Eight people are running for four available seats on the Bar Harbor Town Council, and at least two new members of the board will be elected on Tuesday, June 10.
The only candidate previously elected to the board is current Councilor Earl Brechlin, former editor of the Bar Harbor Times and Mount Desert Islander weekly newspapers, who has served on the 7-seat board since 2023.
Brechlin is running for one of two available three-year terms on the board, along with Steven Boucher, a local real estate agent, and former local police chief Nate Young. Longtime council member Matthew Hochman, who has served on the board since 2016, opted not to seek re-election to another three-year term.
Competing for one two-year term on the board are Kevin Knopp, Randy Sprague and Diane Vreeland. Knopp is a financial professional and Vreeland is a former hospital radiologist, according to candidate profiles published by Bar Harbor Story.
Sprague, owner of a local plumbing and heating service company, is already serving on the board, having been appointed by 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.
Another councilor who resigned in January is Kyle Shank, who moved 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 the seat.
Competing for a one-year term on the council, to fill out the remainder of Shank’s term, are 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.
