Five years after running for Congress, former state Rep. Dale Crafts was back in front of a crowd to propose a major change to his town’s form of government.
“Unfortunately … four people on a seven-person town council can decide a majority vote on our destiny,” he said. “Four people!”
Crafts was describing what he sees as the failures of the Lisbon Town Council that he’s now running to join. But he was also describing a strategy that he and three longtime friends are using to try to take over the town council before potentially dismantling it.
The former Republican lawmaker is the face of one of the hottest property tax revolts in Maine. His Androscoggin County town of nearly 10,000 residents weathered a 20% property tax bump that was crafted to fill a multi-million dollar budget hole caused by a clerical error, years of inflation and high spending.
Town councilors approved that $13.9 million budget in July. Since then, Crafts and other conservatives in the town have focused on opposing the school budget, the only one that residents control. Lisbon has voted the exact same school budget down twice. A slightly slimmed-down version will be on the ballot for a third time alongside the town council race.
This happened in large part due to Crafts. Using his pre-existing political action committee, he purchased mailers arguing for no votes on the school budget. The 66-year-old said he thought he had retired from politics after losing to U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District in 2020, but the tax revolt brought him back in.
“I’ve worked hard all my life and I wasn’t planning on being up here,” he said at a candidate forum at Lisbon Community School on Tuesday. “I’m here to try to make a difference. I feel compelled by God to do this.”
Crafts’ message that longtime Lisbon residents may be priced out of their homes by rising property taxes has resonated. While most of the nine candidates for council expressed an openness to making cuts and looking for ways to reduce property tax increases, Crafts is campaigning most stridently on austerity and riding a wave of anger at the town budget.
His political group has spent $16,000 this year, with much of that going toward the school and municipal elections. He is promoting a trio of longtime friends, Roger Bickford, Greg Garnett and Eric Metivier, with matching lawn signs. With four open council seats, that slate alone could elect the next council chair and control the flow of business.
Crafts is running against three political newcomers for a two-year term on the council. For the other three open seats, his allies are taking on incumbent Jo-Jean Keller and Charlie Turgeon, another candidate drawn in by the ongoing budget crisis.
Turgeon, a project manager on military projects, is running a more moderate campaign than Crafts, saying he rejected his opponents’ “cut, cut, cut regime.” But he has promised to examine the scope of government and find ways to reduce future budgets by outsourcing and privatizing some services.
Turgeon became involved earlier this year when he organized a petition to require the town to hold referendums on town budgets going forward. That eventually resulted in the town council asking voters whether they want to establish a charter commission, which would be tasked with revising Lisbon’s governing document. In addition to four council seats and the school budget, that question will also be on the November ballot.
If voters approve a charter commission in November, it would kick off a long process of review that could change how Lisbon functions, including possibly reverting to a town meeting form of government in which voters would decide the local budget.
The council would hold no direct power to disband itself, but its members could hold sway with a future commission.
If elected, it would not be Crafts’ first time on the council. He served on the town’s very first council after its creation by the town’s current charter, made in 2006. He says he’s longed to return to town meeting budgeting since then.
“After I served on the first town council form of government, I said to myself, ‘this isn’t good,’” he told residents last week. “And look where we’re at.”
Defensemen Max Wanner was re-assigned to the Maine Mariners from the Providence Bruins on Thursday. Defenseman Michael Underwood was also re-assigned to Maine.
Wanner, 22, was acquired by the Boston Bruins when they traded Trent Federic to Edmonton last March. He played in 15 games for the AHL Providence Bruins at the end of last season, and seven this season.
Underwood returns for his second stint with the Mariners. He appeared in 67 games with Maine last season.
Some hot new titles have been arriving late at Maine libraries in recent months, after the closing of one the country’s major library book distributors.
Baker & Taylor, based in North Carolina, began winding down its operations in the fall and expects to close entirely this month. The company’s demise has left many Maine libraries scrambling to buy books through other sources, including local book stores, and to endure deliveries taking twice as long.
That means patrons expecting to get new books on or near publication dates are waiting longer to start turning pages.
At the Portland Public Library, “Heart The Lover” by Maine author Lily King wasn’t available to patrons until nearly a month after its Sept. 30 publication date, even though it was ordered in July. At the Libby Memorial Library in Old Orchard Beach, John Grisham’s Oct. 21 release “The Widow” took six weeks to arrive. Staff at the Kennbunk Free Library weren’t sure how long they’d have to wait for “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans, so they bought two copies at a local store, Octopus Bookshop. As of this week, there were 28 holds on the book.
“Baker & Taylor closing has totally rocked the library world nationwide. It has long been the preferred vendor among many Maine libraries, and their closure is certainly having an impact on us,” said Sarah Skawinski, associate director of the Portland Public Library and president of the Maine Library Association. “I think we’re over the hump now, though.”
Skawinski and other librarians say Baker & Taylor had been having problems getting books from publishers and had been slow with some deliveries, a problem that began during the COVID pandemic. Last year when it became apparent Baker & Taylor was likely going out of business, many libraries switched to the nation’s other major distributor, Ingram Content Group, as well as another company called Brodart Library Supplies. But with increased demand, both those companies have been slow in filling some orders in the last couple months, too.
Industry publications reported that Baker & Taylor’s problems were mostly financial, beginning in the pandemic and included the failed acquisition of another company. An email to Baker & Taylor asking for more information on its closure was not answered Wednesday.
Not every Maine library bought the majority of its books from Baker & Taylor; some used other distibutors instead. Staff at the Waterville Public Library, for instance, say they rarely used the company and weren’t impacted. The Lithgow Public Library in Augusta was only getting about four books a month from Baker & Taylor, said Director Sarah Curra Schultz-Nielsen. Those included children’s books, reference books and travel guides. Finding other distributors for those books, including Brodart and Bookshop, a company that sells mainly to independent bookstores, has been “mildly inconvenient” for staff and has not impacted patrons, Schultz-Nielsen said.
But other libraries used Baker & Taylor for most of its new releases, including fiction and non-fiction, as well to replacements for worn-out books. Stephen King’s books, for instance, have to be replaced pretty regularly, some librarians said.
The Portland Public Library had been ordering about 1,000 items a month from Baker & Taylor, mostly printed books. The library has about 359,000 physical items in its collection. Now, new books are coming to the library from Ingram, but will take maybe four weeks to arrive, compared to one to two weeks when Baker & Taylor was running smoothly.
And there is added work for librarians: While Baker & Taylor sent books that had already been catalogued and ready to be shelved, with bar codes and spine labels, Ingram is not yet offering that service, said Nicole Harkins, cataloging librarian at the Portland library.
“Patrons are aware it’s taking longer and they’re being patient,” Harkins said.
” data-image-caption=”<p>Rosanne Barnes, an adult services reader’s advisor, shelves new fiction books at Portland Public Library on Wednesday. (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)
” data-medium-file=”https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?w=780″ height=”683″ width=”1024″ fifu-data-src=”https://i3.wp.com/www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1″ alt=”” class=”wp-image-7559441″ srcset=”https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg 3000w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=1024,683 1024w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=1536,1025 1536w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=2048,1366 2048w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=1200,800 1200w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=2000,1334 2000w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=780,520 780w, https://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2026/01/43353876_20260107_Libraries_03.jpg?resize=400,267 400w” sizes=”(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px”/><figcaption class=)
Rosanne Barnes, an adult services reader’s advisor, shelves new fiction books at Portland Public Library on Wednesday, (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)Kennebunk Free Library also switched to Ingram, and staff are spending more time prepping books, including putting protective plastic covers on them, said Allison Atkins, assistant director and head of adult services. Atkins said library staff wrote about their “book ordering troubles” in a library newsletter and on social media, so patrons would understand why new books were slow to arrive. The library used to get about 100 books a month from Baker & Taylor and despite still being “way behind” on new books, patrons have been patient, Atkins said.
For smaller libraries with smaller staffs, finding a new supplier is not always easy. Baker & Taylor was the major books supplier for Davis Memorial Library in Limington. The staff there is so small that they didn’t have time to research or compare new suppliers, so they waited until early this month, said Heidi Libby, the library’s director. As a result, the library has very few new arrivals on its shelves right now and has been filling the “new book” shelves with donated books as well as ordering from Amazon.
” data-image-caption=”<p>Volunteer Jim Perry covers books with protective covering at the Kennebunk Free Library on Wednesday. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)
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Volunteer Jim Perry covers books with protective covering at the Kennebunk Free Library on Wednesday. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)
Several librarians said this week that local book stores have been a big help during this period, getting books quickly and pricing them affordably. Sherman’s Maine Coast Bookshops, which has 10 stores across the state, saw its sales to local libraries increase from $50,000 in 2024 to nearly $100,000 in 2025, said Jeff Curtis, owner and CEO of Sherman’s.
The Auburn Public Library would sometimes get more than 300 books a month from Baker & Taylor, including books for adults, teens, and children, as well as fiction and nonfiction as well as some large print books and CDs, said Nancy O’Toole, collections manager at the library.
When Baker & Taylor started having problems, the library bought books from Amazon and the local Bull Moose music and book store chain. Now, with Baker & Taylor closing, the library has switched to Ingram, but has seen delivery delays as that company has been inundated with new customers. This week the library got an order of books that were released in November, including “Exit Strategy” by Lee Child and Andrew Child, “The Seven Rings” by Nora Roberts and “Return of the Spider” by James Patterson.
“The hope is that now that the holidays are over, shipping from Ingram will expedite. But just to be safe, we are choosing to buy certain books elsewhere, including titles by big-name authors, popular series, or anything tied to a fast-approaching holiday,” said O’Toole. “Patrons want to see those titles on the shelf in a timely manner, and we want to make sure we fulfill those expectations.”
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