After three worrisome incidents, town officials are looking at new security measures alongside improvements to the aging building, while preserving residents’ access to their local government.

Carrie Jones

Sep 22, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by First National Wealth Management.

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MOUNT DESERT—Historically, open access to town officials has been a core tenet of local Maine government.

Residents discuss and workshop with town staff about issues at the town office, at annual town meetings, at workshops and boards, and sometimes over the counter at the town clerk’s office or at the grocery store or elementary school field.

However, many towns throughout Maine, worry about threats—or potential threats—that might come to town staff and officials. That puts some towns in a place where they have to balance the safety of their team and that necessary open access to elected officials, appointed volunteers, and town staff.

For Mount Desert, maintaining that balance will likely come by renovating its town hall and offices.

“It’s sort of one of those necessary evils that I think we really need to talk through a little bit,” Town Manager Alex Kimball told the Mount Desert Selectboard, September 21.

One main reason for the renovation is to make the building more secure.

“This is a hard one right here because I’ve also had many many people say to me over time, ‘You know, gosh, I wish the glass would come down. Gosh, I wish we could go back to the wide open lobby,’” Kimball said who started in the position of town manager in 2025. “We can’t. We just can’t. And I’ll come back to that again. We’ve got to go in a different direction. And this isn’t me coming from Portland and being like ‘we need to have Portland here.’ It’s much more a function of as much as we think we’re immune from these things here in this town hall; we’re not.”

Kimball listed a trio of recent events that highlighted those security needs.

“We’ve had at least one individual, not in a particularly good mental state, come crashing through the sliding door because they thought they knew who I was. This person had never actually met me,” Kimball relayed.

Another person walked out of the town building irate.

“Another person who had a very frustrating exchange and walked out the door by telling people as he walked out the door, ‘they will regret this.’ Now, it turns out, I think he mostly probably meant legally. But when somebody angrily walks out the door telling us we’re going to regret it, it’s not a great feel,” Kimball said.

The third event had a tragic end and Kimball said it’s an event not many people heard about.

“This March we had an individual drive up to Mount Desert Island from another state, drive into the parking lot in the evening, outside of the fire department, and overnight, after dark in that parking lot, that person committed suicide. We discovered them in the morning and when the police looked through the car, as (Police Chief) Dave Kerns put it, there were more firearms in that vehicle than in the police department,” Kimball said. “So that happened. That occurred this March here in our parking lot. So when we talk about these kind of things and we talk about the next slide, which is also not going to be one people love to see, we’re talking about mass shootings.”

Kimball then showed a slide of mass shootings.

“I come back to my experience at the County of Cumberland where I think in my first half dozen years there, we maybe did one active shooter training the whole time,” Kimball said. “By the time I left, we were doing two a year and we were getting evacuated about twice a year.”

Though people might make the comment that Mount Desert is 20-25 years behind the times, Kimball said, if you look at 25-30 years ago on his graph, what comes next.

“We need to both make the lobby area of this town hall better, but then we also need to enclose it better. We need to actually have true security between the outer areas of this town hall and the employees. And as much as people might think and might try to say, ‘Okay, we’re in the Town of Mount Desert. This is we’re separate from these things. We’re immune from these things.’ The universe has been sort of screaming at us a little bit really in the past year.”

The security of the building, he said, is important to think about as the town prioritizes potential changes.

The National League of Cities reported in 2021 that of the local public officials responding, approximately eighty-one percent had been harassed, threatened or experienced violence. And eighty-seven percent said they’d witnessed other public officials experience this.

“From a security standpoint, you have no idea what’s coming through that door until they’re already in here and it’s too late,” Town Clerk Claire Woolfolk said. She also expressed concerns about how difficult it is for people to get into the office when in a wheelchair.

There is already a plan for the renovation and it doesn’t just cover security needs, but also addresses other issues in the building. It’s expected to cost $600,000 to $800,000 at the lowest with work occurring in fall and winter 2027-2028.

The plan would address the small public lobby, desk shortages, ADA compliance and other issues.

“With a few tweaks to this town hall, we can accomplish a lot of stuff,” Kimball said.

The plan calls for two new vestibules, a conference room and the vestibules help with accessibility and to see who is coming into the building.

The front lobby can be expanded, a real door installed, and a conference room added between buildings.

The next step would typically go out for RFP, but the town could justify it as sole-source and that DGC (Design Group Collaborative) has already made the plans and has a knowledge base.

Kimball also explained why the renovation doesn’t use spaces currently used by the fire department or police department.

The fire department upstairs space is used for 24-hour shift firefighters and somewhat separate from the town office. The downstairs portion is full of equipment used for fire suppression.

The more interesting point is police, he said.

The proposed complete merger with the police department isn’t going to change anything procedurally, he said. There is a small room next to the police department that could be potentially big enough for one staff member.

However, he said, Bar Harbor officers who take an overtime shift in Mount Desert like the way Mount Desert feels, that extra space, the locker rooms, and evidence room are welcoming he said and incentivize those officers coming over and taking overtime shifts in the town.

“The last thing I want to do as we move forward is to create any disincentive” for those officers, Kimball said.

“I’ve gotten to that age myself where I remember before this place was done. And so in my mind’s eye, I’m like, ‘This is a new building.’ Except then I realized, ‘No, this is a 50-year-old building. I’m just old,’” Kimball said of when he first began the town manager job. “And so over the years, we’ve done a number of renovations to this building. Of course, there was the original structure. There was the addition that created the current fire station and the offices that we’ve got now. Just recently, of course, we did the major expansion to the fire station area. Along the way, over the years at this town hall, we’ve been doing a lot of sort of bits and pieces and gradual changes here and there. The problem with that has been that one area that’s really, really showing its age and showing a lot of different problems is really the main employee area, these meeting rooms, the lobby, and the town hall area. And it’s sort of reached a point by now where it’s really not working for anyone. It’s not working very well for the public and it’s not working very well for the employees.”

Next steps include determining if the town should go through an RFP process, if not approving a DGC contract at an upcoming meeting, for completion of the plans for better estimates, and then issuing a bond for the May 2027 town meeting. The current estimate is between $600-800k but doesn’t include furniture.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

To watch the meeting.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-AygyTs-v5c?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

All graphics are from Kimball’s presentation.

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