Across the Acadia Region, Towns Explore Whether They Can Impact Big Issues Together.
Nov 29, 2025
BAR HARBOR—As the League of Towns works toward a regional collaboration for five or six potential goals created by elected leaders of the Acadia Region, one of the first steps might just be creating an active website.
With a website, the public can more easily see the strategic plan process, access information, or even just know what the League of Towns (often called the LOT or the League) is.
The League a collaboration of staff (mostly administrators) from Bar Harbor, Cranberry Isles, Ellsworth, Lamoine, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Swans Island, Tremont, Trenton, and Acadia National Park.
Those town and city managers, administrators, and assistants are working toward creating a strategic plan for the group as it looks to improve the region.
The League is helped by Noel Musson and Susanne Paul of the Musson Group. Among other projects, the Musson Group has also spearheaded the MDI Housing Solutions Initiative and is working with Mount Desert on its comprehensive plan.
The Acadia region, Musson told officials at an October 2024 elected officials meeting, isn’t used to being proactive “and this challenge demands a proactive approach. So you’re going to have to get out of your comfort zone.”
Since then, the League and the Musson Group have come up with multiple goals to build a strategic plan around.
Those goals for year-round housing availability and affordability, efficient and effective transportation, the same for infrastructure, creating a culture of regional collaboration and governance, and an economically resilient region with a sense of place continue to be refined.
Now, the question is how to get toward those goals and how to fund them. The website could be a tool for that, but it requires a bit of finesse to capture the positive energy of the League meetings.
“(Maintaining) that good magic that comes down to the health in the room. That’s the trick is who’s going to be maintaining attitude,” Acadia National Park Management Assistant John Kelly said of the website’s potential creation during the League’s November 25 meeting in Bar Harbor.
“It’s void, there’s, there’s nothing,” Bar Harbor Planner Michele Gagnon said of the current webpage on Mount Desert’s town site. “Agendas are not uploaded, minutes are not uploaded. There’s nothing, so … my interest is not making it complicated, but actually make it simple, if someone can host it. It would be more like making sure we follow through on populating those sections (with) some of the information that are pertinent and that people may gain from or learn from being able to go to it, especially in light of the work that you’ve done.”
“I was unaware that it was there, so I don’t know if I can try to figure out what’s going on,” said new Mount Desert Town Manager Alex Kimball.
Musson suggested that the Musson Group could set up the site for the League. He also suggested that it could be a project for a MDI High School student.
The League’s work with the Musson Group is to find goals and then actions toward those goals that the group can get behind despite being from different towns and Ellsworth—places with different character and needs and strengths despite their close proximity.
Finding collaborative tools are important, Musson said.
“What does success look like? What does collaboration look like?” Musson asked on Tuesday. “If we can get behind the goals. Great. That’s the first thing. And then secondly, ‘Okay, great. Now, how are we going to work together to do those things?’ That’s the challenge, a challenge.”
“I think if I look back in the history of the League of Towns, there are a couple of successes we could cite. One would be the Island Explorer bus system. Obviously, that was not a direct creation of League of Towns, but it was something that we pushed hard back when that was first established,” Lamoine Administrative Assistant Stu Marckoon said.
Another collaboration is the regional household hazardous waste collection that the League sponsors with the disposal district every year.
“One of my budget committee members last night (was) touting how wonderful that was,” Marckoon said.
The last elected officials workshop had broad goals of year-round livability and affordability, but has not yet worked on concrete actions. Now, the League and the Musson Group will shift its work toward specific collaborative actions and projects. The League members felt past successes have come from identifying a specific need and building a collaborative project around it.
Collaborative projects such as Island Explorer’s expansion and funding, as well as the Town Hill project to create homes (currently lead by the town of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park) for the island were also mentioned as examples of towns working together.
“We don’t have to invent them; they’re here,” Kelly said.
Sharing of resources such as mutual aid agreements which allow fire and police to respond in other communities and at the national park, sharing of staff such as human resource officers, code enforcement officers, or animal control officers has occurred or could.
The Musson Group will also craft potential wording—possibly a preamble for the strategic plan—to help clarify the purpose and scope of the plan and show that its meant to address regional challenges collaboratively, but that also not supersede town authority, character, or local issues.
For example, tourism, Musson said, is both a regional question and a specific question for each town and its wants.
“We actually set up the meeting thinking we were going to try to get through goals, and then we’re going to talk a little bit about actions, and we ended up only talking about the goals,” Musson said. “So, that was also that was a very good and also kind of telling in many ways.”
Marckoon said his select members’ feedback was that there were no easy answers.
“The feedback that I got was, ‘okay, we got the goals, but how are we going to get there?’” Trenton Select Board Chair Fred Ehrlenbach said. “The goals are fine; they’re wonderful, but how do we get there?”
“That was what we were supposed to spend the second part of the meeting talking about,” Musson said.
“Well … “ Ehrlenbach said, leaning back in his chair with a chuckle.
Gagnon said that she felt the work was starting to coalesce. “I think you’re starting to get some of the information you need and starting to refine what some of the goals are.”
She stressed that it was important to determine how the municipalities can work successfully as a region or as a county.
Later, Kimball said, “I guess what I keep coming back to when I look to this, and this was occurring the other night, is that the top two goals we’ve got here—the year-round livability and affordability and whether we call it two or three goals in infrastructure and transportation. Those are the real…We can all spend our careers continuing to fight for those things. Because there’s always going to be, you know, economic and geographic forces are always going to make this tough, but it’s our job to do what we can as much as we can.”
The goal is to have a full strategic plan by the spring.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Brochures of Maine.
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