Rotary Club Needs Extra Time for July Fourth Festivities
Parks and Recreation Add Memorial Bench for Michigan Women and Talk No Smoking Signs and Trees
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.
BAR HARBOR—The Bar Harbor/MDI Rotary Club requested it be allowed a little more time than usual to set up and tear down its annual Fourth of July festivities.
The club is a social service organization whose motto is “service above self” and part of a worldwide Rotary International, which is an organization of over 1.4 million professionals whose goal is to come together to make positive change in their communities and in the world.
The local group of volunteers holds the pancake breakfast and seafood festival on the Bar Harbor ball field every year. It was instrumental in the construction of the Park Street Playground, and has done numerous small and large projects around Mount Desert Island and the world for over the last fifty years. The club also raises money for polio vaccines, including last week’s purple pinkie for polio events. The money raised at the Fourth of July celebration goes back into the local community, supporting multiple nonprofits.
There have been no issues using the field for the Fourth. The Parks and Recreation Committee approves these sort of requests or doesn’t. However, this year there’s a bit of a hitch in Rotary’s typical plans.
Normally the club begins setting up on 10 a.m. on July 3 and, also normally, the town has said that the tear down of the tents, grills, chairs, and electric would have to be done by 10 a.m. on July 5.
“This year, July 4 is a Friday and the tent company that Rotary works with is giving their people off,” said Dean Read, a former Rotary president who was representing the club before the Parks and Recreation Committee last week.
Read said he’d called multiple agencies and all their workers are taking the long holiday weekend off. The club, which he said has an aging membership, can’t get all the tents down themselves without hiring out for help.
“If we’re held to 48 hours, we won’t have an event,” Read said.
He asked that the club be allowed to keep the tents and chairs on the field until Monday morning. All the grills and food and electronics would be stored immediately after the event.
“We’re doing everything we can to offload labor in any way we can because we’re getting older,” Read said.
The Mount Desert Island club is not the only club that is getting older. The average age for a male Rotarian is 65. The average age for a female member is 59. Those numbers are worldwide. The groups are older in the United States and Canada.
Parks and Recreation Committee Secretary Jeff Dobbs said, “I think we can make a special exception this year.”
The portion of the field where the tents are located is ball field five, on the far left.
The committee was concerned about the proper procedure for the exemption and decided to send it to Town Manager James Smith and approve the request subject to the town’s agreement and there being no worries from the police chief or fire chief.
“Honestly, I see it as a benefit on the Fourth of July for people playing out there, they could take refuge in the field,” member Erin Cough said.
Rotary’s goal, according to its website is “we connect passionate people with diverse perspectives to exchange ideas, forge lifelong friendships, and, above all, take action to change the world.”
OTHER BUSINESS
The committee also approved the YWCA Annual Carol Dyer Memorial Luminaria Evening on the Village Green from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, August 9, 2025.
“We’ve done it every year. It’s been exactly the same,” MDI YWCA Executive Director Jackie Davidson said.
The MDI YMCA Acadia Half Marathon and 10k Race on the athletic field from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 1, 2025 and the Annual Bar Harbor Bank and Trust Half-Marathon and 5K Race on the Athletic Field from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 13, 2025, were also unanimously approved.
MEMORIAL PLAQUE
Melissa Herbold Olinger’s request for a memorial plaque to be Installed on a Grant Park Bench was approved.
The bench will honor Barbara R. Herhold, a Michigan resident, whose favorite place to visit was Maine.
“There is one empty bench left there,” Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt said.
PUBLIC WORKS UPDATE
During the public works update, Leavitt spoke about three trees that a Conners Emerson class fundraised for and will plant at the town’s ball fields the day before Halloween.
“I think it’s a good thing and where we’re planning to put the trees is marked out on the ball field,” she said.
The maples provide a green tree in the summer and bright red in the fall. The students will plant and her department will help.
“I think it’s a win-win. Plants Unlimited gave a discount to the town and donated some items,” Leavitt said.
She said the planting will occur on October 30 at 3:15 p.m.
She said a private citizen had also brought up a concern about no smoking at the Village bandstand and people in the park smoking. Her department has begun inventorying no smoking signs.
Chair John Kelly asked if no smoking also meant no vaping. That will be investigated further, she said.
“We sometimes want to react and do the right thing and in the end we have another sign,” and then the sign does nothing, Kelly said.
Cough said making sure there’s a sign on the corner makes sense. However, she felt that enforcement is really the main way to deter people from smoking.
Kelly said he’d hate to see another sign in the town’s park when there are already wayfinding, Bar Harbor street signs, and Island Explorer structure.
Kelly, Cough, and Dobbs were present. Ann Tikkanen and Greg Veilleux were absent.
Photos by Carrie Jones
Disclosure: I was the past president of the local Rotary club and am the former public image coordinator for much of the Northeastern United States and eastern Canada.
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