Welcome to the Harpswell Anchor. Here you can find information on our unique community whether it be local events, historical vignettes, and profiles of some of our unique individual residents.

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The Anchor Staff

School Closure Vote Approaches

Written by Tom Allen | 03 March 2010

On March 9, Harpswell voters will decide the fate of West Harpswell School by a special referendum question which reads: "Do you favor authorizing the Board of Directors of School Administrative District No. 75 to close the West Harpswell School?" Also included is the amount Harpswell would have to pay SAD 75 should it decide to keep the school open: $219,030.60.
On February 25, 2010, the school board hosted an open hearing at Harpswell Islands School to discuss the proposed closure. Understandably, residents were reluctant to speak in favor of the closure. Most who attended supported keeping the school open, despite the added cost it would entail.

Harpswell Loses Land And Its Heritage

Written by Kenneth Z. Chutchian | 03 March 2010

Amy Haible cast a vote in 1998 that helped changed history, and she regrets it.
Haible was one of many Harpswell residents who, at a town meeting in 1998, voted to cede more than 300 acres of marine land to Brunswick in a border dispute that some folks say wiped out local heritage older than the United State of America.
The vote, according to Haible and a recently formed group called the Carrying Place Assembly, was based on incomplete information, a closed-door process with little public input, and emotion stemming from several confrontations between clam diggers in Harpswell and Brunswick.
The Carrying Place Assembly is trying to set the record straight, even after lawmakers rejected an effort last May to re-examine the boundary through the state Legislature.
"We're trying to correct a mistake," said Haible, a former Harpswell selectwoman who has lived in town for 15 years. "The 1998 vote was abysmal. The maps we used to make our decision were missing key places."

Sides Square Off On Library Funding

Written by Bob Jørgensen | 03 March 2010

In this corner, wearing purple trunks and weighing in at...well, no, it isn't exactly like that, but the Town Meeting on March 20 is certainly going to pit two different views of library funding against each other in a secret ballot to decide whether to continue funding the Curtis Memorial Library (CML) in Brunswick at the present level of $113,538 for the year, reduce the contribution to a lower amount or eliminate the annual contribution from the Town of Harpswell to the CML entirely.
On one side, we have those who agree with Marc Wallace that very few people use the Brunswick facility, that libraries are a thing of the past because of internet access to virtually everything we want, and that the money would be better spent, if it is to be spent at all, on our local libraries on Orr's Island and Cundy's Harbor. As the cost of library operation increases, like everything else, the annual assessment by CML has increased by two or three thousand dollars in each recent year. This, Wallace denounces as simply another case of "Government gouging the working poor."

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Welcome to the Harpswell Anchor

School Closure Vote Approaches

Harpswell Loses Land And Its Heritage

Sides Square Off On Library Funding