Building a Shared Future.
League of Towns Hopes to Tackle the Big Issues Together.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.
SOUTHWEST HARBOR—The League of Towns has a mission.
The group of town officials from throughout the Mount Desert Island region wants to be problem solvers for the region where some of the problems seem too big for one community to deal with alone.
“That’s the heart of why we’re here tonight,” Noel Musson, principal planner and owner of the Musson Group, said at an April 16 elected officials meeting, to find the goals that all the town’s elected leadership can all get behind.
It’s important to take the time to build the foundation so that actions can happen, Musson said during the League’s May 27 meeting.
Musson pulled out the common themes from that April meeting and spoke of building an agreement toward goals and strategies at a similar elected officials meeting in October. Between October and April the League and the Musson Group will think about the implementation.
Representatives from the town governments of Bar Harbor, Cranberry Isles, Ellsworth, Lamoine, Mount Desert, Trenton, and Tremont had attended the elected officials meeting.
THE COMMON THEMES
The first theme in the Musson Group’s list was year-round, livable, and affordable communities.
That theme included attainable childcare, healthcare, and education.
All were consistently prioritized the summary report states.
The region also needs to add between 1,500 to 2,500 homes (apartments, condos, houses) to meet demand, it says, referencing the MDI & Acadia Region Housing Study.
“Most homes sold are unaffordable to local residents,” the report states.
The homes that do exist are mostly single-family. Approximately 72% of the homes in the region are owner-occupied. Most renters rent homes in Bar Harbor and Ellsworth.
Those who do own homes are aging and living alone in places with three or more bedrooms. This, the data set says, signals “potential demand for downsizing options.”
Homes off the island are becoming more expensive and increasing to almost the same costs as on-island housing. Approximately 6.7% of rented homes are vacant as are .94% of owned homes.
Another theme was regional collaboration and governance. The group synthesized around the need to create systems for “collaborative decision-making, shared services, and regional advocacy,” the report says.
“Participants recognized that local leaders and town officials need training, peer support, and shared data/tools to make informed collaborative decisions,” according to the summary.
A sense of place and stewardship, infrastructure and transportation improvements and economic resilience through shared assets were the final three themes mentioned in the summary.
The idea, Musson, said is to take common themes and create goal statements to test the water in October.
The commonality, Southwest Harbor Town Manager Karen Reddersen said, is that sense of place and stewardship.
Lunt said more people are speaking of the island as a whole community.
We all treasure our individual histories and identities, Lunt said, as each community should, but that doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
You can be proud of being from Tremont, worry about Tremont, love Tremont, and also be proud of being from the island, worry about the island, and love the island.
“These problems are going to be with us for a long time,” Lunt said. The goal is to create and build adaptable structures to deal with those problems. “I would hate to see us go all this way and fall apart again in a year.”
Lunt has announced his retirement as Mount Desert’s town manager and is expected to be done in that role this August. At the next League meeting, they will elect a new chair, a position Lunt currently serves in.
At the Southwest Harbor Select Board meeting, also on May 27, Vice Chair Chapin McFarland asked Reddersen if she was going to be the new League of Towns’ chair.
She said she’d been asked and would, but also wanted to see if any other administrator wanted that position since she has not been in serving as a town administrator as long as others in the area have.
COLLABORATIONS
“We’re all trying to achieve very similar goals,” Musson told the group on Tuesday morning.
There are a lot of commonalities out there between the communities, and it’s taking the time to articulate that they are going in the same direction and then create the process to go there, he said.
“Our first thought is what we are going to do together, if we could get that sort of thought going … that would be a huge accomplishment,” Lunt said.
Tremont Town Manager Jesse Dunbar said that already there’s been more and more dialogue among the communities about collaborations in different areas regarding zoning and housing.
“I think it would be good to have a strategic plan for the area,” he said, and to continue to recognize that some things will be more appropriate for Bar Harbor than Southwest Harbor or Lamoine and vice versa.
“We are a very diverse set of communities,” Lunt agreed.
Lunt hoped the League’s initial plan will create road maps for the communities to revise each year and for future collaborative plans.
Musson agreed. “The question will be how do we make it so that these goals we’ve all agreed to aren’t just going to sit on a document.”
“Somehow we really have to make that thing come to life,” Lunt said of the goals and upcoming plan.
And then the next question will be how and should the League help bring that plan to life.
LEAGUE FINANCES
Currently, the Musson Group’s work with the League of Town is funded by a grant. The League of Town’s role in implementing any regional goals and changes could potentially increase its budgetary needs.
Only one elected officials meeting is budgeted per year. Unlike many towns who have fiscal years that start and end between March and June, depending on the community, the League’s budget runs with the calendar year, Treasurer and Lamoine Administrative Assistant Stu Marckoon said.
The main cost for that elected officials meeting was the food bill. They will target that for the next budget, they agreed.
HOW TO ENGAGE COMMUNITIES AND ELECTED OFFICIALS
The group discussed how to engage each town’s government throughout the process.
“Maine communities … They are very good at being reactive,” Musson said. “How do we find the time to think about being proactive just for a little bit?”
Does that outreach from the League to the towns have to happen at a regular meeting of a council or a select board or in a special meeting for each of the boards and councils or in a joint meeting (or multiple joint meetings) for the region? They also spoke of having League updates at regular board and council meetings.
“They are never really able to reach their full potential,” Lunt said of councils and boards because they are so busy doing the monthly chores and duties.
The group also discussed how to engage the people of each town who aren’t elected officials or town staff.
Bar Harbor Town Planner Michele Gagnon suggested building up to the regional events by having potential ways for citizens to engage from the beginning, similar to Bar Harbor’s comprehensive plan’s public engagement process. Reddersen ran with the idea, mentioning both in-person and virtual sticky notes being available for people in each community.
“People deserve the ability to comment,” Gagnon said.
Tremont Town Manager Jesse Dunbar suggested when it came to the in-person meeting to have regional groupings and to not have them as agenda items at the end of council and board’s regular meetings.
Gagnon also mentioned creating a newsletter for a region when the proper time occurs and that this could be used as an engagement tool. Musson said a newsletter could also be an action item for the goal of better regional coordination.
“It could serve both,” Musson said.
Dunbar also suggested a centralized website for the League so that people could easily see what its doing and what it is. Currently, the League of Towns’ internet presence is a page on the Town of Mount Desert’s website where it explains that it is “a collaborative unit of government serving Bar Harbor, Cranberry Isles, Ellsworth, Lamoine, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Swans Island, Tremont, Trenton and Acadia National Park.”
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
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Correction: We misidentified Susanne Paul in the caption of one of the photos. We are so sorry for the error and so thankful to Susanne for being so gracious about it.
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