Waldoboro Town Manager Julie Keizer in her office in the town hall. Out of frame is a metal basket on her desk of wooden quahogs that have been burnt and burnished to look like they have just been pulled from the mud.
Yes, Julie Keizer is from New Jersey, and yes, she really is the granddaughter of a clam digger.
As for public service, she inherited that from her mother who was the town clerk for 47 years in Waretown, a coastal village in central New Jersey. Julie, being practical as well as idealistic, got her business degree before setting her eyes on Washington D.C. Along the way, however, a mentor suggested she stay in local government. He told her he believed she would be able to effect more change than she ever would in Washington.
Julie became a town manager at 24 years old. In those Jersey years, she managed four different towns, ranging from small, scrappy communities with tiny budgets to larger, more affluent ones with hot-button topics such as whether to allow paddle boats longer than 16 feet on the lake.
So, how did she come to Waldoboro? Her family had summered in Wiscasset since she was an infant. She loved Maine so much that she and her husband bought a summer house in Damariscotta. Her children went to the university here. When her daughter, who had married and settled here, announced she was having a child, Maine beat out New Jersey. In 2017, they pulled up roots and settled in Maine.
Her love of public service traveled with her. While looking at houses at Ralph’s Homes, Julie happened to hear about the opening for a town manager. She applied. When they offered her the job, she didn’t hesitate because Waldoboro, with its river, history, and shellfish harvesters, reminded her of the New Jersey town where her clam-digging grandfather had lived and worked.
Go into town hall and you might, on occasion, find Julie out front, pitching in wherever needed. Better yet, drop into her office, sit down, and tell her about your concerns, because her office is always open.
“When I was new here, I met someone who said, ‘I know what it’s like to eat lunch on a Friday and not eat again until lunch on a Monday.’ Before that, I’d never known anyone who’d gone to bed hungry. That person helped me put Waldoboro into perspective and what some people here feel.
“In Waldoboro, it’s really easy to look away from poverty because it’s hidden. It’s in places you don’t even think, like in that pretty farmhouse with the nicely manicured lawn. You won’t see how they’re struggling to pay their taxes because even though they probably worked hard their whole life, they’re probably not getting a lot of social security, and prices are going up.
“On the back roads, you might walk into a couple’s home who are about to lose it because they were taken by a fly-by-the-night mortgage company that decided to go down one road and offer them money up front while charging them 17% when mortgages were only 4%. Now they can’t pay their mortgage, and because it’s waterfront, that mortgage company can’t wait.
“You’re sitting there while they bring you tea, and then the woman starts to play the piano, and it’s beautiful, and she invites you to sing church hymns with her. Waldoboro has taught me compassion.
“It’s taught me that there are unseen people, something I didn’t experience in my prior career and people are too proud to ask for help. We need to help, and we need to do it in a way that is respectful for them. The poverty here has many different faces, and it’s not something that’s often spoken about.
“Waldoboro has taught me you don’t judge the book by its cover. It’s taught me you don’t know people until you take the time to know them and hear their story. You just don’t know.
“There’s a perception out there that people who are in poverty don’t want to work. Poverty has nothing do with whether you work or not. There are a lot of very hard-working people here who are still in what we consider poverty.
“It is very subjective because if you were to look at how we consider it, you’d say, ‘Well, if you’re making $34,999, you’re not in poverty.’ Well, you are!
“There’s a group of kids here who don’t stand a chance. How do we give them that chance? If we move the needle on poverty, we can help improve school scores. We must get to the place where kids are fed and where parents have childcare so they can go to work.
“When I talk to experts about our poverty level, they say add 5% to whatever number the government puts out. Take the 2022 census. It was done mostly online, which probably didn’t reach a lot of the people here. Someone knocking on a door is an unknown, and a lot of people won’t open their doors for an unknown person.
“So, if the state says our rate is 22% living in poverty, it’s really 27%. That is a lot. That is more than a quarter of our town.
“COVID showed us how much we needed resources. It showed us that resources are out there. That’s why we have a town navigator, and that’s the single most important decision I’ve ever done here. Our community navigator gets resources to the right people and places and into the hands (where) it’s needed, like for food, housing, mental health, and addiction. It’s not just handing money to people. This is one thing that is effecting change, and at the local level.
“I overheard someone say to someone else, ‘Poor people love their children just as much as rich people do.’ I had two sets of grandparents, and I had love on both sides. One set was well off. My other grandparents lived in a shack because that grandfather was a clam digger.
“Those grandparents didn’t have a lot of money, but they had love. They had love like you wouldn’t believe in that family. To me, that was normal.”
