Trevor Herrick. Charles Sidman.

Feb 15, 2026

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Comment Regarding the Proposed Special Hunt in Tremont

I applaud the Tremont Select board for taking on the difficult task of allowing deer hunting within the town of Tremont, when many people have tried and failed in the past.

I am speaking as a hunter and someone who has lived most of my life on MDI. I currently work for a land trust and steward over 6,000 acres in the Hancock County area. These comments are from me alone, and are not meant as a statement from my employer, Maine Coast Heritage Trust which allows legal hunting on its lands with few exceptions.

I am hopeful that this special hunt gets approved, but with a modification that removes the specific town residency/landowner requirement of the hunter.

One of the reasons that I love Maine is our tradition of “permissive access” on privately owned land for recreation, and hunting. “No trespassing” signs may be well within a landowners right to post, but restricting more land means people will have fewer places to hunt and recreate. A lot of times, these signs are erected due to a failure to understand Maine’s landowner liability laws. These laws actually protect landowners unless they have knowingly been negligent in some way. If someone is hunting or hiking on your land — with or without your permission — you are not liable for their actions or injuries. Other states do not have the same tradition with regards to hunting on unposted land. In many states, a hunter has to pay for the ability to hunt on private land, and hunting becomes less accessible, and more exclusive. This leads to more trophy hunting and less subsistence hunting. There are already several listings for exclusive hunting rights on chunks of posted land in Maine that advertise many large deer.

Maine law already states that a hunter must obtain landowner permission in order to erect a tree stand on private property and they must be labeled. Hunters are taught in the mandatory hunter safety course about target ID, shot placement, safe distance from buildings, obtaining landowner permission, fair chase and other ethical considerations. Successful hunters know that they must be proficient in their aim and must wait for a clear and ethical shot. Hunting accidents remain extremely rare in this state with such a strong hunting heritage.

I understand that some people have worried that opening up our area to hunting will bring swarms of people to the island and they will be shooting every which direction. While I don’t see that happening, if you want to keep tabs on who is actually legally hunting here, you have already created language for that purpose. By keeping the section that states that hunters must ONLY hunt from erected stands or blinds, ensures that, to be legal, hunters must obtain landowner permission and agree on where the stand goes. Unlike most of the state, deer hunters in Tremont would NOT be allowed to go walking in the woods — or “still hunting” as it is called—under your language. While I don’t support this limitation for a long-term solution, I believe this is an acceptable modification to current law to ensure tighter scrutiny on who is hunting, and where, while we gradually reintroduce normal hunting to this region. My suggestion for this proposal is to drop the section where only Tremont property owners or Tremont town residents are able to take part in the harvesting of an animal which travels over land, not grown like a tree or crop. Permission to hunt on your land should not be based on what town you live in. Having to prove that you are a landowner or a legal resident of a town to hunt there has not been accepted in Maine thus far. A responsible hunter who is not a resident of Tremont should be able to obtain landowner permission to take part in the special hunt. Remember, obtaining landowner permission is required for stands, and is only the “unwritten rule” for walkaround “still” hunting.

In conclusion, other island towns are watching what is done here. Please don’t set the precedent that only your local town residents are trustworthy, skilled or ethical enough to safely hunt for food, carry on tradition and take part in the thoughtful management of a shared public resource.

Thank you.

Trevor Herrick,

Mount Desert

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Bar Harbor Water Rate Changes Fundamentally Unfair

As I wrote in recent local publications, I view the water rates proposed by the Town of Bar Harbor and subject of the upcoming February 17 public hearing as fundamentally unfair to local residents, requiring them to subsidize the water usage of our town’s larger commercial, research, and governmental entities. I do not question that the cost of providing water in Bar Harbor has risen substantially in the 10 years since rates were last adjusted, but I challenge both the old and the new differential rates for various user groups.

The Town has written in its handout that it views the new proposed rates as “fair to all water customers,” based apparently on the opinion that the new rates are “fair” because smaller users have been penalized and required to subsidize larger users for years — a disparity most ratepayers have been unaware of until now. Such a view merely reiterates and exemplifies our Town officials’ regular pattern of catering to big business at the expense of forsaking and exploiting the residents who voted in and hired them. That the Town treats longstanding inequity as a justification for continued inequity is telling – residential users represent 70% of the town water users but consume only 23% of total water used. So why are we residents paying more than the favored few for our respective shares? Special interests, of course. The privileged entities have regular access to and support by Town officials that individual residents do not. But as recent cruise ship referenda have demonstrated, when given the chance to weigh in, Bar Harbor’s citizens can and will overrule officials whose priorities diverge from those of the people they serve. I suggest that this is another case where Town officials are out of touch with their citizens, both democratically and economically.

The unfairness of the Town’s proposed new rates is twofold: they (1) maintain a cost differential of over 4x on the per-gallon charge for water usage between some small vs. larger users, and (2) continue a “minimum charge” that further penalizes smaller users by overstating their appropriate share of fixed costs. If anything, larger users – who place greater demands on Bar Harbor’s limited and costly infrastructure – should pay more per gallon, not less. And because every customer is metered, there is no justification for a minimum charge that disproportionately inflates costs for low-volume users.

There is also a troubling, fait accompli, budgetary dimension to these rates. As I have learned from sitting in on this year’s budget deliberations, the Town even in the present year has collected from taxpayers payments for municipal water usage based on the increased rates reflected in this proposal, even though these have even now not yet been approved. In other words, Bar Harbor has already charged its taxpayers more than the last approved rates authorize. The resulting surplus – the difference between what the Town is collecting and what it is entitled to collect under the approved rates – is revenue untethered to any authorized rate structure. Which begs the question: where is that money going? Without transparent accounting, it functions, in effect, as a slush fund: excess revenue extracted from taxpayers without authorization and available to the Town for whatever purpose it sees fit. This practice of budgeting and collecting revenue that has not been authorized or used as stated demonstrates a lack of transparency and accounts for several percentage points of the total and ever-increasing tax bill this year (and perhaps next) for each and every Bar Harbor taxpayer. Such is the respect and financial care of Bar Harbor’s officials for its taxpayers!

Finally, residents should be aware that the rate schedule supposedly open for public comment on February 17 was already formally submitted to the State’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) for approval on January 16 – a full month ago. The upcoming hearing, then, is nothing more than a charade of theatrical pretense. It is not a genuine opportunity for public input to shape an outcome – the Town has already kicked the rate decision upstairs to the PUC. If officials truly intended to consider resident feedback before finalizing the rates, they would not have filed first and asked questions later. Political theater for the masses, indeed, by our diligent public servants!

In summary, I urge the Town Council to here and now abandon the tiered water rate structure entirely, eliminate minimum user charges, and adopt a single, uniform rate per gallon of water consumed. A flat per-gallon rate is the only structure that can credibly be called “fair to all water customers.”

Lastly, if these proposed water rates continue to be requested by our Town Council, I intend to file a formal complaint with the PUC challenging Bar Harbor’s discriminatory and preferential rate structure and budgetary practices. I invite any Bar Harbor citizen or resident who shares these concerns to contact me and join in such objection to the PUC.

Charles Sidman

Bar Harbor

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