Carrie Jones

Jul 29, 2025

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Choco-Latté Café.

BAR HARBOR AND MOUNT DESERT—No decisions were made Monday night and no next steps outlined, but the Town of Mount Desert Selectboard and Bar Harbor Town Council seemed generally supportive of full consolidation of the two towns’ police forces underneath the Town of Bar Harbor.

How exactly those costs would be shared was not yet expressly laid out.

The badges have both names on them: Bar Harbor and Mount Desert. Both names emblazon the patrol vehicles from both towns and in the last 12 years, the departments have merged operations and procedures, internal phone lines and more.

“We really have become a virtual agency as far as the court is concerned and as far as the state’s concerned,” Mount Desert and Bar Harbor Police Chief David Kerns said.

However, the financials for the employees and liabilities haven’t been perfectly combined.

“I think it makes a lot of sense. I think we should do it,” said Mount Desert Selectboard member Martha Dudman after Chief Kerns’ presentation.

The rare joint meeting Monday, July 28, to discuss the next steps in potentially fully consolidating their police departments was spent mostly listening to Chief Kerns explain the proposal and his reasons why he’s suggesting that full consolidation.

Conversations about further combining infrastructure occurred in 2017. In 2022 a new second-in-command was built into the agreement with the costs shared. Kerns became chief in 2023.

“It’s probably not the best practice for what we’re doing where we have two police organizations sharing supervision,” Kerns said.

It would be better, he said, to just have one, especially in terms of financial parity for the employees of both departments as well as to clarify liability in case something went wrong.

A June 13 proposal written by Chief Kerns outlines a plan to fully integrate all police and dispatch personnel under Bar Harbor’s administration while maintaining existing service levels in both communities.

”This proposal outlines the full integration of all police and dispatch personnel under the Town of Bar Harbor’s administration while maintaining existing service levels for both communities. The objective is to streamline administrative functions, eliminate duplication, and create a unified personnel and management structure without altering service delivery,” the document begins.

Since 2013, the towns have shared services and some positions. The towns first shared a police chief, and since then have integrated services while also maintaining positions that were officially within one town or the other. Since then, the towns have shared its records system, computerized dispatch services, and other aspects of call response and record keeping. It operates on one radio frequency and submits reports to the Maine court system as one department.

Former Chief James Willis began in November 2013 as a temporary Bar Harbor Police chief while former Bar Harbor Police Chief Nathan Young was on administrative leave. Young had worked at the Bar Harbor Police Department for more than two decades.

While he had spent nine years as the shared police chief, Willis had spent 19 years at the Town of Mount Desert, a period that included him serving as acting town manager from 2006-2009.

At the time, Willis was chief in the neighboring town of Mount Desert and told the Bangor Daily News that “his main interest in serving as acting chief in Bar Harbor is to ‘help out a neighbor.’”

Willis retired in 2023 and Chief Kerns was selected to replace him later that year. At that time Chief Kerns had worked for Bar Harbor for 23 years.

The historical minimum level of staffing for Mount Desert was one officer and Bar Harbor was two. Those officers cover three patrol zones, which are roughly Mount Desert, in-town Bar Harbor, and then Hulls Cove to the head of the island.

The bigger point Chief Kerns said is that there would be no outward facing change if the proposal goes through.

“It really is going to be all on the back end of making sure that pay rates and benefits and personnel rules, as far as the employees are concerned, are consistent. So the organizational structure is going to remain the same. Chain of command will remain the same. And our community engagement. We take great pride in making sure that we are out in both communities other than just getting calls for service to respond to, to make sure they’re engaged with the communities,” Chief Kerns said.

A consolidation would potentially clarify liability issues if the officers or police department gets sued, according to attorney Sarah Newell, working for Mount Desert, with most of the liability potentially going to Bar Harbor since the town would employ the staff.

Councilor Steven Boucher and then Vice Chair Maya Caines both asked about liability concerns and if Bar Harbor would hold the full burden of any potential lawsuits involving the department and its officers.

Newell said it’s hard to say because any situation that occurs is very fact-sensitive, right, and so it will depend a lot on the facts as to whether both towns are named in such a situation.

“So, you know, you could have a circumstance where an action takes place with an officer as an employee of Bar Harbor and a plaintiff sues only Bar Harbor because it’s related very much to those specific actions,” Newell said. “There may be a situation where something occurs and it’s related to both personnel and location and upkeep of, you know, equipment and, you know, different things. So, I do think there are circumstances where one town could be sued or the other, or both towns could be sued. Both towns would, of course, maintain generalized jeopardy insurance. And so, in general, either town would be covered for any sort of that. There are sometimes arguments between insurance companies about which town bears the most responsibility or which insurance company should settle that. That oftentimes does not have an increased cost necessarily to one of the towns at the time….But you do sometimes have increased cost for insurance coverage after you’ve had some sort of an incident, which I do think those sorts of increased costs could be considered as part of the cost agreement and the cost sharing agreement.”

In the Monday night conversations, the main questions that came from elected officials were concerning that liability and costs.

“I think we’re all, it feels like anyway, that we’re all pretty much in agreement that we should, you know, proceed to the next step,” said Bar Harbor Town Councilor Joe Minutolo. “Is there a way we can model out the costs of this maybe for a future meeting so we can kind of see what this looks like? Who knows, it might be some cost savings for all of us, but it would be nice to kind of see that.”

Next steps currently would likely include having all positions under the Bar Harbor budget (with workman’s compensation, health insurance and other benefits) and cost sharing with Mount Desert.

“I had conversations at the town manager level prior to putting the proposal together, and Mount Desert I don’t think was prepared to bring on all of the Bar Harbor employees, so it made it a smooth transition to just have eight go the other direction,” Chief Kerns said. “And really, this is to acclimate the payroll benefits for the officers and the dispatchers that were working. And this is something that we struggled with for a long time, even as much as we’ve tried to get it down to the penny, having two different towns and personal rules that you play by for each of the employees or group of employees that you’re working with, it’s a little bit convoluted from the administrative part.”

According to the memo, “MD (Mount Desert) may see reduced costs for insurances, workers compensation, other personnel related expenses. Bar Harbor may assume increased financial responsibility in these areas.”

Chief Kerns said on Monday that they’d have to explore how those costs can be shared equitably between the towns. Town Manager James Smith also spoke to that.

A full integration is unlikely to create cost savings, the memo said, but would potentially decrease Mount Desert’s expenses for overhead. The reverse could potentially be true for Bar Harbor unless the cost-sharing agreement was tweaked between the two towns.

“So, it’s not like it’s a huge issue as far as pay, but you can very much have two officers that have the same tenure and time of service all around, working for two different towns on the same call together, making different rates of pay, different benefits,” Chief Kerns. “And it’s noticeable to them. It hasn’t become a problem for us, and I think that’s part due to our culture and what everybody’s brought into for the organization and how we’re operating. But from an administrative point, from the organization, to fix that alignment and get it right so it’s consistent.and equitable for everybody is super important to me.”

The Mount Desert officers currently earn 61 cents less per hour than their Bar Harbor counterparts.

The proposal states that “police patrols, emergency response, and dispatch operations will maintain current service levels; officers and dispatchers will continue to serve both communities; Mount Desert and Bar Harbor will retain its community police presence and engagement efforts.”

The Bar Harbor Police Chief will oversee the staff, supervisory roles would remain, and “dispatch operations will remain under their current structure,” the proposal reads.

“Officers will continue their direct engagement in both communities,” it continues. “Mount Desert and Bar Harbor residents will experience no reduction in visibility or service levels. Existing community outreach programs will continue as structured.”

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Disclosure: The reporter used to part-time dispatch for the Mount Desert Police and Fire Departments.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

The packet and agenda

Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Consider Full Police Merger

Carrie Jones

·

Jul 23

Read full story

More about the Bar Harbor Police Department including staffing numbers, locations, and employment opportunities is at its dedicated website here.

Emergency: 911

Non-Emergency: (207) 288-3391

Bar Harbor Station:
37 Firefly Lane, Bar Harbor, ME 04609

Mount Desert Station:
21 Sea Street, Northeast Harbor, ME 04662

To apply for a position email recruitment@barharbormaine.gov or head to this link.

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