Spring Means Budgets, Ballots, and Busy Calendars for Local Governments
Apr 28, 2026
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TREMONT—A zoom-only League of Towns meeting, April 28 led to quick updates and action items and snippets into the administrative lives of the staff who lead area towns during a busy town meeting season.
There was a bit of a low attendance at the Tuesday morning meeting that is meant to be a gathering of town managers and administrators as well as representatives from Acadia National Park. Town managers and administrators from Tremont, Southwest Harbor, Trenton, Lamoine, and Ellsworth attended for at least a portion of the meeting.
Spring is the time where multiple Mount Desert Island region towns have town meetings to elect local officials (select boards, town councils, school committees, warrant committees in some towns) and where voters approve or tweak budgets.
Town staff prepares those budgets under the direction of elected officials as well as any land use changes that voters have to approve to be enacted.
At the same time, the officials are looking for collaborative ways that both hold true to the individual character of each town, but also allow the region as a whole to prosper.
One of those potential collaborations is for towns that wish to to combine for salt bids in the hopes of lowering the cost for each town involved.
According to Ellsworth Deputy City Manager Sara Devlin, who has taken the lead on that project, salt bids have been posted and submissions are due, May 11.
“Hopefully, we get some competitive pricing,” she said.
Other details during the meeting included hammering out a date for the next elected officials meeting, which is now tentatively set for May 28 at the Neighborhood House in Northeast Harbor. Tremont Town Manager and LOT Chair Jesse Dunbar will send out an email to the other towns and a draft agenda for the meeting, which combines both administrators and elected officials to discuss a regional plan to potentially address issues such as transportation, infrastructure, and needs for homes.
“The Cheese House traffic light is now repaired,” Lamoine Administrative Assistant Stu Marckoon said.
The Cheese House light is on Route 3—also known as the Bar Harbor Road—at the intersection with the Jordan River Road. The Jordan River Road is a direct route to Lamoine and often acts as an unofficial Ellsworth bypass for those heading to eastern points in Hancock County.
“We thought it had been repaired when they put the new module in, but they had failed to have the traffic light read the traffic detection module,” Marckoon explained. “And how it’s reading it and things are moving better, I observed the other day.”
TOWN MEETINGS AND ELECTIONS
The rest of the 16-minute meeting was spent quickly discussing upcoming town meetings and elections.
Tremont’s election and town meeting is set for May 11 and 12. The ballot includes the deer hunt and proposed public safety building. The deer hunt, if approved, would head to the Maine Inland Fisheries and WIldlife’s special committee, which also needs to approve the plan if approved by voters.
“Is there a cap on the number of deer to be taken?” Marckoon asked.
There would be, Dunbar said.
Southwest Harbor’s town meeting is May 4 and 5, Town Manager Karen Reddersen said.
Trenton’s town meeting is May 18 and 19 and voters will decide on the retail sale of cannabis, changes to the LUO requested by the fire department; and changes to the shoreland zoning. There will be public hearings tonight before the select board meeting.
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