By Wayne E. Rivet

Staff Writer

HARRISON — With the arrival of a new year, most people make resolutions to either improve their lives and/or follow a different path to reach a goal or wish.

For the Town of Harrison, 2024 ended in tumultuous fashion. Emotions boiled over at the final Select Board meeting as feelings of distrust and claims of harassment dominated the discussion.

The “friendly” village is now “unfriendly” in many people’s eyes.

Rather than dwell on how this cozy town reached this level, Select Board chairman Matt Frank and vice chairman Phil Devlin want to channel their energy and focus in 2025 on how Harrison can reverse this negative vibe.

“We’re all unhappy,” Frank said. “We need to increase trust. We need to increase participation. There is a lot of ill will that has been created largely on the website, Residents of Harrison. That’s very unfortunate. I am and always have been a man who believes strongly that my word is my bond. If I tell you something, it’s the truth. We are in a period people are saying, ‘thank you very much but show me everything.’ There is a line of what is confidential and what is public. Sometimes, people don’t understand that.

“There are some opportunities for improving,” Devlin added.

While the two leaders admittedly think differently and bring different perspectives on many topics and issues, they agree that better communication with residents and a willingness to be partners, rather than adversaries, will be keys to improving the existing environment.

One step toward financial transparency is involving residents more in the budget process. Frank plans to propose to the Select Board a “hybrid” budget approach, where the five board members will team up with three (possibly more) residents to review and discuss budget requests.

“I believe they (the public) can provide valuable input. I want to have that. I want them to be part of the decision making. The way you get people to trust you is to encourage participation,” Frank said. “I want perhaps three members of the public, who are responsible and truly want to participate. I think that can be done.”

Frank would like to keep the group at eight because “if you have a committee with more than that, things just don’t get accomplished, that’s my opinion.”

Devlin considers himself a forward-thinker, “looking at where we are and where we could go from here.”

“We need to improve communications with the community. We need to engage them more. Certainly, having committees should help us do that. Like Mike Garvey’s group. The town felt there was a need and they came together as a group to talk about things. I think we’re more than happy to work with them,” Devlin said.

Frank concurred, “For years, we have wanted greater public participation. Now, it appears that we have a group that wants to do that. I think that’s great. We want their input. We want their ideas. We want to address whatever they want to address.”

To show he is sincere, and not just spouting rhetoric, Frank attended a recent Citizens Group meeting. He went as just another citizen, not a town official.

“They made it clear we were all welcome to come. I told them in advance that I was coming and they welcomed me. They hit me with a number of questions and issues. I did the best I could to answer them as honestly as I could,” Frank said. “The next time they meet, I plan to attend again because it’s another way of getting questions answered.”

Frank plans to give residents a chance to pose questions by meeting him at the town office from noon to 1 p.m. every Monday.

“When I do that, I’m speaking as a knowledgeable citizen. I am no speaking as a selectman because people will walk out and think, ‘he’s made a decision.’ I don’t have that power,” Frank said.

Another opportunity is to request assistance from the Greater Portland Council of Government, Devlin pointed out.

“They have a pulse of Cumberland County. They know what’s going on in different towns and the problems they are having. They can help us with best practices conversation. What’s worked and what hasn’t worked,” he said. “One of the things I tend to push for is that while certainly being respectful of how we’ve done things in the past, is there a better way to do it now?”

Issues and falsehoods fanned by those on social media remain a problem across the state and nation.

“I think they are common problems, not just locally,” Devlin said. “How do we deal with it? GPCOG can tell us what other towns have done and what’s worked.”

With changes in technology, Devlin and Frank realize how the town conducts business needs to evolve as well. Another upgrade will be providing more information on the town’s website and weekly newsletter. Devlin can see during the upcoming budget process earmarking funds to “refresh” the town’s website.

“It’s not the best in the state, it’s not the worst in the state. But as technology improves, you have to make changes and update them,” Devlin added.

Bottom line for both leaders, “we all care and we all want to do better.” They recognize that if a degree of trust in town government has been lost, it is their job to find ways to correct it.

“We, as a board, recognize people get impatient. We just need to figure out a better way to explain things, explain the rules. We have guardrails here, which are the statutes and our policies. All the decisions we make fit within that framework. Sometimes, when the opportunity arises, we just don’t sufficiently explain why we may be doing things. We just need to do a better job. We need to figure out how to communicate as well as we can,” Devlin noted.

“I think communication is probably our number one problem,” Frank concurred. “We need to build confidence so that we don’t have a town meeting where there’s a lack of trust in the town leadership. By getting public participation, that decrease the problem.”

Devlin added, “We’re all trying to get the boat going in the right direction. We’re all frustrated. We want the board to work on in the upcoming year is to be able to all kind of pull together and go in the same direction.”