Cruise Ships Return

And so it begins. There are 118 cruise ship visits scheduled for Bar Harbor between last Saturday (May 1) and the end of October this year. The Costa Atlantica - pictured above Saturday anchored off Bar Harbor's Grant Park in Frenchman Bay - was the first ship to visit and its expected to be the last one, too, on Oct. 29.
In all, 24 different ships, some of them multiple times and some of them just once, are expected to make stops in Bar Harbor during the 2010 tourist season. The ships range from less than 200 feet long to more than 1,000 feet long, and can carry as few as 49 passengers or more than 3,000. In addition, some of the larger ships carry more than 1,000 crew members. About 175,000 cruise ship passengers are expected in Bar Harbor this year. That's a lot for a town that has a year-round population of only 5,000 people - even if Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park get millions of visitors every summer.
The official list of scheduled cruise ship visits can be seen here.
Not surprisingly, there are mixed feelings about the ships. Some residents don't like them, saying they mar the natural view, their passengers and resulting bus tours congest the town, the ships run over lobster gear in the bay, etc.
Other people love them, saying that the ships bring tourists to town without increasing vehicular traffic or contributing to the town's seasonal parking woes. The ship's passengers also help bring business to local stores, and at times of the year (early spring, late fall) when the stores otherwise might not be able to stay open. And some people just like big boats.
CruiseMaine USA is a marketing group that has done much to promote the cruise ship business in Maine. They point out that, according to a Cruise Lines International Association study, the cruise ship industry contributed $29 million in direct spending and funded more than 500 jobs in Maine in 2008.
Which is why the number of cruise ship visits has been steadily increasing for the past 20 years. If all 118 scheduled visits do indeed occur (some visits usually get canceled due to bad weather) it would exceed Bar Harbor's previous single-year record by about 20 visits. By comparison, Portland, the largest city in Maine, is expected to get about 70 cruise ship visits and 75,000 total cruise ship passengers this year.
The number of such visits cannot increase forever, no matter how many ships might want to come. Bar Harbor wants to keep its small-town charm and has not expressed any interest in further developing its waterfront so it can accommodate more ships. But it has made an effort to get a decent amount of feedback from local residents and business owners, so if there seems to be a feeling that Bar Harbor has reached its limit, undoubtedly town officials will hear about it. Tune in later this year to find out what the reviews for the 2010 cruise ship season are.

Of Mice and Politicians

"Eeeek!"
I can't help but think that is a mild version of what Jackson Lab officials must be thinking at finding their biomedical research institution kicked around as a political football in Maine's gubernatorial campaign. (The photo is of one of the lab's research mice).
No one at the lab has said anything publicly about it, but there's simply no way they can be enthusiastic about the attention they've been getting lately in the campaign, thanks mainly to Republican candidate Les Otten. He was the first candidate to say that the lab's interest in expanding to Florida represents a failure by Maine's state government, but now others are chiming in.
Democrat Rosa Scarcelli (in this PPH op-ed) and Republican Paul LePage are echoing Otten's sentiments, saying that Maine needs to do more to try to get Jackson Lab to expand here instead. But Democrat John Richardson (who now has dropped out of the race for other reasons) and Republican Peter Mills have said that comparing Maine to Florida, in terms of the opportunities available to Jackson Lab in each state, is like comparing apples and oranges (according to this MPBN story).
Mills and Richardson have said Maine simply cannot match what Florida has to offer, in terms of state funding and potential research partners (the lab itself says the same thing in this press release). Republican candidate Matt Jacobson, in this blog post, also says that dangling $130 million to recruit 200 jobs would not be a good economic development strategy for Maine.
The issue of the lab's possible out-of-state expansion has become a hot one politically, and undoubtedly it is making lab officials uncomfortable. During a recent GOP debate in Bangor, Mills publicly rebuked Otten for characterizing the possible expansion as "a loss of 7,000 jobs" in Maine (that's the number of jobs projected to be created eventually in Florida by Jackson Lab and other possible partners). Mills called Otten's statement a "falsehood," and Otten replied by saying he was "appalled" by Mills' criticism (see the BDN story).
[As an aside: Mills' criticism of Otten's comments is not surprising. The Cornville Republican is friends with Jill Goldthwait, an independent who used to be Maine Senate president. Since leaving public office, Goldthwait has served as the lab's chief government relations officer - and she has endorsed Mills in the Republican primary.]
Jackson Lab certainly isn't used to seeing its name dragged into the mudpit of state politics. It long has received broad bipartisan support in Maine - from every governor in recent memory, from Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and from U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, a Democrat. Former Congressman Tom Allen, another Democrat, also took an interest in supporting the lab, even though it wasn’t in his district.
The lab's access to public funding, however, is another matter. If the lab's expansion becomes politicized, how much more money might it get from state bonds or federal allocations?
Scarcelli touches upon this very question in her op-ed piece (even though in the piece she says Maine's recent public investment in the lab has been "worthwhile"). Maine taxpayers, she writes, have given the lab more than $40 million over the past decade.
"But is it too much to expect that in return for this money, Maine should get first refusal on any new facility the company plans to create?" Scarcelli asks.
According to Jackson Lab’s web site, the lab’s operating revenue for the 2009 fiscal year includes more than $54 million in public support, which is nearly one-third of its operating budget. That public support includes both bonds approved directly by Maine voters and funding the lab has received from the federal National Institutes of Health.
What will happen with future public funding votes if Maine is viewed as getting the short end of the stick somehow in the Florida deal? How generous will Maine voters be with future bond issues if most of the lab's growth seems to be headed to Florida instead of Maine? How much can members of Maine’s congressional delegation advocate for continued federal funding for the lab if the lab is believed to be shipping jobs out of state? The perception being cast by the political debate could have adverse consequences on the lab's ability to raise money in Maine and with the help of Maine politicians in Washington.
In an April 26 press release, Jackson Lab CEO Rick Woychik seems to address this concern. Without making any reference to the gubernatorial campaign, he writes: "Job growth over the last decade has been accelerated by Maine's investments in our campus infrastructure, and we hope that our partnership with the state will continue."
Again, lab officials have not made any public reference to the gubernatorial campaign, so how they really feel about the lab becoming a campaign issue is anybody's guess. But whether the attention is fair or not, the lab certainly has ample reason to hope that the political scrutiny in Maine of its plans in Florida goes away as quickly as possible.

Impostor pastor?

Washington County residents were shocked this week to learn that a pastor and his wife who had been living in Jonesport for several months were arrested on kidnapping charges. The Washington County Sheriff's Office has said that Colin Haag, Jr., and Amanda Haag were hiding her two biological daughters, ages 7 and 12, from their biological father.
The tale, as told Wednesday by the Bangor Daily News, is fairly sordid. The couple has been accused of:

• Moving around the country to keep the girls away from their father, who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
• Bringing the pastor's father, Colin Haag, Sr., with them on their itinerant travels, having him use an alias, and keeping him captive in the basement wherever they lived.
• Stealing items from churches in western Washington County
• Telling parishioners that Colin Haag, Jr., is an ordained minister, though he is not.
  
• Never getting divorced from other spouses they lived with previously.
  

The alleged web of misrepresentations and deceit came unraveled, according to the paper, when Haag Sr. went to police last weekend and told them the couple had left the girls at the Eagle's Lodge Motel in Ellsworth. Police found the girls there alone, and then arrested Haag Jr. and his wife. The girls since have been reunited with their biological father, police said.
According to the sheriff, the Haags were preparing to pack up for another distant destination when they were arrested. There also have been suggestions that Haag Jr. may have misrepresented his military background, according to the BDN.
But some of those allegations already are in dispute. Francis Cassidy, who represents Amanda Haag, told the paper Thursday that his client was not hiding her daughters from their father, whose name (according to Associated Press) is Randall Hodges. Cassidy acknowledged, however, that even if she wasn't trying to conceal the girls' location, Amanda Haag might not have had permission to move her daughters around the country. He said his client appears to still be legally married to the girls' father, though she's also married to Haag Jr.
Cassidy said Haag Jr. is a minister, though he did not specifically say that the claim that Haag never was ordained is not true. He did say it is not true the Haags were preparing to hit the road again. They simply were getting ready to move into another rental in Jonesport, he said.

So, is it a case of actual law-breaking, of perhaps more-than-inappropriate but not-quite-illegal behavior, or just an unfortunate series of misunderstandings and misassumptions? Whatever the final, official version turns out to be, the allegations are eye-popping, especially for a rural and fairly conservative area where scandals of this magnitude are unheard of.

Incidentally, this is the second tragic tale in the area in the past week. On April 14, the body of one of two adult brothers was found floating off Bois Bubert Island in Milbridge, a few days after the two had gone out to the island for a weekend trip, according to an article in Fenceviewer. The body of the second brother, who also is believed to have drowned, has not been found.