Papers returned for four-way Select Board race and for School Board seats.

Carrie Jones

Mar 12, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Choco-Latté Café.

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SOUTHWEST HARBOR—Everything isn’t finalized yet, but the Southwest Harbor Select Board made a large step forward this week when it decided to spend the $51,029 in its harbor department fund to purchase parking equipment for seasonal paid parking at several waterfront areas in town.

“We’re at a moment if we want to make this happen, we need to move forward,” Town Manager Karen Reddersen told the Select Board members, March 10.

The paid parking will be at the Manset Pier and the Upper Town Dock and Lower Town Dock and a small portion of the Clark Point Road.

Reddersen has been working with John Burke, the same parking consultant who has worked with Bar Harbor to implement that town’s seasonal paid parking program downtown. He’s also worked with Camden, Belgrade, and other towns in New England. He’s expected to attend the Select Board’s March 24 meeting to talk about his recommendations.

The town will have to tweak some of its parking ordinance for the program.

Reddersen has also met with three vendors about the system. The fees will be discussed at the March 24 meeting.

“This parking equipment, payment system, and enforcement system will meet our needs and will be seamless for visitors in Bar Harbor and Southwest Harbor, and provide a variety of payment methods, including the ParkMobile Ap, text-to-pay, and pay stations,” Reddersen wrote in her manager’s memo.

It also provides for one hand-held parking device and enforcement would be through a part-time parking officer.

“Just generally, if a person goes to park, it will, you we will set our fee for the hourly rate, and then there’s basically a negotiated price of $0.40 for the processing payment,” Reddersen said, which is passed on to the consumer.

The system allows for permits for members of the working waterfront.

Select Board member Natasha Johnson asked if there were restrictions about where the funds collected would be used.

Reddersen said that the revenue is currently allocated within the harbor department’s budget.

Across the island, Bar Harbor already has paid parking in the summer months in its downtown area, using kiosks, which were also recommended in Southwest Harbor’s proposal in 2025. Bar Harbor’s rates range from $2.00 per hour to $4.00 per hour and cover a much larger area than Southwest Harbor’s proposal, which focuses on the town docks and harbor areas.

Bar Harbor’s parking fees brought in just over $2 million net in 2022, and then $3.4 million in 2023, and between May 15, 2024 and Oct. 30, 2024, the town brought in approximately $4.1 million.

For 2025, Bar Harbor Finance Director Sarah Gilbert said, just metered revenue between May 15 and October 30 came in at $4,335,189. This number doesn’t include cost to process payments, which is approximately 9% of the total, or citations.

The day with the most metered revenue was October 11, 2025, with $35,794. The second highest metered day was July 5, which brought in $35,750.

The potential for paid parking at the harbor sites was brought up by the Southwest Harbor Harbor Committee a few years ago as a deterrent to people taking up spaces for extended periods of time and creating bottlenecks in the areas. It was characterized as more of an enforcement situation than a revenue creator.

The board authorized Reddersen to enter into contracts with BTS, Park Loyalty and ParkMobile, through the Omnia Purchasing Consortium, and approve the funding of capital parking system equipment in the amount of $51,029.77 from Harbor CIP Account # 221-21.

The harbor committee has the parking proposal on its agenda at its next meeting.

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ELECTION SET

The nomination papers for Southwest Harbor’s races have been returned for the election on May 5.

The seats for the Select Board are currently occupied by Vice Chair Chapin McFarland and Carolyn Ball. Ball is not running again for the three-year seat.

McFarland, Tom Benson, Kalie Hess, and Melanie Lisy returned. Former Select Board member, James “Jim” Valette withdrew his papers in support of Hess and Lisy.

For the School Board, Clifford Noyes and Maria Spallino are running again for their seats. The MDI School Board of Trustees’ three-year seat is vacant. No one has taken out papers for the seat.

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