Bar Harbor voters decided to elect two new town councilors on Tuesday as eight candidates faced off for four seats.
Incumbent councilors Earl Brechlin and Randy Sprague were elected to new terms on the Town Council, joining newcomers Steve Boucher and David Kief.
Earl Brechlin, former editor of the Bar Harbor Times and Mount Desert Islander weekly newspapers, has served on the 7-seat board since 2023. He was running for one of two available three-year terms, along with Boucher, a local real estate agent, and former local police chief Nate Young. Brechlin received 993 votes, Boucher received 700 and Young received 614.
Competing for one two-year term on the board were Kevin Knopp, Randy Sprague and Diane Vreeland. Sprague won with 639 votes, while Knopp received 475 and Vreeland got 257.
Sprague, owner of a local plumbing and heating service company, was appointed to the council in January. He filled a seat left vacant by the resignation of Gary Friedmann, who resigned to focus on his other elected role as a member of the Maine House of Representatives, to which he was elected in November.
Competing for a one-year term on the council, to fill out the remainder of a term vacated by former councilor Kyle Shank, were Nina St. Germain, a local hospitality business owner, and David Kief, who has worked as a fisherman, a boat captain and builder, and a carpenter, according to Bar Harbor Story. Kief won with 848 votes while St. Germain received 562.
Longtime council member Matthew Hochman, who has served on the board since 2016, opted not to seek re-election to another three-year term.
Shank, like Friedmann, also resigned his seat in January, after deciding to move away from Bar Harbor for work-related reasons. Meagan Kelley, a former warrant committee member who had been appointed to fill out Shank’s term on the council, opted not to run to keep her council seat.
Kelley instead ran to serve again on the warrant committee. She defeated Michael Good in a bid for one available two-year term on the committee, receiving 824 votes to Good’s 404.
In a seven-candidate race for 5 three-year terms on the warrant committee, Tammy Bloom, Robert Chaplin, John Kelly, Louise Lopez and Victoria Smith were elected while Eben Salvatore and Timothy Smith each came up short.
In the school committee race, Tracy Neel and Tyson Starling defeated Carlyle Paul in a 3-way race for 2 three-year terms.
Bar Harbor has 4,619 registered voters, but only 1,462 cast ballots in Tuesday’s local elections, amounting to roughly a 30 percent turnout, according to town officials.
