Community Resilience Grants and Comprehensive Planning Moving Forward
Dec 03, 2025
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Choco-Latté Café.
TRENTON—At its November 25 meeting, Fire Chief Steve Heckman told the Trenton Select Board that the town’s new Smokey Bear sign is currently being made. Once finished, the sign will be delivered to Old Town and the fire department will bring it home from there.
Heckman said that the Smoky Bear sign is a fire danger sign and the “plan is to put it at the southern end of the parking lot.”
“Once we receive it, we’ll have to see how far back from the road it needs to be for visibility and still be effective; as the road starts to curve and for folks exiting the parking lot, visibility is critical,” Heckman said.
The sign costs $600.
COMMUNITY RESILIENCY GRANT
Trenton has been awarded a grant through the state’s Community Resilience Partnership to work with the Hancock County Planning Commission (HCPC) to apply for other larger grants. These larger grants would be used for specific goals related to the town’s climate mitigation and adaptation activities.
According to Select Board Chair Fred Ehrlenbach the HCPC will do the grant proposal writing, assist in an inventory of the town, and most other associated tasks related to grant applications.
The town must come up with a committee to handle the town’s responsibilities which will consist of the fire chief, the town’s Emergency Management Director Lisa Winger, one member from the board of selectmen and four members of the public.
During the November 25 meeting, board member Judith Sproule volunteered to be the select board representative.
The first task of the committee will be to come up with five goals to further the town’s resiliency. Those goals will be the subject matter for the specific grant applications.
The town can receive up to $75,000 in grant money, according to Ehrlenbach and the applications are due in May.
Member John Bennett moved to establish the committee as being Heckman, Winger, and Sproule and the motion passed. The four members of the public will be voted on at the select board’s December 9 meeting to meet the timeline outlined by HCPC Regional Resilience Coordinator Janna Richards.
COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING COMMITTEE STEERING COMMITTEE
Before she was even a select board member, Sproule had asked to get the subject of a comprehensive planning committee on the board’s agenda. At the meeting, she said that she never imagined that she would be a sitting select board member discussing it when it came up.
A group of residents (Christina Heiniger, Ann Luther, Rachel Nobel, Jarod Rollins, and Sproule) wrote a letter to the select board proposing the formation of a steering committee to undertake the underpinnings of the actual comprehensive planning committee.
Rollins spoke before the board and said that the steering committee would undertake such tasks as identifying other community members to be a part of the full group, researching and securing funding sources and creating a proposed budget, and formulating an action plan of how the group will engage the public to gather its opinions.
Rollins also said that the steering committee would like to have a full-blown working committee within 100 days.
Sproule said, “We would bring back something fairly solid looking to the select board for them to approve, including a list of recommended members of the committee.”
Ehrlenbach clarified that this steering committee would not be the actual comprehensive planning committee.
“No,” responded Sproule.
Rollins said, “The idea here, we don’t want to make extra paperwork for anyone, but essentially, we want to make sure that this thing starts off right. So, I am worried if we pull together a bunch of people for, slap together a committee, it’s not going to be successful. So, we want to include the (select) board, especially a lot in these early steps, and get your approval of the plan, budget, and we might need help in rounding out some of the members because we want to make sure our community is represented in this board.”
Ehrlenbach expressed concerns with firing up the full-blown comprehensive planning committee prior to the resiliency grant applications being taken care of. One of his concerns was the possibility of funding for the comprehensive planning process from the grants.
Rollins responded that they had proposed three months and was hopeful that the resiliency items would be far enough along to not be an issue. Rollins also said that the steering committee would be trying to fill in membership gaps with local expertise to spend as little money as possible on the planning process.
The steering committee is hoping to have the comprehensive plan completed, once the full committee is in motion, in about two years, start to finish.
According to the letter submitted by the group the current comprehensive plan is from 2006 and the consistency finding from the state expired in 2018.
Bennett moved to approve the steering committee for the comprehensive plan with the listed persons and it was approved.
MUNICIPAL WASTE HUB BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The select board had to vote on someone to represent it on the Board of Directors for the Municipal Waste Hub. Board member John Bennett made a motion to nominate Tony Smith, one of three candidates.
Sproule asked if the chair of the solid waste committee, Heiniger, who was present in the audience had any input. Heiniger said to go with Tony, like John said, stating that he will have the town’s interests at heart.
Sproule seconded the motion and it passed.
PARKS AND RECREATION COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS
There was an item of business to appoint Patricia and Thomas Walsh to the town’s Parks and Recreation Committee which was approved by the board.
Thomas Walsh said that they hope to bring some new ideas and energy to the committee and expand recreational opportunities within the town.
A NOTE FROM US
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