonathan Phelps. The Tracy family, Vicki Young, Kevin Sipe and Jane Allen Weathersby are constants in the Reeves family, and the Reeves children are grateful for their support and continuing love. The family is comforted by the thoughts of John and Gail being reunited, where they are certainly singing songs, laughing, and dancing cheek-to-cheek.

A Memorial will be held February 3, 2023, at 5:00 pm, at College of the Atlantic -The Turrets Administration Building, 105 Eden St, Bar Harbor, ME 04609. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to: The MDI YMCA, c/o John Reeves & The Endowment Fund, 21 Park Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609.

Condolences may be expressed at www.jordanfernald.com