Southwest Harbor: The little library that could
OTHER NEWS: NYT report on Key West cruise ship battle; town managers to coordinate response in case of migrant challenge
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Nov. 25, 2023 - Deborah Fallows believes the library is a small town’s hearthstone.
In particular, Fallows, who wrote the bestseller, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America (2018) with her husband James Fallows, believes that libraries which cater to children form the nucleus of America’s most authentic communities.
“Whenever I asked directors or librarians about the most important efforts in their libraries, or their top dreams and aspirations yet to come, they invariably answered some version of: “It’s the children; it’s all about the children,” Fallows wrote in the Atlantic.
“And they homed in on reading readiness or school readiness or child development, particularly for the kids who need it most. Attracting children, and their parents, into libraries is a prime mission.”
Around 1993, when my son was a tot, we found a warm, welcoming hearth in the library here.
My wife and I made our livelihood out of the printed word, so a place which accentuated that was a beacon in the fog of early parenthood.
Their physical layouts called attention to their priority. When you walked into Northeast Harbor Library or the SWH library, the children-centric emphasis was obvious.
One of the smartest moves made by SWH was when it promoted its children’s librarian Candy Emlen to be the director in 2002. Her programs brought in generations of tots, including my son, and parents of those tots became members, donors and repeated users. And so did the tots when they became adults.
Thus, it was no surprise that SWH library scored the highest use in “circulation among children and young adults” in 2022, with 21,334 points of contact compared to Northeast Harbor’s 15,771 and Bar Harbor’s 11,763, according to the state’s 2022 trend report.
The total use of the library’s collection ranked SWH in the top 10 among all 260 public libraries in Maine. Current director Erich Reed pointed out in the library’s 2022 annual report that SWH achieved this in a state “full of remarkable libraries!”
None of the island’s libraries has fully recovered from the pandemic. But Southwest Harbor is the mighty little library that could. According to the five-year trend data collected by the state, SWH consistently outperformed all others on MDI in the most important metric - library visits. It did this with a population size only 30 percent that of Bar Harbor.
Northeast Harbor Library, which serves as the library for the Mount Desert Elementary School across the street, led the important category of materials checked out by children and young adults in 2022 of 14,694 items. SWH library, which is across the street from Pemetic School, lent 13,298 items. Bar Harbor had 10,908, while Bass Harbor and Somesville lent 4,463 and 3,387 respectively.
The physical accessibility of the libraries is an important factor in their visitation scores.
SWH is the most accessible library on the island. It has plenty of free municipal parking at its back door.
Tourists amble through to glimpse at a quintessential New England small town library, oozing charm and friendliness.
Somesville has only three parking spaces in front of its Route 102 location. Northeast Harbor is uneven, with some days which are availing and others when I have to look for space on Main Street or beyond.
Bar Harbor might as well have constructed ramparts to ward off visitors so unfriendly is its approach, with paid parking and headache-induced stress of driving into the town. I only go to that library when I have already parked for another errand. The good news is that I have never had a problem finding a seat.
During the summer, Bar Harbor’s daily population balloons to six times its year-round population, according to the planning department. None of that benefits the library. Some would argue that like restaurants and shops, year-round residents just avoid downtown Bar Harbor.
The Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor is hoping to reverse that, embarking on a major expansion - but at a great cost.
Apart of the $14 million it raised to build the addition, it’s excavating an abutting year-round home and used its political influence to close the adjacent School Street for at least 18 months.
Even though it has less usage, according to all measures reported by the state, it has the highest expenses.
SWH had the lowest cost of the three major towns, spending $530,831 in 2021 according to public disclosures. Northeast Harbor spent $649,900 while Bar Harbor spent $804,380.
Bar Harbor also has the highest number of employees, 7.65 full-time equivalents. SWH had 5.9 FTEs and NEH had 5.47.
Because most of its workers relied on their husbands’ health benefits, Jesup, like many Maine libraries, under-funded benefits for its staff for years, one person with knowledge of its operation said.
Maine Municipal Association offers excellent health insurance “but it’s expensive,” said one librarian.
“So if you got an employee paying 75 percent of that, it's just not affordable.
“There has been this sense, in a lot of Maine libraries that people will work for free. They love to be there.
“But there are fewer people that can work for free,” the librarian said.
Bar Harbor also has never developed its endowment the way Northeast Harbor and SWH have. As a result, it depends more on taxpayer support - $160,000 annually - and is expected to ask for a significant increase for FY25.
NEH received $74,500 from taxpayers and SWH $60,000.
The $14 million raised would have made a nice endowment for Jesup. But then donors wouldn’t have had the legacy of a vanity buy with names plaqued on every conceivable surface in the new addition.
Will more people use the library once the addition is built? Only time will tell.
FOOTNOTE: The QSJ is a contributor to both Jesup and SWH.
NEW YORK TIMES: Will DeSantis reward Walsh’s wish for more cruise ships in Key West?
BAR HARBOR - The New York Times reported today that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is considering a request by a major campaign donor on whether to allow larger cruise ships to dock in Key West.
The donor is Mark Walsh, whose family business is suing Bar Harbor over its citizens-approved ordinance capping disembarking passengers at 1,000 a day.
The QSJ wrote in July 2021 that entities owned by Walsh, vice president of Ocean Properties, gave $995,000 to Friends of Ron DeSantis, the political committee operated by the governor, according to data collected by the Florida Division of Elections and analyzed by the Miami Herald. Founded by Thomas Walsh in Brewer in 1969, The Walsh family business is the biggest hotel operator in Bar Harbor and runs the pier and tenders which ferry passengers ashore.
“The issue will soon land on the desk of Mr. DeSantis, who has received nearly $1 million in campaign donations from the pier’s owner,” the Times reported. “It represents a tough balancing act for the Republican governor, a 2024 presidential candidate who has touted his environmental record but has also been a booster of Florida’s tourism industry.”
“Safer Cleaner Ships, the organization behind the move to keep large cruise ships out of Key West, recently fired another salvo: It filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the local port owner, Pier B Development Corp., citing state records it said showed the company had underpaid millions of dollars in state fees and taxes” the Times reported. Pier B is owned by the Walsh family. Like in Bar Harbor, it is the only dock which disembarks passengers in Key West.
“The Florida attorney general’s office dismissed the suit in part on jurisdictional grounds, a decision that activists said was a sign of continuing state support for a campaign donor, the owner of one of the country’s largest private hotel chains,” the Times wrote.
“For Mr. DeSantis, whose policies are under scrutiny during the presidential campaign, a decision on whether to authorize expanded cruise ship operations calls for weighing environmental concerns as well as potential revenues from his state’s biggest industry in a petition that comes from a major campaign donor,” the Times reported.
The Walsh family is the lead plaintiff in a suit challenging the constitutionality of the citizens ordinance, saying it violates interstate commerce laws. The town and citizen intervenor Charles Sidman have argued that the town has “home rule” rights which allow it to govern land use, including how many passengers may disembark on any property.
All sides are awaiting a decision from US District Court Judge Lance Walker, who held a three-day trial last summer.
Area town managers to plan for possible migrant challenges
NORTHEAST HARBOR - Speaking of DeSantis, will the towns of Mount Desert and Bar Harbor regret declaring themselves as “sanctuary cities” in 2017.
Town Manager Durlin Lunt is not taking any chances.
He added an item to the monthly meeting of area town managers Tuesday to discuss the possibility of unauthorized transporting of migrants here the way DeSantis did in 2022, when the State of Florida spent $12 million to divert migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.
Lunt, chair of the League of Towns, forwarded an example of how the City of Tukwila declared an emergency Oct. 6, 2023 to handle 200 migrants.
“The State of Emergency declaration allows the City to adopt emergency zoning rules, suspend competitive bidding, and seek funding from the State of Washington and the Federal Government to address the growing need of asylum seekers,” Mayor Allan Ekberg announced.
Alfred J. May Jr. from Maine’s CDC Public Health District will attend the meeting, Lunt said.
Thank you for the article on the SWHarbor Library. I'm so proud to bring visitors there. It really is a gem. When my son was here over the past years working on his dissertation, he spent countless hours at the library and always was so impressed with the employees and volunteers, as well as the set up for students.