SWH boards, committees hostile to folks from away and women, say ex members
“Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind.”
― King Lear
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. “
The flipside of a real estate boom: How many MDI residents face a tax increase?
TREMONT, May 14, 2021 - There was no question the house perched on the promontory at Nutter Point with almost 750 feet of frontage on Blue Hill Bay would garner a seven-figure valuation. Indeed, the town assessed it at $1,508,400.
Several years ago, the owners put the house on the market, asking more than $2 million, an astronomical amount for Tremont, even for a waterfront property.
And there it sat, appearing to have over-estimated the market.
Until the pandemic.
Until out-of-state buyers flooded the zone otherwise known as Coastal Maine.
A $2 million price tag is a fire sale for a Californian.
In December 2020, it sold for $2.1 million.
Stories like 25 Nutter Point Drive abound on MDI and the entire state of Maine, even in inland rural communities like Caribou. https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/new-york-coronavirus-exodus-fuels-maine-real-estate-boom/
Many career real estate professionals say they have never seen a spike like 2020.
Things that happen quickly are often met with a response just as quick.
The Portland Press Herald last Sunday published a lengthy article on the imminent tax increases across Maine because of the real estate boom. But the Portland paper, which is excellent, sees everything through the prism of Southern Maine, which is a colony of Taxachusetts.
As you move north the predictions are more moderated. It’s doubtful that we will have 30 percent tax increases anywhere on MDI, as reported by the Press Herald.
Those who own homes on the Quietside, consider yourself lucky even as a revaluation of property assessment looms large in Mount Desert. It’s unclear whether Bar Harbor will be as fortunate. It’s in the midst of a revaluation which ends in a few weeks. Both towns haven’t had a revaluation for more than a decade.
Southwest Harbor’s last revaluation was in 2007, with an update in 2013. Similarly for Tremont.
The shift in valuation is most profound in cities where commercial properties did not enjoy the price spikes of residential real estate. Portland and South Portland, where the commercial tax bases are 56 and 54 percent, respectfully, are poised to shift the taxable base to residential.
The only town on MDI with a significant commercial footprint is Bar Harbor, with a third of its tax base in commercial and two thirds in residential. It’s hard to imagine residential housing not having to bear a bigger burden, although Assessor Steven Weed said the ratio has kept steady the last two decades.
Even among residential assessment, there will be gradations. Waterfront properties clearly will bear a bigger burden, as will homes with better wifi access. Stephen Whalen of the firm of Vision Government Solutions, which is conducting the revaluation in Bar Harbor and in Mount Desert starting in July, said ranch style homes is an example of the shift in valuation, as older homeowners favor them.
Whalen agreed with the assumption that a typical revaluation will see one third of the homes go up, one third stay even and one third will decline.
Another consideration is Maine’s homestead tax exemption which punishes towns which fall under a ratio of 70 percent valuation against fair market value. The above Nutter Point home sits slightly above 70 percent. Virtually all the homes sold during the boom have assessments well under fair market value.
The state allows a $25,000 reduction of property tax assessment on a pro-rated basis between 70 and 100 percent of fair market value for full-time Maine residents.
Overall, Mount Desert Assessor Kyle Avila believes the town has had a 10 percent increase in home value the past year. How that’s parsed will be the subject of great debate.
The one thing most experts agree on?
This is not good news for MDI’s already troubled affordable housing.
QSJ met an adjunct professor of the College of the Atlantic who is paid just enough to rent a house during the academic year and to buy food. Now this person must find summer housing to bridge to the next academic year, at the time of the year with the highest demand. About 35 percent of COA faculty are adjuncts.
Two books of note - Downeast, In the Lyme-Light - by MDI authors
SOMESVILLE - QSJ went fishing this week in Grand Lake Stream. While not completely off the grid it did afford some down time, as I managed to devour two books by local writers.
The first one, Downeast, was featured in the Bangor Daily News this week and will be available at Sherman’s May 25. QSJ read an advance copy but has ordered three and plans to donate two to the Southwest Harbor library.
Gigi Georges, a seasonal resident of Southwest Harbor, followed five girls as they came of age in one of the most challenging and geographically isolated regions in Maine, Washington County - about an hour northeast of MDI. Their stories reveal surprising truths about rural America and offer hope for its future.
Georges spent four years with Willow, Vivian, Mckenna, Audrey, and Josie - teenage girls caught between tradition and transformation. “Downeast” followed their journeys of heartbreak and hope in uncertain times, creating a nuanced and unique portrait of rural America with women at its center,” HarperCollins wrote in its publisher’s summary.
QSJ had a hard time putting the book down and was late for the appointment with his fishing guide who, much like some of the girls, has never strayed too far from his roots. He asked QSJ what New York City was like, saying he would be “totally stressed out” if he had to go there. He didn’t even like visiting Boston when he attended Red Sox games. He’s never been to Canada, which is about a half hour north.
Georges is a smooth storyteller which helps the reader to create a bond with her subjects, the five girls.
Gigi Georges is a serious brainiac - Wellesley BA, Princeton MPA, NYU PhD in public administration.
Since 2013, she has taught political science as part of the adjunct faculty at Boston College. Gigi was previously Program Director for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Innovation Strategies Initiative and Managing Director of the Glover Park Group, a leading national strategic communications consulting firm, whose New York office she co-founded and ran. Gigi also served as Communications Director for the New York City Department of Education under Mayor Michael Bloomberg; a Special Assistant to the President in the Clinton White House; and former NY Senator Hillary Clinton’s State Director.
In 2008, Gigi was a Kennedy School Research Fellow and a contributing author to Stephen Goldsmith’s The Power of Social Innovation: How Civic Entrepreneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good.
She has homes in Bedford, NH, and SWH which she shares with her husband and daughter.
In the Lyme-Light
The second book is extremely topical. “In the Lyme-light” is Emily Bracale’s unplanned journey to becoming an expert on Lyme disease.
The book combines her art, mystical sensibility and useful pedagogical information about the disease.
In the foreward, Dr. Patricia L. Gerbarg, who teaches clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College, wrote:
“Those of us who have lived with Lyme disease, who have struggled to express what we experience, recognize exactly what Emily portrays in words and colors.
“And with that recognition comes a sense of gratitude that someone has found a way to tell our story, to convey the many nuances of denying, resisting, hiding, self-doubting, trying, loving, learning, adapting, and eventually coping with a mysterious and widely misunderstood illness.”
There is an emotional intensity in Emily Bracale’s book, combining a huge range of her artistry with her story-telling, making it clear why so many Lyme victims have embraced it as cathartic.
She is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and College of the Atlantic, with a BA in Human Ecology. Her visual arts training began in early childhood from a clan of three generations of women artists and art teachers.
She has held many solo art exhibits with an educational twist, most notably cultural travel sketches and paintings in “Visions of the World” and the “Lyme-Light” collection. Many of her watercolor landscapes and seascapes are in private collections in the US and abroad. She lives with her family in Bar Harbor, Maine.
The book may be purchased on this website.
Lincoln’s Log …
SOUTHWEST HARBOR - The village is coming alive. The upper Deck opened for the season today. Red Sky Cafe will open May 20 Thursday through Sunday.
QSJ requested an interview with Tim Harrington, owner of Claremont Hotel, to do a feature on his new restaurant and was told the hotel did not like my previous reporting and will allow an interview only if the article “will be highlighted in a positive light.”