The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The 1932 Criterion Theatre.
MOUNT DESERT—Mount Desert’s Assessor Kyle Avila was disciplined by the town’s selectboard, October 6. Avila received a written three-day unpaid suspension for violation of a section of the Town of Mount Desert Personnel Policy.
“I’m going to jump in just to give a little background on this, just from a rules perspective. This next item is on the public agenda tonight because the position of the employee involved is town assessor, because the assessor is a position appointed directly by the selectboard,” Town Manager Alex Kimball said at the beginning of the meeting, “any disciplinary action that would result in a gap in service by the assessor needs to be approved by the selectboard. This differs from disciplinary actions for all other employees appointed by the town manager, which would instead be handled by the town manager.”
Personnel rules prohibit the town from saying why Avila has a three-day suspension.
While the town can’t explicitly say the cause of the suspension, Avila issued a formal apology during the town’s September 15 selectboard meeting following a spitting incident in town.
That statement and apology stemmed from September 10 when Adam Bradshaw was in downtown Northeast Harbor trying to get lunch for himself and another coworker who had stayed behind at the job site where they were working. Bradshaw was driving his employer’s long-bed, crew-cab pickup truck.
According to Bradshaw, he hadn’t been parked for more than two minutes when a man walked by the truck on the sidewalk and spit on the front passenger’s side window. A colleague was in the truck when this happened.
Bradshaw alleges that Avila said that he does this to all the commercial vehicles that he sees “parked like that” because “you guys are ruining the roads, the sidewalks.”
According to Bradshaw, Avila did not apologize for spitting on the truck nor did he offer to clean off the window.
“I speak tonight to offer my apology for an incident that happened last week while out walking. I wholeheartedly regret my behavior that day and wish I had handled the situation very differently. I never should have spit on the truck. And then once confronted, I should have apologized immediately and offered to clean up the mess I had made. I missed that opportunity, to apologize right then and there,” Avila said at that earlier selectboard meeting in September.
He continued, “I want to be clear to all involved that no malice was intended, but understand that my actions caused unnecessary harm. To the two gentlemen that were there, please accept my sincere apologies.
“In hindsight, my behavior in this matter does not represent who I want to be, nor of how I want to be perceived in our community. I fully own my actions and want to take full responsibility. I hope to heal the harm that I’ve caused and offer restitution. I am filled with so much remorse and sadness for my regrettable behavior. After reflecting on my inappropriate actions, it’s clear that I’ve been in denial of just how stressed I am. I pledge that I will seek stress management counseling and want to assure you that this behavior will never happen again.
“I offer my humble apologies to all who were affected. I also want to extend my apologies to the police department, town manager, town hall staff, and selectboard for having to spend their valuable time on this matter. Likewise, I apologize to the residents of Mount Desert for the negative reflection this incident has cast upon the town.
“I am truly sorry.”
There was no discussion on the suspension during the Monday meeting after Chair John Macauley moved to direct the town manager to issue a written three-day suspension without pay to Avila with an additional condition that Avila attend training related to stress and anger management and a requirement that he refrain from any further conduct in violation of town policy.
According to Macauley, “The relevant section of the town personnel policy dictating this discipline is section 9.5.1, which references failure to exercise good judgment or being discourteous in dealing with fellow employees, residents, or the general public as cause for disciplinary action.”
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Mount Desert Assessor Issues a Formal Apology for Recent Spitting Incident
The meeting should be up and available to view tomorrow on the town’s YouTube channel, which is here.
The packet for the meeting is here. We’ll have another story about this meeting later on this week.
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