Two people are running for one open seat on the Penobscot County Commission.
Bangor City Councilor Dan Tremble, 59, and former Bangor City Councilor Cary Weston, 52, both of Bangor, are running for the seat during the Nov. 5 election.
They are vying for the District 1 seat, which covers Bangor, Brewer, Clifton, Eddington, Holden and Orrington. It is held by longtime Commissioner Peter Baldacci, who is retiring after decades as a county commissioner.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
The Penobscot County Commission candidates are listed in the order they appear on the ballot.
Dan Tremble
Tremble spent 12 years as the county treasurer from 2006 to 2018 and is entering his 15th year on the City Council, having served from 1999 to 2005 and again starting in 2020. His term on council ends November 2025 but he said he would resign for the last 10 months if elected to commission. He defeated Bangor City Councilor Joseph Leonard in the June primary.
He’s participated in more than 500 county commission meetings as the treasurer, he said. Tremble, who owns the Fairmount Market at 662 Hammond St., decided to run because of his knowledge of how the board works and his desire to continue serving in elected office after he’s term limited from the city council.
The jail is one of the most pressing issues facing the county, Tremble said. It’s unsafe for the people to live and work in and the county is trying to find property to build on.
“Once the location’s nailed down [we’ll be] moving forward with making the case to the people of the county that we need to fund it,” he said.
Addressing the entry pay level for people working in 911 dispatch to help fill vacancies is another priority for Tremble, he said.
“You can’t pay enough for those dispatchers,” Tremble said. “It’s a very stressful position, there’s a lot of burnout.”
He said he also wants to find a way to fix the staffing shortages in the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office.
Tremble, a Democrat, said most of what the commission does is non-partisan because it’s dealing with things to keep the county running.
Cary Weston
Weston served on the Bangor City Council from 2009 to 2012 and again from 2016 to 2019 and served as the mayor during one of those years.
The open commission seat gives Weston a chance to get involved again as an elected official, in a position that gives him the opportunity to look at the bigger picture and address issues from a wider perspective, he said.
“The issues that face our county are facing many counties throughout the state,” Weston said. “One of them is we have kind of an issue around homelessness, drug addiction, dealing with the jail, the lack of resources from a mental health point of view.”
There isn’t enough space in the county jail, meaning inmates can’t get the resources necessary to reform instead of just being housed, Weston said. The jail has become one of the largest mental health and substance use disorder counseling centers by default, something it isn’t set up to handle, he said.
Fixing the jail is one of his biggest priorities, which in turn should help with some of the staffing shortages, especially among the jail’s correctional officers. With the current jail layout, some jobs require multiple people when it should only take one person. A new jail will fix those inefficiencies and help with the staffing shortages without causing anyone to lose their jobs, he said.
In 2018, the Bangor City Council launched an investigation into a potential ethical violation by Weston. It found he did not violate the board’s conflict of interest policies.
Weston is the president of Sutherland Weston, a Bangor-based marketing agency. He is involved in numerous recreation, business and public service activities where paths can get crossed, he said. When that happens, trust is not the only thing that should be relied on for transparency.
“It’s necessary and important that there be systems of checks and balances to ensure transparency,” Weston said. “Each body has those systems in place and I fully intend to respect and abide by the Penobscot County Commissioners established process, as I would expect other commissioners to do as well.”
He said he cares about making the area better than it was, which he said he can do in part by serving on the county commission.
