BREAKING NEWS: Marilyn Lowell retiring from town manager role in Southwest Harbor
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Jan. 5, 2024 - Marilyn Lowell, town manager since Dec. 13, 2021, has announced her retirement, Carolyn Ball, select board chair, confirmed today. She will serve until the end of October, giving the town 10 months to search for a replacement.
Before being named town manager, Lowell was the town clerk from 2013.
Lowell lives in Ellsworth.
She grew up in Birch Harbor. According to the Ellsworth American, Lowell graduated from Sumner High School and later earned an associate’s degree in developmental disabilities at Bangor Community College. She worked three years at the Elizabeth Levinson Center in Bangor before returning to Sumner as a Resource Room education technician for 12 years.
Marilyn worked for 2½ years at the Ellsworth Middle School as an ed tech. Then “I worked for Morrison Chevrolet almost three years as a receptionist and part time in the business office,” she told the Ellsworth American.
Leaving that job, Marilyn worked 11½ years at the Hancock Town Office as the registrar of voters, general assistance administrator, deputy treasurer, and deputy tax collector. Stacey Clement was then Hancock’s administrative assistant and treasurer, and “I believe we were the two longest counterparts working” in the town office, Marilyn said.
She became the Southwest Harbor town clerk in August 2013. Although the two towns are similar in size (Hancock actually has more residents), “it seems like it’s a lot busier here than in Hancock,” said Marilyn, a notary and a certified clerk of Maine.
Her son, Michael, a commercial fisherman living in Hancock, drags for wild mussels with his dragger. Her daughter, Natasha, is a radiation therapist living in Jacksonville, Florida. Marilyn also has a granddaughter, Wendy.
The town manager job is budgeted for a salary of $99,750 starting next year.