Final days at the helm for harbormaster
The productive if controversial nine-year career of Ian Macmillan as state harbormaster for Greenwich is coming to a close.
The end could arrive as soon as June 30, the official expiration date of his current term. If Gov. Ned Lamont has not named a new harbormaster by then, however, Macmillan would continue to serve until his successor is named.
Lamont has to select the new harbormaster from a list of three candidates endorsed by the town’s Harbor Management Committee; the HMC is expected to approve
its list at its June 17 meeting. To date, an HMC sub-committee has interviewed four people for the post, two from Greenwich and one each from Stamford and Norwalk.
It will come as no surprise to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Greenwich waterfront that Macmillan was not even on the list of candidates to be interviewed for the job. It may be an even bigger surprise that he wanted to be reappointed.
Town elected and appointed officials have been at odds with Macmillan since the harbormaster was first appointed in December 2011 by then Gov. Dannel Malloy. Democrat Malloy ignored the candidate endorsed at the time by First Selectman Peter Tesei, a Republican, and picked Macmillan without consulting Tesei.
What started as a bad relationship got worse as the years progressed. I don’t have the strength (or space) to recount all the silly and nasty ways the town worked to undermine Macmillan. They ranged from the petty (for years denying him use of a town-owned boat for his work) to the litigious (suggesting that he be punished for removing a navigational hazard without HMC approval).
I thought a quick look over what he has accomplished in his tenure as harbormaster would provide an interesting example of what perseverance and determination can accomplish in the face of pettiness and hostility.
When Macmillan got his first inside look at how the town managed its mooring space in late 2011, he found that almost 100 people had been languishing for years on a waiting list. He found mooring spaces for everyone and more within his first boating season on the job.
He also found no accurate maps of mooring fields in the town’s possession, key tools in designing and maintaining safe anchorages. So he recruited volunteers, including an aerospace engineer who was expert in GPS technology, and a marine surveyor, to create the first such maps. In each of his nine years he has upgraded and refined those maps to reflect changing conditions along the Greenwich coast.
He stood by the property rights of shell fishermen who owned underwater beds when wellconnected shoreline property owners tried to moor their boats in those beds. And when a large working barge showed up in Greenwich Cove to repair some docks, he took the opportunity to raise $19,000 overnight to have that barge’s owner remove a large, submerged engine block from the popular mooring field at Great Captain’s Island.
Perhaps his most lasting work in Greenwich is yet to come. Several years ago, he and some owners of large yachts formed a private entity to raise up to $21 million to dredge Greenwich Harbor.
Macmillan hopes to restore, through dredging, all the navigable channels and one federally designated Hurricane Hole in Greenwich. Those channels have been silting in for decades and the town does not have the appetite to tackle the project. This is a huge project, and I’m skeptical that the group will raise the funds, though some of them could write a check for the whole thing and barely notice it.
First Selectman Fred Camillo made public/private partnerships part of his campaign platform last year. He has also spoken about the need to make better economic use of Greenwich Harbor. Who knows? Maybe Macmillan will finally get some support from Town Hall.
Macmillan has far more supporters than detractors among the Greenwich marine community. He is eccentric, for sure, but he has always been committed to safe boating and enhancing enjoyment of the town’s magnificent waterfront. I, for one, am glad the Harbor Management Commission won’t have Ian to kick around anymore.