Selectboard - Regular Meeting

Um, so I would like to start the meeting and I would like to ask for a motion to go into executive session.

So moved 2nd, all in favor.

Welcome back everyone. Um, I will take a motion to approve the minutes of August 3, 2026. 2nd, all in favor appointments and resignations, none consent agenda. None. When you select court reports, I have 1.

I think it's time that we took another look at short-term rentals. They're back in the news. The Bar Harbor story did a couple of good articles about it on August 6th, about the discussion at the Tremont Select Board and August 12th, the similar discussion in Southwest Harbor. There's new state legislation that allow, starting next year, will allow three dwelling units on the lot and four dwelling units in a designated growth area. And towns have to be in compliance by July 2027. I know that this legislation is intended to create more housing for more people, but it could backfire and it could, without an ordinance in place, it could result in enormous growth in short-term rentals in all of our towns. I'm not against, I said this when we tried to tackle this before, I'm not against people renting out their own homes or space in their home. That's an old tradition in our town, and I think it's one that should continue. I'm talking about the growing practice of people using homes as investments, people buying up houses or building houses and using them like hotels. This does nothing to promote a healthy, vibrant, year-round community, which we all want. It's time we address the issue. I think we need to begin by taking stock of what's going on in our town, find out how many short-term rentals there actually are, currently exist. Who owns them? Are they owned by the people who live in the house? Are they somebody from out of town, out of state? That's the first step, but we can't stop there. We need to put some guardrails in place so our town doesn't turn into a ghost town.

I agree 100%. Thank you.

Any comments? Thank you, Martha. That's very to the point. I do have something. I just want to get out there and reiterate the importance to have a plan in place for um for our issue with town garage um and just to let people know that nothing's going to happen overnight we are working on plans but we need to we need to get those plans in place and have something for folks that we've overlooked because apparently there are a lot of folks in town that don't have the wherewithal to get their garbage out at the end of their private roads either there isn't a container there or there isn't space or something like that so we need to look into getting that done okay that's all i got anyone else be directing alex to figure it out we're still playing with some ideas as is anyways i will say the communications

that we've gotten from outside people, letters, some of them have been really good, had really good points. Um, so I feel like we're making progress, getting information out there that we need to do something. And I will say if you drive by that town garage Sunday night, I saw it's discussed. I've made a point to do it this. I no wonder we have to do something like it is beyond uncontrollable. And so we have to do something, but.

I think one of the things, and Brian mentioned this, and he's on the Zoom call, by the way, but there's a rather enormous amount of the trash for the town itself that seems to be passing through there, a much larger chunk than would seem rational. And so that's part of what we've got to really figure out here. A lot of it is out-of-town trash.

I agree.

Yeah, I mean, and that's part of why if we all come up with a system, we'll find out pretty fast. And I think anecdotally, we all know it. We've all been there after hours and seen the car pull up where you're just like, no, no. So, yeah. So we know that's out there. But yeah, there's a lot of work to be done on this one. This is definitely proven to be a stickier one than I think initially thought.

Go ahead, Brian. Go ahead. Oh, so yeah, we're still trying to collect data and information and really understand what the circumstances are so that we can come up with a good solution for how we're going to move forward with this. There's not a fixed answer, certainly. And I'm doing some data collection in terms of managing the way in which we're dumping it such that we can actually know total volumes coming out of there. We're trying to pay attention to what's going on there, make sure that our camera system is operational. So we're trying to do that. I would ask that if anyone does come to either, you know, any town staff or any of the select board members and does talk about their particular circumstances, by all means, please send them my way. I want to hear as many people as I possibly can. I want to understand all the circumstances as much as I can and really use that information to our best ability to craft something that will work but does improve the conditions at the town garage. But I need to hear from people. So please refer people to me as much as possible.

I haven't heard anything personally, but I think I mentioned before, I have visions of having the place closed up and Monday morning come down and find, well, if we can't get in, just drop it at the gate. And I actually see that happening. Maybe not.

No, it does. It's well documented. Oh, yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Process question, what role does the sustainability committee play in this? Because to me, this is part kind of managing the town garage and it's part recycling and trash procedures, expenses. where does this get hashed out where does this get workshopped i have full faith in brian but i think having you know volunteers who have put a lot of time and thought into this in the past we just just need to understand what their role is if any actually um i can tell you uh none there's no role for them in this this is this is strictly a town thing i don't want to put that

of committee work on that particular committee because it really that committee was designed initially to to get the led lights installed and the fixtures installed and work on solar and work on sustainability stuff we've had very very little interaction other than phil went out to look at uh municipal waste hub at one point when it was fiber right uh very little involvement in in municipal solid waste okay that's helpful yeah So the recycling, different issue, but the sustainability committee's input on recycling will simply have to do with what we end up recycling, either returnables or used sports equipment or used tools, things like that. Things that aren't part of our mainstream. I just think you get yourself into trouble when you land something like that, because that's going to take a lot of horsepower to figure out. Okay, anything else?

Can I make a side note?

Yes.

When we visited Waste Hub, was that Have we had a meeting since then or not? I can't.

I'm losing track. The belts were running. A successful visit, the belts were running.

Oh boy. I posted a little very, very amateur video up on our YouTube channel if anyone wants to look at it. Yeah. No, it's that.

For sure. And the grill is still there. It is really impressive.

You're not making a mistake.

So bad.

That's okay. Thank you for your service in going back.

The entertaining part was watching the lady with that enormous backhoe try to lift a stuffed elephant out of the pile and perch it up somewhere.

I thought the most interesting thing was the grill. The barbecue grill in the facility for people to have their lunch there.

Well, we never quite figured out if it was salivating.

That might have been a statement of decorationism.

All right. Anything else? All right, unfinished business, none presented new business, public space, special event, application, neighborhood house and not desert police association community barbecue. September 13, 2026. Northeast tower village green approval. All in favor. Approval of service agreement with the town of our heart police department. Police department.

Do you want me to speak about this before you make a motion?

Yeah. We'll make a motion first, won't we?

Yeah, make a motion first.

Move approval.

Okay.

What this is, this is a one-off for a new officer who will be stationed in the town of Mount Desert. But instead of us hiring this person on as a Mount Desert employee directly, Bar Harbor is bringing this person on and then will bill us for the services. From the perspective of the residents, there's no change to the cost or how the person will function. This was a more experienced person where their pay structure is better structured for handling somebody like this. And this is a great example of where, as we draw closer to the date at which we truly merge, you may see us making more and more decisions like this. And the way I put it is we are acting under the assumption that this is going to work and that we are going to merge because we've seen nothing that would cause us to feel otherwise in terms of the dealings with the force, the way it's working between the two towns, and mostly just how successfully this police force is running right now. So we really have two paths. We can either assume and make assumptions like this as if it's going to occur, or we can go the opposite direction. And I think going the opposite direction and acting as if it's not going to work isn't really fair to employees, to anyone. I think we need to do that. something were to occur and we didn't cross the finish line, we can adjust course for there. But we sort of need to plan for what I think we all agree is the most likely of the outcomes here. And that has a lot to do with just the fact that it's going awfully well. So, yeah.

It was under the assumption that it was already not merged, but you were already doing that. Do we have to go through this with everyone that is hired until we merge or even after?

Not after we merge. They'd all be Bar Harbor employees straight forward. The tricky part for us is moving the employees from Mount Desert to Bar Harbor, moving assets over and really getting the governing language for this so that we have a voice, maybe not too much of a voice, not too little of a voice, but there's a lot of nuances i guess that we just need to get in writing and get just right um in order to do this but there's absolutely no indication from anyone that any of this is going to be problematic um but that hasn't been done yet that's what we're working on in a series of meetings right now figuring it out figuring out the assets figuring out how to bring over audited yeah i think it's a good move yeah um but in terms of operationally for the residents of both towns nobody's going to notice any difference at all like none whatsoever the only tight case where you'd see a huge difference is if we reversed course and say the town of mount dessert chose to try to stand alone again then we'd see massive changes to budgets massive changes to staffing and none of it in a direction that i think our residents would be happy with so There's that.

No, all in favor.

Authorize the use of 120,997 dollars and 30 cents from public works road reserve account 4050100 dash 24573 with an approximate unencumbered balance of 153,830 dollars and 66 cents. to pay outstanding costs on contracts for the Jordan Pond Road sewer line replacement project.

Move authorization.

Second.

Second. Oh, you're second again.

Any discussion?

Yeah. Brian, what's that fog? They haven't even done it yet. What is the 153,000 ?

The two contracts that we did at the last Select Board meeting, when we were initially putting those together, we were looking at the account balance for where we've moved those pooled bond funds, which is in excess of what we needed for those two contracts. Thankfully, Nancy went back and looked at what was authorized at the last annual town meeting, which was short of the total amount for those two contracts. So the town meeting had a specific amount that was authorized. It's not just everything that was available. It was 1.8 million. It's like 1834, I think, something like that. And so there is a shortage relative to what was authorized at that previous annual town meeting, but there's not a shortage in the total funds that have been pooled together. So what we're doing is going to use a reserve account to cover the difference, just so we have everything allocated such that we can pay those contracts when they do the work. okay i misunderstood that that was when where you're just having securing the funds so we can pay the funds this is yeah this is the this is the step to secure the funds and then potentially for repayment of those funds we might be looking towards another authorization at annual town meeting to then pay back that reserve account where we're using money out of it yeah The reserve accounts, that's a pretty big hit in a reserve account, and you'd want to have a plan for how you'd pay that back. And we'll be working on that and potentially bringing that forward for a warrant article or your review later.

Brian, will that reserve account be sufficient for the rest of the year?

It's a rarely used reserve account. It's the roads reserve. We have a budget line for paving, which we typically do the road work out of. So we'll raise manholes and we'll do paving on that. So it's a pretty limited use. It's just been a handful of times since I've been here. So I don't foresee there being an issue with that particular reserve account and this use.

Nancy, did you want to weigh in? No.

I agree with what he's saying is we're able to use, so I think we'll be fine. Thanks.

Thank you, Brian. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. One more process question. So using a road reserve account to do sewer line replacement, is that a slippery slope, Brian? Is that a precedent that we have to be careful about?

know the the history of the sewer lines in the road have actually they've been a roads project okay so okay i've mixed things a little bit differently than what tony's past practice was so the sewer the wastewater collection line system typically had been kind of in the the highways division and primarily within the public works superintendent I kind of have put both of the superintendents into the mix in terms of understanding what we have for both stormwater collection and sewer collection. I just feel it's better to have that institutional knowledge spread across a couple of people and that they're both out there understanding what our systems look like. So roads is pretty typical in the past of where wastewater collection systems come from. The sewer reserve, which is a separate reserve account, is typically the pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants.

That's helpful.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else? All in favor? Okay, review and adopt the municipal resolution for emergency medical services transport plan for the town of Mount Desert Fire Department.

That's right. Second.

Okay, so all this is about posting. This is playing that we already have in place.

Correct. Right. So, say a main form of blue ribbon committee. And really what they're looking at is coverage across the state. We're trying to get an official tally because some agencies with the new DEA changes and everything else are giving up their paramedic license. And so they're really trying to get a grasp on who's doing what officially so that they can make recommendations to the state on how to approach EMS moving forward. So really, we formed this resolution in 2022 in the town. and we're just basically translating it to the verbiage the state is requiring for posting to meet the terms of the Blue Ribbon Committee.

We have a motion and a second, correct? Mm-hmm. Okay. Any more discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Great. Thanks, Kyle. information a letter from resident alan kimberly regarding proposed elimination of public dumpsters at public works garage and warrant giving public notice of commissioner district caucus for election of budget advisory committee members i'd like to explain that one if we've got something right yeah um so this is an interesting one we have a caucus at 2 p.m next monday um

for the budget advisory committee. I was able to track down a couple of people at the county this afternoon to get the answer as to what that entails. So at this caucus, this is the point in time at which any elected official within the town of Mount Desert would like to put in their name to be on the budget advisory committee for Hancock County and serve on that, that would be their time to come in and for members of the public to come in and to essentially affirm that caucus and vote for them at that moment in time. Unfortunately, it is elected officials only, not appointed officials like say a town manager or a finance director. So for somebody to come forward for that caucus, it would need to be one of our elected officials, and that would be at 2 o'clock next Monday. So I was looking forward to serving on it, and I'm sad.

How many people are on that committee?

The Budget Advisory Committee? I believe it is a nine-person committee, but I could be wrong on that.

So they're not from all the towns? Not all the towns, no.

We would get one if we put someone for it because we represent such a large share of county taxes.

Rodney wants to do it. How often do they meet?

I'm thinking about elected now. It would probably be, I think, every couple of weeks through the winter months. Again, I don't have a lot of visibility into exactly how this works. It is something we are the largest taxpayer in Cumberland County. I haven't done that one in a while.

Hancock County.

I was hanging out with Cumberland County folks a lot last week. So I think it is an important thing for the town of Mount Desert, but it's something for us to discuss as to how we want to approach this moving forward.

Where do they meet?

The caucus or the actual meetings? The actual meetings. I believe they occur at the administrative building for Hancock County. Which is where? In Trenton.

It's in Trenton, okay.

and it's an elsewhere county okay building the courthouse oh it's at the courthouse i think okay yes give them a lot of money yep is this caucus uh specific to the town of mount dessert or is this yes it is okay yep so it is a 2 p.m caucus commissioner novella will be here to organize it we're essentially just giving them the use of the room for them to hold the caucus here and do they do a similar thing in all other towns Not all other towns, but as needed as needed. Yeah.

So this caucus will involve anyone, everyone that's interested in. Having that spot who is an elected official of the town of map to search. So what's the support of the 5 of us? Plus the school boards. So, I think the school.

Well, the elementary school board could count because it would be specific to. On map dessert. Yes. Well, that could potentially be a group of people who could fit in on it. Yes. The elected piece is the tricky piece. And I understand the rationale behind it. It just is very limiting, of course. So that's our explanation on this one. I was able to tease out this afternoon. Like I said, I was actually looking forward to serving on that.

I got that impression.

Yeah.

There's my information on that 1, so you don't know, like, you said twice a month, but you don't know, like, what day of the week or.

I only sort of learned about this, but I can certainly learn more in the next couple of days.

Yeah, because I would make a difference.

Yes.

Yeah.

If you did it, because you get a lot of it now, I mean, I just, I do a lot of budgets, so I feel like it makes sense, but I. Right now it can't be 2 o'clock on a Monday afternoon. So I wonder if it'd be possible also to zoom in.

Oh, yeah, I will ask these questions.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Any public comment, any general comment about something.

Alex, what was the award that Derlin, didn't Derlin just get another award at your meeting that you went to? He did. I just feel like that's a nice public thing to say.

Yeah, thank you. So, yes, last week I was at the Maine Town and City Managers Association annual conference and joining me there as an ambassador, you know, no longer our town manager, but for very distinguished town managers and city managers who have a good career, they end up going up there as ambassadors. to help mentor new managers to serve up advice as best as possible. And Derlin won the Lifetime Achievement Award, which actually basically gives him a membership running through the next bunch of years automatically at MTCMA. And just as a side note, they just love him up there. It's pretty cool to watch. It's really interesting to watch how well known and respected he is. you know here it's a year later but to them it's just um yes that's really nice i just thanks for sharing that yeah yeah um definitely i should have jumped in on that but no it was it was a cool thing to see okay all right any more public comments or comments private comments

Okay, treasurer's warrants, approval and signature, town invoice AP 2712 and DD 2705 for the grant total of $3,047,560.68. Move approval and signature. Second. All in favor? I have a quick question. I am in favor of it.

This had some big numbers in it. So for Nancy and Alex just confirmed for me that the 1.6 million plus or minus to Hancock County treasurer is. County taxes. Thank you. That was my assumption and the 776,000 dollars to trust company. Is that moving funds from 1 account to another? Or is that a payment for services?

That is the bond payment for the school that was taken out last year. But I want to double check that 1. I'm pretty sure. 99% sure on that one, but I'll check with Nancy.

But it's a, it's a bump in.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The 6Million. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um, good all in favor. I approval approval and signature. State fees and payroll benefits AP 2710, DD 2704, AP 2711, town payroll PR 2705 for a grant total of $342,837.16. I move authorization. All in favor? 1 abstention please. Acknowledgement school invoice MDESAP03, school payroll MDESPRO4 for grant total of $196,553.99. Second. All in favor? I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second.

All in favor?