Today

Quiet Exterior Masks an Active Little Town

Visitors to Brooklin probably consider the town to be pretty quiet.

There is a village center with a library and general store. The town office, nearby, is open for three hours each Tuesday afternoon.

Up the road at the Rock Bound Chapel, there is nondenominational hymn singing each Tuesday evening in summer.

Bounded by water on three sides, the town’s far reaches are the historically named Naskeag Point, Flye Point and Harriman Point. The extensive shoreline is dotted with boatyards, year-round residences and summer homes.

There is a storied history of boatbuilding, with a dozen companies still working out of Brooklin.

There are the inviting, park-like grounds of WoodenBoat, the international magazine that has made its home on Naskeag Point Road for a quarter-century, spawning a boatbuilding school and an annual regatta.

And there are young people—teenagers not yet old enough to work in formal summer jobs—who comprise the unique Brooklin Youth Corps. They do community service and odd jobs through the summer.

But the locals know better than to say little happens beneath the town’s cover of calm.

Not that any core controversy grips the 841 residents just now—just the usual concerns that surface in coastal communities.

At the annual town meeting in April, two items drew more discussion than others. The voters decided to build a bigger firehouse and not to build a town dock at this point.

Fitting in fire trucks has been a problem for the fire department’s volunteers for years. Now that will be remedied, with the building of the new firehouse expected to start by fall.

As for the possibility of a town dock, that’s now in the hands of a new committee.

There are maybe a dozen fishermen in town, but they sell their lobsters at co-ops elsewhere, in Deer Isle or Stonington. They make use of the tides each spring and fall to transfer their traps to or from the water for the season. That’s the way they have done it for years, said Frank Parson, chair of the town’s three selectmen.

A town dock at Naskeag Point ideally would give fishermen a place to load and unload at all tides. But some in town think it would just incur a hefty construction expense. A dock would need patrolling, they say, and possibly even a paid harbormaster.

Also on the town’s agenda is the completion of its state-mandated comprehensive plan. The town has been setting aside money for the last three years toward that project.

The town is not necessarily thrilled about the state’s dictates for Maine’s towns.

“The state is not understanding the problems of small towns,” Parson said. “You take the wonderful spirit of Maine and try to superimpose big-city kind of legislative ideas. That’s not accepted here.”

Some of the issues that the Comprehensive Plan Committee is addressing, per the state mandate, are a declining school enrollment, protection of shoreland areas, conservation of undeveloped lands, harbor management and affordable housing.

 “We are only 841 people,” Parson said. “And when Augusta talks about having low-cost housing in towns, we are all very sympathetic. But there isn’t the money to get into all these kind of things.

“And, people just don’t want the nature of the town changed.”