In mid-June, a paper tacked to a bulletin board in the small central Aroostook town of Ashland declared a neighboring community would no longer be able to use several of the former’s facilities.
“Effective immediately,” it read, “residents of Masardis will no longer be able to utilize the library and recreation center.”
Masardis, a rural town of 204, had declined to pay subsidies to support either facility, including more $11,000 for the library, which is nearly 40% funded by a handful of nearby communities that don’t have a library of their own.
The same message reached the select board of Portage Lake, a town of 359 some 16 miles north of Ashland, where residents had voted down a nearly $21,000 subsidy for the library and another for the recreation department. “If Portage does not wish to fully support the rec and library programs based on the per-capita rate, we will be forced to exclude your residents from utilizing them,” a letter the board chair read at a June meeting said.
Residents ruminated over that sentiment. One asked if it was legal. Another suggested it would be cheaper for Portage to put up a building itself and house books in it. A third looked at the total and decried “wasteful spending.”
The subsidy dispute led Ashland’s library director, Hilary Tuttle, to resign in September, she said in a public Facebook post. “Everyone should be able to have access to knowledge whether they can afford to do so or not,” she wrote. Tuttle declined to be interviewed by the Bangor Daily News.
Without the subsidies from Masardis and Portage Lake, the library would be missing more than a quarter of the revenue needed to support its 2025 budget, money that would instead come out of the pockets of Ashland taxpayers.
“Library services cost money to operate, and when the neighboring towns opt out of contributing, it places an unfair burden on the Ashland taxpayers,” Ashland Town Manager Alicia Burby said Thursday.
Regional funding disputes are not a new phenomenon for libraries in Maine, 43% of which are municipally funded. Gardiner faced a similar battle in 2016 when it increased the cost for nearby communities. Nearly a decade later, its library is still supported by subsidies from surrounding towns.
Portage ended up voting in August to pay a $8,000 subsidy. Masardis offered $5,000, which Ashland declined. Masardis residents are still not able to use the library.
Funding disputes between these communities are also not new. The residents of Masardis and Portage Lake last year voted to reject the bundling of several Ashland services that they subsidize, including the library and recreation, fire and ambulance departments, saying that they should be able to choose which they pay for.
The disputes are why Ashland’s town council launched an advisory committee in July to explore new ways to fund the library. And they’re why on Tuesday, that committee came before the council with a recommendation: create a nonprofit.
A 65-page report presented to councilors during the meeting proposes that the library adopt a nonprofit advisory board to accept tax-deductible donations that would offset subsidy revenue.
Under that plan, Ashland would still cover 80% of the library budget (including the salary and benefits of employees), leaving the nonprofit to fund $26,357 in a projected 2026 budget, close to the subsidy revenue shortfall the library is facing this year.
In order to take effect, that transition needs approval from the town council — and potentially — Ashland voters, the first stage of which could happen as early as November.
But the measure has faced pushback. The July council meeting in which the advisory committee was formed began with 40 minutes of public comment from residents who lamented a decision they believed could lead to the end of the library.
“Why would we take something and change it?” one woman said. “Why would we take something and ruin a good thing that is happening?”
Burby disagrees with that notion. She brought the idea of nonprofit funding to the council shortly after taking the position in March. In her eyes, a restructuring is about sustainability.
“There’s been a lot of misinformation. It’s really a hard topic,” Burby said Thursday. “But at the end of the day, the Gladys J. Craig Memorial Library isn’t closing, it’s evolving.”
The library’s projected 2026 budget sits at $131,783. Nearly 75% of that, or $98,283, is allocated to the facility’s one full-time and one part-time employee. But Burby said Ashland has no current plans to fill the vacancy caused by the library’s full-time director resigning in September — potentially reducing that total by more than $65,000.
Fifty-seven percent of libraries in Maine — including most in Aroostook County — function as a nonprofit or with a nonprofit advisory board, according to a report from the Maine State Library, so such a transition by Ashland would not be out of the ordinary. The amount of revenue it collects through subsidies from other municipalities is, however.
The Ashland library billed Masardis, Portage Lake, Nashville Plantation, Garfield Plantation and Oxbow, an unorganized township, over $38,000 combined in 2025. That is more $10,000 greater than what the next closest library in Aroostook County — Cary Library in Houlton, which serves 16 communities — raises from other communities. No other library in The County raises more than $2,600 through this method.
Under the fundraising model recommended by the committee, Ashland’s library would no longer receive subsidies. Instead, the nonprofit advisory board would solicit donations from each of those communities, asking for an amount similar to what it had previously approved as a subsidy, the report detailed. If each town or township agrees, that would leave the board with roughly $8,000 to fund through other sources.
“It would kind of take the politics out of it,” Burby said.
The committee’s recommendation was one of four courses of action it considered. Others included the town’s existing subsidy model, a discounted subsidy model and transferring the library entirely to a nonprofit entity.
It proposed using the discounted model, which would bill each of the five communities at 50% of its full subsidy, in 2026 as the library works to establish the nonprofit board.
“This is a moment of transition, but also of opportunity,” Burby said. “We’re listening, we’re learning, and we are committed to building a library system that reflects the values of our community. I’m proud of the work the panel has done and I’m confident in the path ahead.”
