CAMDEN — With a loaded agenda set for municipal business Tuesday, Jan. 6, the Camden Select Board will step into the new year with several weighty issues, including consideration of four contractor bids to replace a Snow Bowl Lodge wall, hearing a first-year report of the town's short term rental licensing program, reviewing a mutual aid agreement amongst area fire departments, and deciding who — the Town of the Children's House Montessori School — is reponsible for which repairs at the Elm Street school building.

In front of all business, however, will be a special recognition of Camden's Town Clerk Katrina Oakes, who retired November 21. Oakes was town clerk for 23 years, and was deputy town clerk for several years prior to that. Read: After 23-plus years, Camden Town Clerk Katrina Oakes oversees her last election

Mutual Aid Agreement

In a memo to the Select Board, Camden Town Manager Audra Caler outlined the town's role in the Knox County Mutual Aid Association, Inc., which was organized as a nonprofit with bylaws in 2016. The purpose of the nonprofit is to ensure public safety and disaster management, and provide safety education.

"It is also to provide cooperative assistance during fire, life-threatening emergencies, and other incidents," wrote Caler. "The Association’s bylaws, adopted in January 2016, set out membership standards, governance, and general expectations for mutual aid responses."

Mutual aid is an automatic assist rendered by neighboring fire departments, as laid out in the bylaws. The Association exists so its members help and receive, "cooperative assistance in the event of fire, forest fire, or life-threatening situations, to exchange preventive information, and extend more adequate fire prevention and protection of municipalities.

Caler wrote, however, that a gap, "between assumption and certainty in how automatic mutual aid functions in real time" has been recent experience.

"In at least one recent commercial structure fire, automatic mutual aid was dispatched broadly, some departments responded and communicated as expected, and at least one dispatched department neither responded nor communicated unavailability during the incident," said Caler, in her memo. "Incident command therefore had incomplete information about which resources were actually en route and which were not."

She was not assigning fault, she said; adding however: "The issue is governance and risk management:

"Incident command must know, at the moment of dispatch, what resources are actually coming. If dispatched resources do not respond or do not communicate unavailability, commanders are forced to plan based on assumptions rather than confirmed capacity. The current mutual aid framework provides no municipal-level mechanism to ensure consistent communication standards or clarify response expectations."

Caler noted structural limitations of the agreement, which is governed by fire chief, not select boards or municipal staff. Because of that, and the lack of requirement for real-time confirmation or denial of mutual aid response departments through dispatch, the town assumes a risk, "if its planning assumptions about mutual aid reliability do not match reality on the ground."

She recommend the Select Board direct a review of agreement, clarify communication expectations amongst fire departments, direct Camden staff ask neighboring communities for clarification of their own mutual aid expectations, and then return to the Select Board with options to adjust the agreement system.

"Revisiting this agreement is not about undermining cooperation," Caler wrote. "It is about ensuring that Camden’s operational planning, risk exposure, and public safety decisions are based on clear, reliable information rather than assumption."

Use of Drift at the Camden Snow Bowl

In December 2024, Camden Snow Bowl Manager Jeff Nathan asked the Select Board to approve the use of Drift, a chemical additive applied in snowmaking to lower the physical tension of water, and create lighter snow. The answer was delayed following a directive from the Board for more study. Nathan is now returning to the Board with the same request, to allow the Camden Snow Bowl to use DRIFT in its snowmaking system.

Drift was last approved for use by the Select Board in August 2016, when a $920,000 Snow Bowl budget was under consideration. During those budget discussions, the Board and various Snow Bowl representatives spoke about Drift and the hopes raised for making more, and better snow for skiing.

“When you take a drop of water on any surface it beads up,” said Camden resident Dennis McGuirk, in 2016. “These additives change the surface tension of the water, it spreads out to maximize surface area and it freezes better.”

According to CHS Snowmakers, the company that owns the rights to the additive Drift, the substance is a surfactant, not a nucleator, and increases the surface area of each droplet of water, "thus releasing the heat faster to allow more thorough freezing."

 McGuirk told then Camden Select Board member Leonard Lookner that Drift would not affect animals or people. Then Snow Bowl Manager Landon Fake said just after that 2016 meeting that Drift has been used at the Snow Bowl for many years. It was dropped from the snowmaking process over in 2014 and 2015 because of weather and plumbing changes at the pump house, which draws water from Hosmer Pond to the snow guns on the mountain.

Mountain staff again resumed using Drift in snowmaking, but then stopped, and there has been no definitive reason why.

In December 2024, however, Nathan proposed the mountain restart the practice. He asked the Select Board for permission, but after a lengthy discussion, the Board chose instead to direct that a study of Drift environmental impacts and alternatives be conducted, according to Dec. 17, 2024 meeting minutes.

One year later, he is returning to the Select Board to again seek permission to use Drift. In his Jan. 6, 2026 premeeting memo he said the use of Drift would benefit snow quality, improve operational efficiency with less money spent on snowmaking efforts and fuel, increase snowmaking in varying weather conditions, and enhance safety — "lighter snow is safer snow," wrote Nathan.

"Drift is introduced into the snow making system at three parts per million (3ppm or ~3mg/L)," he wrote. "The process begins by mixing one gallon of DRIFT with 29 gallons of water, creating a 30-gallon solution. This solution is then metered into the snow making process at three ppm. If we were to use DRIFT 100% of snow making operations, the Camden Snow Bowl would use ~11.5 gallons of Drift over the season."

Nathan said Hosmer Pond is approximately 54-65 acres in size with a mean depth of nine feet.

"Using a conservative estimate of 54 acres multiplied by the mean depth of 4.5 feet (50% of reported mean depth), Hosmer Pond contains 243 foot-acres of water," said Nathan. "One foot-acre of water contains 325,851 gallons of water. Therefore, Hosmer Pond contains no less than 79,174,503 gallons of water.The total potential concentration of DRIFT in Hosmer Pond is 0.000000145 (11.5 gallons of DRIFT / 79,174,503 gallons of water)."

He also said that he had researched surfactant effects on honey bees, referencing a study of the almond industry in California, and concluded that: "the risk posed by using DRIFT is reasonable and aligns with our values. Better quality snow is safer, more economical to manage and allows us to continue to make snow when coastal humidity levels and temperatures would otherwise prevent snowmaking."

Short Term Rentals

The Select Board will hear Jan. 6 from Camden Planning and Development Director Jeremy Martin a report concerning the first year of the town's licensing program for short term rentals.

He said Camden had joined a number of other Maine municipalities now regulating STRs. They are Bar Harbor, Cape Elizabeth, Ogunquit, Portland, Bangor, Kennebunkport, Falmouth, Kittery, Holden, Rockland, Freeport, Gray, South Portland, and Casco.

In his memo, Martin said Camden's new regulations allow the town to comply with: "Maine's subsurface wastewater rules, which require that dwellings that are used as STRs have an increased design capacity beyond the standard bedroom calculation that site evaluators typically use to design septic systems. This is particularly important for STRs that are near our Town’s valued freshwater resources (i.e. Megunticook Lake and Hosmer Pond)."

Camden's STR program classifies rentals into three categories: Commercial, Seasonal, and Residential.

Commercial STRs are owned by the licensee, but the licensee does not claim primary residency on the property and operates a short-term rental(s) on the property.

Seasonal STRs are in a building containing a single dwelling or dwelling unit made up of a room or group of rooms containing facilities for eating, sleeping, bathing, and cooking, but has water service available only seasonally and is occupied only seasonally. They typically are not insulated or have heating and ventilation, nor air-conditioning, systems.

Residential STRs are where the rental is on a lot where the owner claims primary residency, and the owner may or may not be "in residence" during the tenancy of the short-term rental by transient occupants.

While initially the town estimated between 200 and 400 STRs were maintained in Camden, "after the first year of implementing, administering, licensing and enforcing the new STR regulations we have identified approximately 165 unique STRs in Camden," wrote Martin.  The number and types of licensed STRs are noted in the table below.

Martin said in his memo:

"Staff issued 151 STR licenses this past year, and of those approximately eight were issued conditional licenses and the Code Enforcement Officer is working with those property owners to ensure compliance and to obtain the requisite license moving into a new licensing year.

"A couple of STRs failed to obtain licenses due to significant life safety issues and we are working on an enforcement path to ensure compliance with applicable requirements as we head into the new licensing year.

"Of the 165 aforementioned STRs last year, 10 or so failed to obtain a license. The owners either failed to respond to the letter campaign, or once we made contact continued to fail to follow through on licensing requirements.

"Of the 10 or so, five STR operators failed to respond at all to the letters and notices that were sent out."

Martin also said that with the town moving into the STR program's second year, municipal staff would be increasing enforcement of unlicensed rentals. He encouraged the Select Board to support such action.

"Based on our often-daily communication with STR owners and operators it is department staff believe [belief] that in general most of the STR owners are supportive and understanding of the need for the licensing requirements, and we have had relatively small number of issues with licensing and inspecting STRs," said Martin. "As we move into the second year of implementation, we have already had nearly 50 applications submitted for renewal as of today’s date. As mentioned previously, should the department have to resort to formal enforcement action against non-compliant STR operators we will look to the Select Board for support in those enforcement efforts. That said, it is always our intent to work cooperatively with property owners to ensure compliance and we will continue to approach enforcement in this way."

Greenfield subdivision lot

Due to a municipal lack of action dating back to 2003, the Town of Camden is revisiting a property acquisition, which is to entail a June Town Meeting warrant article inclusion, if the Select Board agrees.

At 2003 annual Town Meeting, Camden voters authorized the town to accept title to a 25-foot-wide corridor of land atop an earthen berm in the Greenfield Subdivision in order to create a multi-use pedestrian and bicycle pathway. The deed was prepared from Alkco Acceptance Corporation (and any other owners), without compensation, and required that the proposed deed and survey be on file and certified prior to the meeting.

Despite voter approval, however, the deed transfer was never executed and no reason for that was supplied.

"As a result, the Town does not hold legal title to the common lot or pathway area, even though the 2003 vote clearly intended municipal acquisition," said Town Manager Caler, in her Jan. 6 pre-meeting memo.

She recommended that the Select Board place a warrant article before voters at June 2026 Town Meeting authorizing Camden to formally acquire the Greenfield Subdivision common lot (or the defined portion necessary for stormwater management and a multi-use path), and to accept and record a deed consistent with that authorization. This action would complete unfinished business from the 2003 Town Meeting.

Elm Street School (Children's House Montessori School) repairs and maintenance

After School Administrative District 28 (Camden-Rockport K-8 school board) returned the historic Elm Street School building, at the corner of Union and Elm streets, back to the Town of Camden last year, and after the town then issued a five-year lease to the Children's House Montessori School, there are now disagreements about which entity — the town or the school — is responsible for routine maintenance and repairs.

While the lease ($20,000 per year paid to Camden) stipulates that the Town of Camden has purview over, “routine maintenance and repairs of the School Building, including the plumbing and heating systems,” and requires the Town to schedule annual fire safety inspections, the town is balking at other costs, such as pest and rat control, fire suppression, and heating system repairs.

Town Manager Caler is recommending the Select Board define "routine maintenance and repaiars" so that expansive obligations are not assumed by the town. 

"The lease does not define 'routine maintenance and repairs,' nor does it distinguish between minor upkeep, contracted services, emergency response, or tenant-managed systems," said Caler. "As a result, the Town is exposed to a broad and evolving interpretation of its responsibilities that extends well beyond what the Town has historically provided to lessees of Town-owned buildings."

There is also a concern that those expansive obligations could set a precedent risk to the Camden Yacht Club lease, any future lease of the former Chamber of Commerce building at the Public Landing, and other Town-owned facilities leased to nonprofit or private entities.

Caler suggests amending the lease.

Snow Bowl contracts for lodge curtain wall replacement

The Camden Snow Bowl lodge was built in the 1960s and its exterior now needs replacement. Camden voters approved spending up to $350,000 at the June 2025 annual Town Meeting for the repairs.

The project includes the removal of the existing wood and glass curtain wall system on the west gable end, and the installation of a replacement wood and glass curtain wall system. Additional peripheral work is required for the installation, including rough and finish carpentry, and light electrical work.

Requests for proposals were circulated November 1 for the job, and the bids were returned by November 24. Now, the Select Board must award that bid.

The lodge is to be ready for the project to begin by March 16 and finished no later than June 15.

Four bids were received and reviewed by Jeremy Martin, Joe Rusillo, of Maple Street Design Studio, and Nathan. The lowest bid was i $360,867 and the highest was $414,879. 

The recommendation is to award the project to Blaine Casey Contractors, in Augusta, for $360,867.

Agenda

The complete Jan. 6 agenda follows: 

Call to Order

1. Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

2. Approval of Board Minutes – December 2nd, 2025

3. Recognition of Service: Katrina Oakes

4. Consent Agenda:

a) Renewal Victualer License: Camden Birchwood, Long Grain, and Zoot Coffee (new owners)

b) Request for Closure of Atlantic Avenue for Winterfest on January 31st

5. Public Hearings Liquor Licenses (establishments under 5 years required public hearing)

a) b) Albatross at 115 Elm Street for a renewal Class I Restaurant Liquor License

Café Louis at 50 Elm Street for a renewal Class I Restaurant Liquor License

6. Select Board Members' Reports

7. Town Manager's Report

8. Discussion Items:

a) Review of Automatic Fire/EMS Mutual Aid Assumptions and Resource Availability

b) Use of Drift for Snowmaking at the Camden Snow Bowl

c) Short Term Rental Program Update

d) Acquisition of Common Lot in Greenfield Subdivision

9. Action Items:

a) b) c) Vote on Renewal of License Agreement with Megunticook Rowing

Vote on Elm Street School Maintenance issues

Vote to Award Bid Snow Bowl Lodge

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657