A former Hancock County budgeteer and perennial downeast candidate and has been fined $250 for wrecking signs at a land preserve.
Ian Schwartz, who initially denied the vandalism, pleaded guilty to damaging several signs and trail markers at the Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve.
The Mount Desert resident has run three times for local, county and state office, all ending in defeat.
He competed in the 2018 Democrat primary for state senate, Mount Desert selectman’s race in 2019 and as a Democrat for Hancock County Commission in 2020.
Schwartz, a former member of a county budget committee, was charged earlier this year with two vandalism counts.
Prosecutors later dropped one of them.
Schwartz, 38, was accused a year ago of damaging the popular historic preserve’s property.
The 1,400-acre conservation area in on Mount Desert Island adjacent to Acadia National Park.
The property includes historic gardens and Little Long Pond, as well as hiking trails.
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, created in the mid-1920s, is named for the wife of financier John D. Rockefeller Jr.
Aldrich Rockefeller, the driving force behind the Museum of Modern Art, was the mother of Nelson Rockefeller, former vice president and New York governor.
So, just what did he do to destroy these signs??