Hancock County’s top administrator will work his last day on Friday, June 3.
While the county looks for a new administrator, it will hire Bar Harbor’s former town manager on an interim basis, a county commissioner said Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear why Scott Adkins, who has been Hancock County’s county administrator since 2016, resigned but he did confirm his last day will be June 3.
“I am assuming he’s taken another job,” Paul Paradis, one of the county’s three elected commissioners, said Tuesday.
In his resignation letter, Adkins didn’t say where he might work next.
“We have accomplished a considerable amount of progress during this time,” Adkins wrote. “My thanks to you as a commission and supporting me as best you could.”
John Wombacher, chairman of the commission, credited Adkins with establishing and maintaining good relationships with other county officials, many of whom are elected directly by voters.
He said Hancock County is in a stronger position now than when Adkins arrived. The county created the county administrator position in 2015, after Phil Roy left as the county’s chief financial officer — a position that has since been eliminated . Adkins’ predecessor as county administrator, Gene Conlogue, held the position for only one year.
“He navigated that really well,” Wombacher said.
Paradis said the commission met Tuesday morning with consultant Don Gerrish of Eaton Peabody to discuss how to move ahead with a search for a new county administrator. He said that Gerrish recommended that the county hire Cornell Knight on an interim basis while it looks for a long-term replacement for Adkins.
Knight served as Bar Harbor’s town manager for 7 years before he retired at the end of 2021.
The county also is looking for a new deputy administrator. Rebekah Knowlton, who held that post for several years, left earlier this month to take a job in the private sector, Paradis said.
Paradis said the county likely will focus on hiring a new county administrator on a long-term basis before it looks to fill the deputy administrator position.
The county does have a new treasurer. Gov. Janet Mills has appointed Monica Cease, the county’s finance director, to the position, which had been vacant since Michael Boucher resigned in March. Boucher, who feuded with Adkins and commissioners over his commitment to the job, was elected as a write-in candidate in 2018.
Cease already entered this year’s race for the county treasurer position as a Democrat. She is running unopposed in the June primary. Candidates who want to run as unaffiliated candidates in the November general election have until 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 1, to file certified nomination papers with the Secretary of State’s office.
