Mount Desert officials are heading into a fall of discussions about school consolidation, housing, short-term rentals, parking, the comprehensive plan, and major infrastructure projects.
Sep 10, 2026
Brian Henkel, public works director. file photo.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Maine Seacoast Mission.
MOUNT DESERT—The town’s Selectboard meeting, September 8 was a quick one, clocking in at under 17 minutes, but Town Manager Alex Kimball said to expect that not to be the norm for the next meeting or three.
“Tonight’s meeting is a pretty quick one, but for everyone in the room and everyone else, buckle up. We’ve got a bunch of pretty packed meetings coming September, October, and into November. We’ve got some work on the town hall I need to talk about. We’ve got tif (tax incremental financing) district conversation. We just had a really interesting meeting on the new pier for the Northeast Harbor Marina; that’ll start getting more and more public and there’s a lot for us to talk about with that. We’ve got school consolidation coming up, bunch of topics on housing and possibly short-term rental ordinances, parking committee, comprehensive plan, on and on and on and on. Heads up, folks. Here we go. But let’s all take a deep breath for one day past Labor Day and then off we go,” Kimball said.
“Fair warning!” board member Martha Dudman said before the board moved onto its regular business.
During the early September meeting, the board put the school consolidation referendum question that will go before the town voters in November to the Warrant Committee, which will meet about the plan, September 29 at 6 p.m.
Phil Lichtenstein, the Warrant Committee’s chair, said he was worried about the town giving up the school building and the land beneath it and during the Selectboard meeting, a member of the audience agreed. The committee hopes to have School Superintendent Michael Zboray attend the meeting.
The board approved a wedding on October 24 at Suminsby Park; renewed the liquor license for Eliza Bishop/DBA Milk and Honey at 3 Old Firehouse Lane, Northeast Harbor; and released up to $57,000 from a fire department reserve to repair the 2017 Ferrara fire truck. This engine is referred to as Engine 2.
“Can I ask a question? $57,000. What happened to it?” board member Rodney King asked.
The repairs, fire officials explained, have been piling up for years and include corrosion repair, diagnoses for engine codes, fixes to the foam system, seat belt replacements for belts that have been worn through, and replacement of a backup alarm. A windshield motor is only working intermittently and the pump has issues.
In a September memo to Kimball, Fire Chief Mike Bender wrote, “This engine is currently out of service in Auburn, awaiting approval to proceed with a long list of overdue repairs.”
After listing the repairs, Chief Bender explained, “Most of these, if not all, cannot be repaired by our town mechanics, as they are not certified to work on any fire pump-related equipment. An estimated $17,250 of the $57,000 requested will go to rebuilding the fire pump, which failed its annual NFPA test this past year.
“Due to the extended waiting period between order and delivery of our last fire truck, our fleet has been down one engine for the past three years. As a result, the repairs needed for this vehicle were pushed out until the new delivery was fully in service.“
SALT AND SAND STORAGE FACILITY
The board also approved a contract to move forward with the rebuild of a new sand and salt shed. The money for this—a $1 million bond—had been approved previously by voters at the May Town Meeting.
How the project will unfold is still in process.
“There’s sort of two versions of it. There’s the simplified version of using a pre-engineered building which is the cheaper route and then there’s the more expensive version where they would do the engineering of the building. We haven’t determined yet which is appropriate for our site and as such I put in the larger amount for the request out of the bond money that’s put set aside for doing this work if we need to go down that route. But what we want to do is understand the conditions and what pre-engineered building provides in savings and long-term costs before we make a decision one way or the other,” Public Works Director Brian Henkel explained to the board.
Dudman wanted to know how that would be determined.
One aspect would be geotechnical borings. Another would be the roof. According to Henkel, the town is looking to get a sense of the types of soils on-site.
”Pre-engineered buildings tend to have a fabric roof. Fabric roof has to be replaced at some interval. And so what does that building look like in terms of costs when you’re thinking about it 40, 50, 60 years out?” Henkel explained. “Are the short-term cost reductions sufficient to cover those long-term higher maintenance costs if you’re replacing that roof on a more frequent basis? And how easy is that to do? I’d like to know more about that before I come back here with a recommendation to go one way or the other.”
The salt building that is there now will be likely where the replacement is, but there are also complications for the site, which has the town’s current sand pile, underground electrical, a gas pump, oil and water separators.
There are also size considerations based on the operations that the town might want to do.
“Right now we’re pretty sand heavy. That costs us money and salt is more expensive, but sand is . . . you need a lot of it. We end up going and sweeping that sand back up. Operationally, we want to figure out what we really want to do and probably will move to more (of) a salt use than just the sand. We do a salt-sand mix mostly right now,” Henkel explained.
However, if the distribution is tweaked, the town could use less sand with a lighter distribution that Henkel said would be more effective than just a straight salt sand mix.
“That building would give us the capacity to do that,” he said.
There is a lot to figure out about town needs and the most effective way to use the town’s money to take care of this need.
“As you change the size of the footprint, you also have to change the size of the walls because you have to stack it in particular ways. An 8-foot wall determines how high you can stack it. You put in a 10 foot wall, now your stack gets bigger. You leave less footprint,” Henkel said.
The wall could even be up to 12 feet.
The board approved the contract with Gartley & Dorsky Engineering & Surveying, Inc. for professional services for the design and construction of a salt/sand storage facility.
CLERK RECOGNITION
Town Clerk Claire Woolfolk received her certified municipal clerk designation from the International Institute of Municipal Clerks.
APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATIONS
The board appointed Gail Marshall to the Board of Assessment Review.
Jerry Miller was appointed to the Board of Assessment Review.
Kevin Walls was also appointed to the Board of Assessment Review.
“Could you say something about the board of assessment; what exactly it is?” Dudman asked. “We haven’t heard about it in years.”
“The board of assessment review is basically the appeals board for assessments. It’s a separate board that is under fairly strict guidelines as to what they can and can’t do. But there’s likely a pending appeal coming,” Kimball said.
He didn’t believe the board has met since 2010.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Update: One of the captions did not stick for the photos. We updated that immediately. We’ve also corrected a typo on a number and the word geotechnical, which spellcheck changed to geothermal and we didn’t catch. Apologies! We’ve also added a bit more info from Henkel, with many thanks. This update occurred at 9 a.m., September 10.
CLERK RECOGNITION
Town Clerk Claire Woolfolk received her certified municipal clerk designation from the International Institute of Municipal Clerks.
APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATIONS
The board appointed Gail Marshall to the Board of Assessment Review.
Jerry Miller was appointed to the Board of Assessment Review.
Kevin Walls was also appointed to the Board of Assessment Review.
“Could you say something about the board of assessment; what exactly it is?” Dudman asked. “We haven’t heard about it in years.”
“The board of assessment review is basically the appeals board for assessments. It’s a separate board that is under fairly strict guidelines as to what they can and can’t do. But there’s likely a pending appeal coming,” Kimball said.
He didn’t believe the board has met since 2010.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/kOeCnghZkJA?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
Update: We’ve corrected a typo on a number and the word geotechnical, which spellcheck changed to geothermal and we didn’t catch. Apologies! We’ve also added a bit more info from Henkel, with many thanks. This update occurred at 9 a.m., September 10.
RECENT PRESS RELEASES AND BRIEFS
To see all the press releases, click here. To see our news, click here. For the full archive, click here. All of these are on our dedicated website.
Discover more from Bar Harbor Story
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.