Charles Sidman. Annlinn Kruger.

Carrie Jones

Aug 02, 2026

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY

We always welcome letter submissions to The Bar Harbor Story.

For details on our policy, please visit our about page and scroll down or just visit here.

As with all newspapers, the beliefs, opinions, and viewpoints expressed by the writers of letters to the editor and included here do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, opinions, and viewpoints or official policies of The Bar Harbor Story.

Similarly, we do not fact check those beliefs, opinions, or viewpoints that are espoused in letters to the editor.

We do not have an exclusive submission policy. That just means if your letter is published here, it is fine by us if it’s also published in other places and vice versa. We will print letters related to local elections that involve candidate discussion only up to one week prior to that election.

All the past letters to the editor can be found on the Substack site here.

---

---

Bar Harbor Town Government Today

(Reiterating a comment made to Bar Harbor Story article on 7/29/26)

Two comments are necessary showing that apparently all current council members are readily-led sheep who either do not know or do not care about their own rules and responsibilities.

First, regarding the abrogation of committee and board term limits through a “consent agenda” item (that any single councilor could have asked to remove and have separate consideration), Bar Harbor’s Town Code states:

§ 31-6 Term of office. The term of each regular member shall be three years. Alternate members will serve for a one-year term. There are no limits to the number of terms served. All appointments run from August 1 to July 31.

Couldn’t be any clearer, and not subject to the modification and appointments supposedly made that night. I urged Council to formally reappoint members as necessary, and not to ignore the unambiguous town code, but they all declined to even consider this.

Second, concerning Council meeting minutes, no councilor was willing to take up the issue of incomplete and misleading minutes and all gave their lock-step approval. The minutes being objected to stated that, at the Council’s 7/7/26 workshop, “Ruth Eveland, Dennis Bracale, Teresa Wagner, Charles Sidman, and Carol Chappell offered comments.” It does not say that all five of these members of the public urged continuation of a lodging moratorium, and is hardly an adequate or accurate summary of what transpired there (even though all Councilor comments, even the most mundane, are recorded and memorialized in detail.) Hardly a proper historical record, which is the whole purpose of recorded and approved minutes.

Why won’t these folks do their (hardly onerous) jobs, that they all sought?

On another score, this past week Maine’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) voted to open a formal investigation into Bar Harbor’s declining rate water rate structure (over the strenuous objections of our Bar Harbor government), that has historically disadvantaged smaller residential water users in favor of subsidizing the greater use and bottom lines of Bar Harbor’s major commercial entities. Bar Harbor’s Town Council voted 6-1 to continue this unfair practice this past winter, with no nod whatsoever to the clearly expressed rights and well-being of the majority of Bar Harbor’s citizens. Where are (were) their heads?

Has any mention or objection been made by our Town Council to the targeted personal attacks accumulating on Bar Harbor’s citizens and journalists? Perhaps these instances of scurrilous and anonymous hate speech and attempts at personal destruction find support (or even originate) within our town government? No mention, objection, or disclaimer from anyone in town hall has been made or heard, yet their inane comments on all manners of triviality are recorded in full and evidently thought to substitute for (or constitute) moral and political leadership. Sound anything like our national scene?

Charles Sidman

Bar Harbor

---

Reflecting Pool Thoughts

In David Hearn, Republican enforcers picked the wrong reflecting pool visitor to prosecute. An American Olympian with extraordinary lawyer Norm Eisen defending him. But what about others whose curiosity to find out for themselves was criminalized to serve the president’s reflecting pool lies?

James Comey is fighting trumped up charges for his photo of a sea-shell 86 47. Across the country, police are fabricating narratives and distorting ‘evidence’ to make people look like criminals.

No act of resistance is too small, no person too insignificant, and no municipality lacking Republican vigilantes eager to point the finger and demand retribution. Black friends are saying, welcome to our world. At 250, U.S.A. 2026 is more Salem 1693, DC 1954, and Montgomery 1963 than Philadelphia 1776.

Annlinn Kruger

Bar Harbor