Former Bar Harbor Town Manager Cornell Knight will return to his prior role on an interim, part-time basis.
Knight was hired Monday to take over from Sarah Gilbert as the town’s temporary top administrator. Gilbert will continue to serve as Bar Harbor’s finance director, a position she has held for several years and has retained while also serving as interim town manager.
Knight’s first day back as interim town manager will be on Wednesday, Aug. 16, Gilbert said.
Gilbert has been filling in temporarily since the town reached a separation agreement in January with Kevin Sutherland, who succeeded Knight as town manager in January 2022. Knight, who lives in Bar Harbor, served as Bar Harbor’s town manager for seven years, from 2014 through 2021.
Sutherland abruptly resigned in January after the elected town council offered him a separation agreement and gave him two days to decide whether or not to accept it.
The move to rehire Knight to work three days a week on an interim basis comes after the town interviewed three finalists for the job out of 29 people who applied. The finalists decided to withdraw their applications, however, prompting the town to re-advertise the post at the end of June and to advertise for another interim town manager to take over from Gilbert.
Val Peacock, the chair of Bar Harbor’s town council, said Monday evening that the council is grateful for Gilbert’s willingness to serve as interim town manager but that the town needs to boost its staffing so Gilbert can focus on her finance duties. Additional staffing would also allow the town to keep up with its other tasks and responsibilities, such as pursuing infrastructure projects and updating its comprehensive plan.
“Cornell Knight’s experience with the staff and town means he can get right to work, while we hope to find a new manager in the stack of applications we’ve just received,” Peacock said.
Since leaving as Bar Harbor’s town manager, Knight has worked for Eaton Peabody Consulting Group and, in that capacity, has held interim municipal and county administrator gigs in Farmington and for Hancock County.
In hiring Knight on an interim basis, Bar Harbor officials pointed out that he has left his employment with Eaton Peabody “as a condition of his temporary service for Bar Harbor.” Eaton Peabody’s legal division is representing the Association to Preserve and Protect Local Livelihoods, a business group that is suing the town of Bar Harbor over voter-approved limits on local cruise ship visits.
