Mapping a Resilient Future for Frenchboro
Jan 15, 2026
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Choco-Latté Café.
FRENCHBORO—As Frenchboro plans for its future, it’s taking multiple steps in governance and community outreach to do so.
One of those steps is a climate resiliency plan that is being created with the Musson Group. Another is work with the Hancock County Planning Commission. A third is planning board work. The fourth will be the town’s comprehensive plan, which will likely be in process in 2027.
Like many coastal or island Maine communities, Frenchboro has a small population to create and guide its future.
The resiliency plan allows for people invested in the community (not necessarily monetarily) to comment and plan on the island’s future.
“This is for people who want the town to still be a vibrant town, a working waterfront town with people who can sustain the town into the foreseeable future. And things maybe can look a little, little, not shaky, but, you know, we need to pay some attention to that,” Lauren Jennings, chair of the municipal advisory committee, said at a Zoom meeting last week. “That doesn’t just happen. What can we, as interested community members, do to make it happen? What concrete things?”
The plan is open to input and comment from people who live in Frenchboro, but also people interested in Frenchboro (PIFs). It’s people who are invested in the future of the island, Jennings said. So all members of the community, land owners, residents, people who come, and people who have some investment in the town’s future. That might be someone from the Maine Seacoast Mission, Maine Coast Heritage Fund, or other nonprofit agency that cares about the island’s future.
“The reason it’s draft is it makes a lot of statements about what we think the key issues are, what we think the goals and strategies, what are the priority projects,” Jennings said.
Town and community input is crucial before it’s finalized and figuring out how to add comments to the Google Document accessible to those PIFs is important.
Courtney Cease, planner, resilience and sustainability lead of the Musson Group walked attendees through how to do just that.
People received the document as a PDF in their emails. However, that’s not where they comment. Instead, they sign into Google and comment there. Everyone who looks at that document can comment so those thoughts will be public.
People can also email Jennings privately with thoughts.
“If we see that sort of a discussion is starting up in the comments, you know, where people are reacting to other people’s comments, we’ll see if it would make sense even in advance of the meeting in the spring to try to have some kind of forum for that so that it doesn’t end up all being in sort of the back and forth comments section,” Jennings said.
“There’s the sort of the parallel and intersecting process that the Planning Board has been going through with the Hancock County Planning Commission, and what we hope to do is bring those together because it just makes sense,” Jennings said.
“We’ve been working on the update of the 1991 Land Use Ordinance,” Planning Board Chair Kirk Emerson said. “We have particular attention to resilience and climate vulnerability, and one of the things that can help this process is the mapping system, which most of you know about now, which should be up, Rick, you can confirm that, and accessible with a link on the town website, but many of the same maps that are illustrated and attached here, in addition to additional layers of relevant data, on climate effects, with maps.”
Maps are also available on the homepage of the town website.
The town will be updating its comprehensive plan starting in 2027. This plan and other planning board work is intended to kick-start that process and begin getting the community input. A comprehensive plan is meant to reflect what the community wants the future of the town to be.
Dan DeBord said of the document, “It’s also a feeder. I mean, it’s a very much a feeder document into a full comprehensive plan in the sense that all these goals and strategies are … that’s the meat of a comp plan is goals, policies, and strategies, and your future land use plan. It’s teeing up a home run for, hopefully, for a comp plan.”
Together, the draft resiliency plan, ongoing land use ordinance revisions, and planning board work are laying the groundwork for Frenchboro’s next comprehensive plan, offering residents and people invested in the island a chance to shape its future well before that formal process begins. By gathering input now—through public documents, mapping tools, and community discussion—town leaders hope to ensure that when comprehensive planning begins in 2027, it reflects both the realities of climate vulnerability and the community’s shared vision for a resilient, working waterfront island.
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