Part of budget work involves preparing for potential fuller police consolidation

Carrie Jones

Jan 13, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.

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MOUNT DESERT—Deep budget work began in both Southwest Harbor and Mount Desert this Monday.

It was just the first of multiple meetings in both towns as their boards go over draft budgets that will eventually be approved by the voters in each town.

In Mount Desert, Town Manager Alex Kimball reviewed the general budget and police budget with the town’s selectboard.

Most of Monday’s discussion centered around the police department budget and bringing patrol officers up to Bar Harbor pay rates in anticipation of them being a joined force where the officers are all Bar Harbor employees in 17 months. That increase is .3% of $3,350.

“And this .3%, I will say, does come with the fact that we’re starting the process of equalizing the pay, particularly within the full officers, getting them closer to the same wages they’d be earning if they were employees of the Town of Bar Harbor,” Kimball said.

A recent memo from the Bar Harbor and Mount Desert town managers said that the push to join the forces more fully, with all the employees being under Bar Harbor’s budget, was being slowed down for a bit so Kimball can get a budget under his belt during his first year as town manager.

The departments have been sharing some services for more than a decade and work under one police chief.

“This is something that’s been out there as a discussion topic for a while now, where we’re moving most of the way in that direction in anticipation of them becoming Bar Harbor employees in 17 months now,” Kimball said.

How or if Mount Desert might reimburse Bar Harbor for the employees has not been fully publicly explained yet nor has how the towns will deal with any liabilities.

“And so this is sort of the first step along that path. Small decrease in the contracted piece to Bar Harbor. They found a little bit of savings there,” Kimball said.

Police Chief David Kerns said they’d tried to keep the police portion of the budget pretty flat.

In July, a proposal written by Chief Kerns outlined a plan to fully integrate all police and dispatch personnel under Bar Harbor’s administration while maintaining existing service levels in both communities.

The late December memo goes on to say that both managers are familiarizing themselves with the relationship between the two towns. Bar Harbor’s James Smith was hired in late 2023, beginning in November of that year. Kimball began work in early September 2025.

Mount Desert’s dispatch budget is seeing a proposed larger 11% increase ($54,767) primarily due to wage adjustments for long-tenured dispatchers and increases in health insurance costs.

“And a large part of that is within the dispatch department, the area where Bar Harbor and Mt. Desert’s wages differs more is based on longevity,” Kimball said. “Theirs is a program that essentially caused it to be a little larger on the dispatcher side. So you’ll see their wages have a pretty good size jump to them as we do the catch up there.”

Kimball stressed the importance of keeping dispatch and police fully staffed and how it’s difficult to hire for those positions.

Kimball provided an overview of the administrative budgets, noting that the total is around $2.5 million or 9% of the overall departmental budget.

He explained that he has applied a more stringent methodology to payroll and benefits, which is causing changes in different directions across the various departments.

The town administration budget has a 0.5% increase, largely due to differences in benefit plans.

The legal budget is increasing from $20,000 to $30,000 due to ongoing needs.

The elections budget is increasing 36.8% ($3,800) because of the needs for the upcoming gubernatorial election.

However, the biggest dollar increases are from the Mount Desert Elementary School ($405,789 or 7.7%) Mount Desert High School ($188,841 or 4.4%), the town’s highway department ($189,741 or 8.4%) and the town’s fire department ($261,949 or 9.6%).

The capital improvement transfer fund is also increasing by 10.3% or $124,520.

The preliminary estimate for the town’s property tax increase is an additional $1,420,925 or 5.91% increase. This would make the total amount to be raised by property tax $25,449,586.

The budget is still in the proposed and draft stage. The town’s warrant committee and select board will discuss various aspects of it, refine it and then have it placed on the town’s warrant. The voters will approve the budget (or not) at its town meeting this spring.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

To read the agenda:

https://www.mtdesert.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_01122026-889

To watch the meeting, head to Mount Desert’s YouTube channel.

For the town’s website and upcoming meetings go here.

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Disclosure: I was once a part-time dispatcher in Mount Desert.

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