Public Safety Building Committee seats available and improved Bernard Wharf hoists move forward.

Shaun Farrar

Dec 31, 2025

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Havana.

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TREMONT—Budget season has officially started in Tremont. At the Tremont Select Board’s December 15 meeting, the board approved the requests of local nonprofit organizations that applied for funding assistance from the town.

All of the approvals were unanimous with Vice Chair McKenzie Jewett and member Howdy Goodwin having excused absences.

The organizations and the amounts that they each requested for the 2026/27 budget year are listed below.

• Southwest Harbor-Tremont Ambulance Service – $158,000
• Harbor House – $30,000
• Island Explorer – $3,000
• MDI Campfire Coalition – $3,000
• Community Action in Aroostook, Washington, and Hancock- $618
• Tremont Historical Society – $3,500
• Mount Desert Nursing Association – $4,000
• Hospice Volunteers of Hancock County – $1,000
• Island Connections – $1,500
• Bar Harbor Food Pantry – $2,500
• Westside Food Pantry – $2,500
• Island Housing Trust – $5,000
• WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) – $750

Grand Total – $215,368

Southwest Harbor-Tremont Ambulance Service Board of Directors President and Treasurer Andy Cline spoke to the ambulance service’s request going from $116,000 to $158,000.

Cline said that as of the end of November, the ambulance service had responded to 448 calls this year, 126 of those calls being in Tremont. Over the past nine years response time (from the time of the call being dispatched to the ambulance arriving on scene) has averaged about 11 minutes but is down to 9.3 minutes this year.

The ambulance service has focused on three specific areas of improvement this year, Cline added. The three areas are staffing, reserve funds, and administrative work load.

• Staffing – Due to problems finding staff that wishes to only be a driver, the service has moved to a two provider model where both people on duty are certified with some level of EMS licensure. Cline said that the service has been able to fill its shifts at with two providers approximately 99% of the time.
• Reserve funds – The service concentrated on some fundraising efforts this year, having a capital campaign, and successfully raised over $500,000. This money will allow them to pay for an ambulance refurbishment with an expected delivery of early 2026 and also allowed the service to bolster its reserve fund.
• Administrative work load – The tasks that have been taken on by board members and other volunteers have been so great that they lead to “some really good people” becoming burned out and the service is at risk of burning out more, Cline said. The ambulance service is currently in the process of hiring a service director (now considered and posted as an executive director position) to oversee operations in Southwest Harbor and Tremont and take a lot of the administrative work load off of board members. The service is hoping to hire someone for $100,000 including insurance and benefits and at the time of this meeting had two candidates that they were looking at closely.

The total increase, between both Southwest Harbor and Tremont, is $100,000. The ambulance service has traditionally used a 42-58% share ratio for funding from the two towns with Southwest Harbor carrying the 58% burden due to a higher call volume.

Select board member Eric Eaton said, “Call volume looks like 25-75.”

Cline responded that it’s probably closer to 70-30%, and that it is pretty consistently a 2 to 1 ratio for calls with Southwest Harbor having approximately twice as many calls as Tremont.

However the population base in both towns is getting pretty close now so they have adjusted a bit for that, Cline added.

Eaton said that it gets harder and harder to fit everything into what the tax payers are willing to pay for, especially with the prospect of a new public safety building in the works.

Select Board Chair Jamie Thurlow said, “Our population fluctuates so much in the summertime, you just need that additional help. I mean, the amount of people that are here, I think you need more than that. You’re doing very well to handle what you have for a work load there. I think this is, it is an increase for sure, like Eric said, we have to draw the line somewhere, but this is a lot cheaper than what it would be if the town had to take over this ambulance service.”

The request from the Island Explorer bus service went from $0 (no request) last year to $3,000 this year. There was discussion amongst the select board and Town manager Jesse Dunbar about concerns regarding the Island Explorer’s routes to the west side of the island diminishing and also the fact that there is not a direct route to Tremont from the Acadia Gateway Center in Trenton.

The select board approved the request but tasked Dunbar with making sure that the lack of routes and having a designated bus stop where parking is available in Tremont were a part of future discussions.

The request from Community Action in Aroostook, Washington, and Hancock (formerly Downeast Community Partners) went down from $2,500 last year to $618 this year, but there was not a representative at the meeting to explain why.

The request from the Mount Desert Nursing Association went from $2,000 last year to $4,000 this year. Megan Rilkoff, the association’s development and communications coordinator explained that last year the association served 45 patients in Tremont which was up from 17 last year. This equates to a total of almost 400 visits in Tremont. Additionally, 23 Tremont residents borrowed medical equipment from the association’s free “loan closet.”

Downeast Horizons and Open Table MDI were past applicants who did not apply for funding this year.

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BERNARD WHARF HOIST UPGRADE

At its October 6 meeting, the select board had unanimously approved contracting with Lonnie’s Hydraulics in an amount of $13,850 to upgrade the electric hoist at the Bernard Wharf. This will make all three of the hoists hydraulic. All three hoists will have electric controllers but will also have a manual winch handle should the controller fail.

At the time it was known that there would be some additional costs for hydraulic hoses and an electrician to do the electrical work. Harbormaster Tyler Damon estimated these additional costs to be around $3,000 at the October 6 meeting.

In the interim, Damon sought three bid requests for the required electrical work. One potential bidder said that he may have a chance to look at the project in April. Two companies submitted bids. Stephen Stanley of Stanley Electric submitted a bid of $12,155 and MCM Electric submitted a bid of $12,945.

At the December 15 meeting, Damon said, “The confidence in the work described by Steve Stanley, I am not really looking to go forward with that quote. MCM, their quote was $12,945 and their quote was very extensive, included actually mounting the hydraulic motor and taking down the electric motor from the facility, so basically that is our next step for moving forward. MCM can also start immediately if we want to move forward with that.”

Damon also said that the town has spent almost $13,000 maintaining the electric hoists in this year alone.

At the time of the meeting, the town had approximately $154,000 in its wharf fund and $28,000 in its wharf capital fund.

The select board unanimously approved spending the $12,945 and awarding the contract to MCM Electric.

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PUBLIC SAFETY BUILDING COMMITTEE SEATS

There were three seats open on the public safety building committee at the time of the select board meeting. One seat was a planning board seat that has been vacant for a while. The other two seats were both due to resignations, one for health reasons and one for other obligations that were taking up more time for the previous seat holder.

Alan Feuer, who at the time of the meeting held a Tremont Fire Department representative seat, asked to be moved into the ambulance service representative seat. The select board unanimously approved this request and approved Feuer for the ambulance service seat.

The select board decided to advertise for three open seats, an at-large Tremont resident seat, a Tremont Fire Department representative seat, and a planning board representative seat.

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SURPLUS PROPERTY SALE

The town had made notice of a public auction to sell one of its plow trucks that was taken out of service. The truck, a 2016 Ford F-550, received four bids which are listed below.

• William Gott- $5,100
• Alan Gordius – $2,715
• Corkery Tractor Trailer Sales – $2,187
• Jon Bunker – $2,000

The board unanimously voted to accept the bid of $5,100 from William Gott.

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EXECUTIVE SESSION

At the end of the meeting, the board went into executive session to discuss a personnel matter. There were no motions made after the executive session.

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The next meeting of the Tremont Select Board is scheduled for January 20, 2026, at 5 p.m., in the Harvey Kelley Meeting Room at the town office.

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