Southwest Harbor Sets Budget, Talks FEMA Funds and Shore Road Issues
Potential Four-Day Work Week Discussed
SOUTHWEST—The Southwest Harbor Select Board set its draft budget for fiscal year 2026 to head to the town warrant, Tuesday night, and also discussed recovery efforts for town properties impacted by the winter storms that occurred in January 2024.
The mill rate is now approximately 10.17, which is a 12.7% increase. Most of the board’s motions concerning the budget were unanimous with an occasional recusal or abstention (such as Chapin McFarland not voting on the fire department’s section of the budget and Vice Chair Natasha Johnson abstaining on $610,998 for reserved and restricted funds) or an occasional nay, which came from Chair Carolyn Ball, who voted against the placement of $65,000 for the library and $5,640 for Harbor House Community Center. James Vallette voted against confirming the amount of $513,965 for county tax.
The proposed education budget has increased by 12.1% to $6,676,686.
The proposed share of county tax has increased by 20% to $513,965.
The total municipal budget has increased 15.6% to $6,368,543. The total “revenues” portion of the budget (non-property tax revenue, state revenue sharing and unassigned fund balance) has increased by 8.6% to just under $2 million.
“With the new bonds,” the budget had already increased over 6% Vallette said.
Those new bonds Vallette referred to are just under half a million of voter-approved bonds for the town’s water and sewer district.
“Most of the rest is taken by increases in the county tax and in the education appropriation,” Vallette said of the budget increases.
Chapin McFarland abstained on the fire department vote for $349,431 to be placed on the warrant. The police department was placed on the warrant for $832,244.
“If people want to have a flat budget, then the question is what are you going to cut from existing services?” Vallette asked, mentioning the difficult balancing act of not decreasing services while also not increasing property taxes.
Vallette said he’d love to see fuller island-wide conversation about sharing dispatch and police service.
ZOOM GLITCH AND FEMA FUNDS
A Zoom glitch right after the meeting began had board member Noah Burby and seven other Zoom guests in silence and unable to watch the meeting. That glitch led to the loss of approximately 10 minutes of the meeting.
When Zoom attendees returned, the board was discussing the Manset pier.
The town received approximately $15,000 from Maine for initial emergency repairs.
Town Manager Karen Reddersen said a mitigation team will come in and look and decide what is too cost prohibitive for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help with the Manset pier work. Raising the pier was already considered cost prohibitive by FEMA. The agency would only look at mitigation for one of the options, Reddersen said. One of the mitigation options was a concrete pour meant to reinforce the pier and improve it.
Once the concrete is poured, it raises it about a foot higher. Reddersen said that will give the pier a gain of net eight inches. Possibly ten, Harbormaster Rob Leavitt verified.
“The decking is the weak spot of the Manset pier,” he said.
That decking has been the subject of some contention due to a FEMA required engineering survey that recommended a 20,000-pound weight limit on the dock.
“We’re just trying to get all of our ducks in a row as fast as we can,” Reddersen said of the process, which has seen her meeting with three different FEMA representatives so far. Reddersen is still in her first year of employment in the town.
The lower town dock is a different story, Leavitt said, there they are focusing on the lower town dock’s floats.
“They’re all in poor shape,” he said. “We’ve removed the outermost (floats) … this fall … and we’ve replaced the middle two with repaired relief floats.”
The hope is to get through the season with the current floats and the town has applied for a SHIP grant with the MaineDOT.
SHORE ROAD
Vallette also mentioned needed repairs to the Shore Road. The working estimate for just the boulders on that road was $100,000, he said.
“It’s one of the projects that is submitted. It was filed with environmental and I met with them a few weeks ago,” Reddersen said.
If the road isn’t fixed until fall, Vallette asked if there had been consideration to close it to traffic to prevent further decay.
FOUR-DAY WORK SCHEDULE
Much like Trenton, the Southwest Harbor Select Board is considering a four-day work week for town office staff. Trenton just approved that change in its town office hours earlier this month.
This increases the hours town office in-person services are available for the public at the end and beginning of the open days, Reddersen said.
The proposal could have the town office open four days a week, Monday through Thursday, from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Reddersen said she thought it would cut down overtime needs. “It’s something that we feel would meet a wider public need from a time perspective.”
“We want to be the town on the island that people want to work at,” Reddersen said.
Johnson said she’d researched and found out that different schools and different local areas have different year-round schedules, such as Ellsworth schools only having students attend mornings on Fridays. She said she worried about staff working 10 hours days.
Reddersen said they worked with the Maine Municipal Association and that there were 45 municipalities that tried the four-week schedule in Maine. Johnson said that’s less than 10%. There are 453 towns and cities in Maine and 29 plantations.
“We would be a leader,” Johnson said.
Ball said that an early start at the town office is not as beneficial as staying later, which would help get committees started with meetings. Those meetings often begin at 5 p.m. or later. She also said it could be flexible so some could come in early and others could stay late.
Town Clerk Jennifer LaHaye said staff would like to see morning hours increase rather than evening hours.
Any change can be undone, Reddersen said, but it’s something the team felt very strongly about. Johnson said she’d love to have anonymous input from staff about any change.
The request, Reddersen said, is employee-driven for office staff.
The main concern from some board members was that Friday would be the closed day rather than Monday (where there are holidays) and summer visitors tending to be there on long weekend and having Friday needs.
SEAWALL ROAD AND OTHER REQUESTS FOR FUTURE CONVERSATION
There has been no movement with the DOT about the permanent repairs to the Seawall Road, Reddersen said. She added that an Acadia National Park official has reached out to MaineDOT about the reconstruction. They are setting up a meeting to discuss the situation further.
She said she reached out to legislators and didn’t receive a lot of “strong” response back.
“Here we are and we have no plan,” Reddersen said. She also hasn’t heard from the MaineDOT about planned work by the IGA.
McFarland said that he saw on DOT plan that there would be paving on the Pretty Marsh Road.
Work on the sidewalk on Main Street is expected to begin March 31 and end June 10.
Water and Sewer District Supervisor Steve Kenney is no longer employed with the district and Aaron Zurek has been appointed interim supervisor for the town until October 31, 2025. There will be a search for Kenney’s replacement.
“We thank Steve for his hard work and efforts on behalf of Southwest Harbor and wish him well,” Reddersen said.
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