Applications open for warrant committee vacancy.
Nov 28, 2025
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Havana.
BAR HARBOR—After the resignation of Warrant Committee member Barbara Dunphey, the Bar Harbor Warrant Committee is looking to appoint a new member to temporarily fill Dunphey’s seat.
The appointment would be until June when a new warrant committee member is elected by the public.
Dunphey’s resignation was sent in via a November 10 email to the town council, town manager, town finance director, and town clerk.
In it she wrote that she was immediately resigning for personal reasons and thanked for the opportunity to serve. She affirmed her reason to the Bar Harbor Story earlier this week.
The municipal portion of the town’s budget was approximately $26.7 million fiscal year 2024, and projected to be $34.7 million in FY 2026, our current year for budgets. It was $20.2 million in FY 2000.
Dunphey and her husband, Guy, (who serves on the town’s planning board) moved to Bar Harbor permanently in 2017 after decades camping on the island. They’d purchased a home prior to that in 2006. Dunphey has extensive auditing and financial analysis experience. She was elected in 2024 to a three-year term. That term ends in 2027.
WHAT IS THE WARRANT COMMITTEE ABOUT?
According to the town’s charter (article VII), the 15-member committee is elected and comprised of people who are “qualified to vote in elections in the Town of Bar Harbor and have been registered to vote for one year prior to their election.”
According to that article:
“It shall be the duty of any duly elected warrant committee to consider, investigate and report upon with recommendations or comments all articles except those dealing with election of candidates in the warrant of all Town Meetings, whether annual or special. When requested to do so, it shall be the duty of Town officers and committees to meet with the warrant committee or any of its subcommittees and to furnish all information relative to matters being considered by said committee or subcommittee.”
Town officers and other committees must give the warrant committee or its subcommittees information about those articles when the committee (or a subcommittee) requests it.
The committee then makes formal recommendations on those warrant articles or the preliminary municipal budget so that the voters can know if they recommend changes to the town’s land use ordinance or the budget or not. A member can also submit a minority report or recommendation at the Annual Town Meeting or Special Town Meeting about any of those articles.
The last appointment to the committee was Elissa Chesler, who took Steven Boucher’s spot when he was elected to the Bar Harbor Town Council in 2025. That seat will also be added to the slate.
Chair Christine Smith, Carol Chappell, Kevin DesVeaux, Shaun Farrar, and Allison Sasner all have terms ending in 2026.
Disclosure: Shaun Farrar is my husband, on the Bar Harbor Warrant Committee, and a reporter/editor with the Bar Harbor Story.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
The warrant committee’s page.
To talk to all committee members, email here: warrant@barharbormaine.gov
Anyone interested in serving should complete the Application to Serve on Boards and Committees, and write in “Warrant Committee” (it is not one of the options listed). Applications are due to the Town Clerk’s office 5 p.m. Monday, December 22.
Contact 288-4098 with any questions.
A NOTE FROM US
This is Carrie and Shaun, and as you’ve probably noticed, we’ve been working hard at the Bar Harbor Story, providing local news in a way that keeps you informed, but also embraces and promotes community and the good that is within it.
We take so much time—just the two of us, with a special needs kid that has to be homeschooled—to cover our island community’s (plus, Trenton) local news in a way that’s timely, daily, and remembers that underneath the news . . . there are people who are our neighbors.
We are working hard to get the news out there—for free—for everyone. But it’s taking its toll on our family financially and honestly, sometimes, emotionally, because frontline local news in a small community? It’s hard.
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