“We Can’t Do It Alone”: MDI Communities Will Potentially Join Forces for Regional Change
MOUNT DESERT ISLAND REGION—The draft goals are lofty and full of hope.
Year-round livability and affordability. Check.
A culture of regional collaboration and governance. Check.
Efficient and effective infrastructure and transportation systems. It’s there.
Add in regional economic resilience and a sense of place, and you can see why the elected officials and staff from towns across the region and Ellsworth have gathered together to tackle the issues in a multi-year process to both define the goals and then to eventually determine the action steps.
Why are we doing this? Why are working together? Noel Musson of the Musson Group asked at the beginning of the elected officials meeting at the Northeast Harbor Neighborhood House, October 30.
“We really can’t do all the things we’re trying to do alone,” Musson said as he and Susanne Paul of the Musson Group facilitated the discussion. The Musson Group has also spearheaded the MDI Housing Summit.
“We do things across town lines,” already, Musson told the group that included town and city managers, clerks, and elected leaders to councils and select boards
The communities are interconnected and by working together they can create consensus and collaboration, he explained.
“We don’t all really have to solve these really big issues by ourselves,” Musson said.
He added, there are positives of coming together.
Working together on issues that might involve the state or federal government can strengthen the collective voice when it comes to things like transportation. Working together on issues can also lessen each town or city’s individual burden.
“It gives us a chance to do more,” Musson said.
Together.
WHO ARE THE LEAGUE OF TOWNS?
The group is a collaboration of staff and officials from Bar Harbor, Cranberry Isles, Ellsworth, Lamoine, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Swans Island, Tremont, Trenton, and Acadia National Park.
“It may be small, but it’s really mighty,” Southwest Harbor Town Manager Karen Reddersen has said of the League of Towns and the power of learning from past successes and lessons learned in other towns. “It’s tying into our larger buckets.”
THE GOALS THE GROUP IS DRAFTING
“These goals are aspirational goals,” Musson said.
He also wanted to make sure that the exercise had value and could be used to create a document that each municipality could get behind. From those goals and objectives, the region could create action steps. The goals, theoretically, would be long term.
“A lot of these issues are ones that come up in Augusta,” State Representative Gary Friedmann said. He passed around summaries of those bills as well and spoke to new funding from the Maine State Housing Authority. He also spoke about continued work toward a local options tax.
Southwest Harbor Select Board member Natasha Johnson said that A Climate to Thrive and its sustainability efforts seems to be doing similar work and asked how this process is different.
Musson said he thinks of sustainability and resiliency work as an overarching mindset.
Bar Harbor Planning Director Michele Gagnon said one of the things that struck her about Maine is how there are so many strong nooks and crannies and identities.
“At the end of the day we are trying to address a lot of the same issues. We may come from different perspectives, but there are a lot of commonalities,” she said.
The system is fractured and not easily structured for regional success, she said.
“We have a chance here to make a difference,” Gagnon said.
YEAR ROUND LIVABILITY AND AFFORDABILITY
One table of attendees spoke about taxes and what it is to be a town and what is a collective good. Affordable housing is for the hypothetical resident who might move in, they said.
“We all felt like the goals were good. We were more concerned with the details of them,” Bar Harbor Town Council Chair Valerie Peacock said.
Like the other group, Peacock’s tablemates spoke a lot about taxes and how to talk about how goals like these could potentially increase property tax burdens since municipal taxes are part of why people can’t afford to live in some of the towns. They suggested thinking about funding models.
Mount Desert Selectboard member Martha Dudman suggested looking into how the region could take issues (for example short-term rentals) and use them to generate funding and solutions.
Rep. Friedmann said that his table spoke a lot about seasonal homes and year-round housing and how to balance the needs of year-round workers as opposed to visitors as well as the differing short-term rental ordinances in towns that went before voters. Only Bar Harbor has a short-term rental ordinance. Voters in other area towns have voted against them.
He also spoke toward economic resiliency and decent paying jobs and the relationship of jobs to available housing.
A CULTURE OF COLLABORATIONS
Rep. Friedmann said that collaborations have worked well for police agencies and emergency coverage. Resistance to collaborations seems to be waning, he said.
Mount Desert Selectboard Chair John Macauley spoke to how collaborations evolve and often are driven by operational issues (combining police, administration, dispatch between Bar Harbor and Mount Desert). It seems to have been happening two towns at a time, he said. Mutual aid, however, is islandwide and sometimes regional with Ellsworth, Lamoine, and Trenton often helping with larger incidents and vice-versa. area police, fire, and ambulance often help each other with responses. This includes Acadia National Park, Hancock County Sheriff’s Department, and the Maine State Police.
Tremont Select Board member Kevin Buck said there have been multiple grants that have had more than one town involved. This is another less talked about example of collaborations.
“It’s something that everyone is expecting to see more of,” Buck said.
EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS.
Many groups talked about how to have less cars on the island.
“It seems the bus transportation system is designed for visitors, not year-round residents,” Rep. Friedmann said.
Johnson spoke about the Island Explorer’s route system and who it is designed for and the areas that it focuses on.
Bar Harbor Housing and Community Planner Cali Martinez’s group felt that they could break out infrastructure (water, sewer, public health, safety) and transportation systems into different goals.
“Transportation needs to be a stand-alone,” Mount Desert Selectboard member Geoff Wood agreed “We need to focus on being able to get across the island to the grocery store.”
Let the market take care of the tourists, he suggested, and let the municipalities take care of the residents.
“It would be nice to have a transportation system particularly for older people,” Dudman said. “We do have Island Connections, but it would be nice to have a bus.”
“We wouldn’t have any transportation system here if we didn’t have tourists,” Peacock said, but also the congestion is from mostly the tourists. The two impact each other. How do we design a transportation system that benefits everyone on the island, she asked.
Peacock said, “How can tourism help us be the best we want to be?”
Johnson asked if there was a way to some day sell passes for tourists to come onto the island. Another board member quipped that the idea was one breath away from a tollbooth.
Macauley’s group said the goal as phrased now was more of a strategy. He spoke to potentially making the goal more about the carrying capacity of the island.
To better connect communities and ease congestion might be a better goal, he suggested.
REGIONAL ECONOMIC RESILIENCE
Rep. Friedmann spoke to the demand for skilled workers and having adequate childcare.
“Childcare is more important than ever,” Rep. Friedmann said.
Ellsworth City Manager Charles Pearce spoke to creating a slightly less generic objective in the draft which writes “diversify economic sectors to balance tourism with year-round economic opportunities.”
Others worried about how local towns support the state revenue without enough state funding returning to the towns.
“Tourist dollars go to Augusta and they don’t come back. Surprise,” Macauley said.
The numbers of Bar Harbor were terrifying, he added, when it comes to the amount of sales tax money that the town gets back despite all the revenue and state taxes that it generates.
“We talk about tourism and the economy of tourism. That doesn’t do what a stable economy should,” Macauley said.
Diversification can be a goal, but it depends on how the economy is diversified, many agreed.
Former Mount Desert Town Manager Durlin Lunt said it would be interesting to see how the island economy has evolved and if it was more stable in the 1950s or 1960s.
“I think that’s part of our problem in that our economy is so unbalanced and dependent on summer visitors,” he said.
According to the Bar Harbor Existing Conditions Report, there are five major industries in Bar Harbor, which is the island’s largest town, but not the same industry-wise as the other area towns. In Bar Harbor those five industries are scientific, and technical service; accommodations and food services; educational services; health care and social assistance; and retail trade.
“In 2021, Bar Harbor’s businesses employed an estimated 5,401 people of which 80% were employed in these five primary industry sectors,” the report states. “In 2021, 31% of the workforce in Bar Harbor were part of the professional, scientific, and technical services industry sector and 25% were part of the accommodation and food services sector, representing the largest industry sectors in town.“
SENSE OF PLACE
Mount Desert Town Manager Alex Kimball said that in moving back to the island “the sense of strength of place here really leaps off the page.”
Macauley’s table felt the first goal could be simplified to just creating conditions for year-round communities.
“We did quibble with this because we believe we do have a strong sense of place,” said Southwest Harbor Select Board member Carolyn Ball. Instead, she suggested the language be about preserving it.
Dudman also spoke to the language of preserving.
Others said the goal was a bit nebulous.
Gagnon said that maybe the sense of place is more of an overarching statement rather than a goal. Dudman agreed that it might be less of a goal but a continuing and interesting conversation and that possibly each attendee at some point could speak to why their community is dear to them and why it feels so important to them.
The topic is interesting to think about, but hard to define, Musson said. He said that in towns’ comprehensive plans the statements about what people find admirable in their towns often is encapsulated.
Paul said that when communities talk about managing change, keeping sense of place in mind can help mitigate fear of potential change or anxiety about change.
“Everything that we try to do here is a fight. It’s pulling us apart” rather than bringing people together, Peacock said. That means, she said, that municipalities should be thinking about all the people in the community and making sure they have space for everyone.
Others also spoke to bringing more empathy into the area.
Martinez spoke to a research paper she delved into while a student at College of Atlantic. Small-town character, which she said can be defined in different ways, is often spoken to as a growth-related concern that deals with sense of place and it might be interesting to see how that might conflict with other goals.
Or how it might inform it, Musson said.
TIMELINE
There will be another group meeting in April 2026. By September 2026, the League of Towns and Musson Group hope to develop goals and objectives based on all the meetings. They’ll also be refining what they hear with some of the towns.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art.
All photos: Shaun Farrar/Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story.
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