As Cruise Ship Vote Looms, Many Parties Involved Host Discussions
BAR HARBOR—A duo of informational meetings in Bar Harbor last week had both the Bar Harbor Town Council and Charles Sidman explaining their rationale for support for and against a ballot question about cruise ship disembarkations that will face Bar Harbor voters this November 5.
Sidman is the lead petitioner for a citizens’ initiative that successfully limited the number of cruise ship passenger disembarkations to 1,000 or less a day. The initiative was upheld in a federal court decision on the last day of February. It is currently being appealed. Sidman is also currently suing the town about a March press release where the Town Council spoke to the ordinances enforcement. The town is also currently involved in litigation with the cruise tendering facility, which it believes is violating the 1,000-and-under daily cap. The cruise tendering facility has argued that it has a pre-existing right to continue its operations as it always has prior to the changes.
Just the legal cases alone can cause confusion. However, the Council believes that the citizens’ initiative itself creates difficulty in its enforcement and opens the town up to lawsuits. This is because it created a permitting system involving the town’s harbor master and its code enforcement officer. That system was placed within the town’s land use ordinance (LUO) and requires a counting mechanism for passengers on private property.
The Council has proposed a new system, which also creates caps that are daily, monthly, and seasonal and also includes days where cruise ships are not allowed. This new system involves five-year contracts with cruise lines as well as separate contracts with the property owners where the passengers are tendered. In those contracts, which have already been agreed to, the parties have agreed not to sue, the town says. Opponents say that this proposed system is just as confusing.
For this new system to be considered, the town voters must first repeal the current system, which has just been put in place this summer.
That repeal is the question on the ballot. Voting no would keep the 1,000-a-day caps in place. Voting yes would repeal the caps, which would allow the town to start the contractural limits instead.
THE COUNCIL QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
At a table in front of the normal Town Council chairs, Town Council Chair Val Peacock, Councilor Joe Minutolo, Harbormaster Christopher Wharff, and Town Manager James Smith sat fielding questions.
“Please keep your questions respectful, brief, and focused on clarifying understanding of policy,” Peacock said.
For the most part, the group did.
Wharff explained how the cruise ship reservation system, Port Call, works and how it is used throughout Maine. He explained that there are only three anchorages used in Bar Harbor. These are considered federal anchorages, run by the federal government, and he cannot regulate them.
Peacock gave a run-down of how different September scenarios look under the 1,000-cap and the potential ordinance change.
Many of those who spoke also attended the Sidman session at the YWCA two days prior to the Town Council’s question and answer.
THE BUSIEST TIMES COMPARED TO THE COUNCIL PLAN
Resident Ron Wrobel said he’d lived in Bar Harbor for approximately 30 years and asked what the disembarkations were like in Bar Harbor’s busiest year compared to this year and how many ship-free days there were in those years.
Peacock said that 2022 with approximately 300,000 passengers was busiest. Most of those people visited in September and October, with 90,000 passengers in each month. On some days, the town had a ship with a 5,500 passenger count. There were three days without a ship in both September and October.
The Council plan caps those monthly visits at 55,000 caps and holds the cruise lines to 10-cruise-ship-free days in each month of September and October.
FIVE-YEAR CONTRACTS AND HOW THEY WOULD WORK
Smith said that the town’s negotiations with the cruise lines and the dock owners was to try to create balance between the parties involved.
“What we’ve done is yoke the town meeting and the Town Council together to work together collaboratively for what they’d like to see for the community,” Smith said. The town meeting he refers to would be any future votes on cruise ship limitations. Those would occur via ballot.
Anything the Council recommends has to be voted in by the voters. The Council is the only body that can initiate the process but it can’t do so unilaterally. The voters have to agree and have final say.
The five-year contracts were negotiated and a compromise. At the end of year two of the contracts, the Town Council has a 90-day window to bring potential substantive changes to the voters.
If there is a change in year two, that change would go into effect in year six. Cruise lines would have to agree to new contracts with the town’s new voted-in regulations. Contracts would not be renegotiated, Smith said. The cruise lines would decided if they wanted to come into the town under those changed conditions or not.
Those 90-day windows happen each year after year two.
Some attendees, such as Diane Vreeland, who wore a “Vote No on 4” T-shirt disagreed and said that the town was giving all its power to the cruise lines.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS AND OTHER QUESTIONS
Though many are concerned about cruise ships’ environmental impact, Wharff said that the town, with Mount Desert Biological Laboratories, tests the water every two years. Maine Healthy Beaches also takes weekly water samples, he said.
If there was sewer outflow and water pollution in Bar Harbor, Wharff said, the town would take legal action. There was no discussion about air quality and if cruise ships are impacting that locally or not.
Other questions clarified that a cruise ship isn’t forever allowed to come if it was one of the pre-existing reservations prior to the cap’s enactment; that the town is not liable if a private property accepts tenders without a permit; that the Council cannot increase or decrease the disembarkation limits in the contracts without it being approved by the voters; and that these contracts do not require future negotiations with cruise lines in terms of limits and visitations even if the voters do change those limits.
Peacock and Smith handled most of the questions from attendees. The caps, they stressed, are in appendix a’s contracts. The coordination contract with the dock owners is in appendix b. There is nothing, Smith said, that prevents other dock owners from being licensed and permitted. The code enforcement officer is taking notes and documenting violations, Smith said.
Peacock stressed that the current councilors didn’t put the systems in place that built up cruise ship visitation in town. It’s not a difference of opinion about where the Council and town wants to be in visitation number, but what the tool is to get to where the town wants to be, she said.
“There are no deals between the Council and the business people,” Minutolo said. “If I never saw another cruise coming to the town of Bar Harbor? Hallelujah. Am I for 3,200 a day? Not really, but right now with the legal exposures that we have and the pathway forward, this puts us at risk.”
He added that the negotiations were tough and the town’s negotiation team spent hours and hours going back and forth. “This is what we’re trying to do: give the town the power.”
The current rules are complicated, Peacock said. They hear from the staff and how complicated things are with the citizens’ initiative.
“Why wouldn’t we say to ourselves is there a better way to do this?” Peacock said. The goals are to decrease visitation, reduce litigation, and create more trust in the Town Council.
THE SIDMAN QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
On Tuesday, October 1, Sidman held a cruise ship question and answer session at the YWCA. Sidman was joined by Attorney Robert “Bobby” Papazian who Sidman introduced as “the guy who won our case, with colleagues and with help, but he represented us in the federal courtroom in Bangor.”
Papazian was joining the meeting via Zoom.
Sidman was also joined by Peter Scott, who Sidman introduced as a “Bar Harbor voter, he is an attorney, and he is not practicing and he is not here to give legal advice, but he knows how to read contracts and he has negotiated lots of them.”
Scott was at the meeting in person. He also attended the Bar Harbor Town Council’s question and answer session.
There were approximately 50 attendees at the Sidman meeting.
DIFFERING VIEWS ON HOW CHAPTER 52 WORKS
At the Sidman meeting, Noreen Hunter asked about how the fine system works under chapter 52 (the current citizen’s initiative ordinance) because she felt that she understood what was supposed to happen, but then realized that no fines were getting paid.
Sidman said, “The ordinance says that a pier operator, or even the Town, who wants to accept disembarking passengers has to go through a two-step process. One is to be allowed to accept disembarking passengers, and then once they are a valid disembarkation point, that they need a daily permit for a specific ship for a specific number of people for a specific location and if they get that approved, let’s say they want to disembark 750 people at their pier from the ship, they are allowed 750 people. But, if they disembark 751 or 760, then those extra non-permitted disembarking people would incur a fine of $100 each. So that is what is written. That is in our law; it’s in the LUO now.”
According to Code Enforcement Officer Angela Chamberlain, Sidman is correct “that it is a violation of the ordinance (as stated in § 52-8 of the Cruise Ship Disembarkation ordinance) for the Cruise Ship Disembarkation Facility owner to disembark not only 1,001 persons but also to disembark more than the number allowed in the disembarkation permit.”
“If a violation occurs, and if the town authorizes enforcement action through court, and if we prevail, only a court has the authority and discretion under 30-A M.R.S. § 4452 (3)(B) to assess fines between $100 and $5,000 per day. The town does not have the ability to simply send a bill to the property owner demanding payment for a violation of this ordinance,” Chamberlain said.
LIMITING CRUISE SHIP VISITATION BASED ON LOWER BERTH CAPACITY
The town’s new proposed plan, Chapter 50, limits cruise ship passengers via daily, monthly, and annual caps and by having cruise-ship-free days and a certain number of guaranteed cruise ship free days per month in certain months.
Tanya Ivanow said at the Sidman meeting, “I just want to clarify the numbers. You say that 3,200 is the day cap, but it actually could be as much as 5,000-6,000. Does the same rule apply to the weekly cap, the monthly cap, and the yearly cap? In other words, when they say 220,000 per year and we are capping it, it could actually be half a million.”
”Absolutely. They are governing everything by this number, this mythical number that is printed on every ship, lower berth capacity. It is not the number of people,” Sidman replied.
“That is what I wanted to straighten out. So, it means, potentially, you could have twice as many people?” Ivanow asked.
“Correct,” Sidman said.
“But I don’t understand that. Lower berth capacity, a berth is two people, right?” asked another attendee.
Sidman said, “Well, a berth is the lower berth and a lot of ships, big ships can have a quarter as many in addition. So, a 3,200 lower berth capacity big ship can have 4,000 people, passengers, on it. A 200-person lower berth capacity little ship can have 400 people on it, because the upper berths aren’t counted.”
Lower berth capacity is used throughout the industry and at harbors to regulate the size of ships coming in, the town has said. It’s the standard that was used prior to the citizens’ initiative’s enactment.
In a 2021 memo to the Town Council, Eben Salvatore wrote, “Two separate studies on cruise ship visitation in Maine have found that the disembarkation rate is 85%.”
Those studies were a 2016 study, “Economic Impact of Cruise Ship Passengers Visiting Bar Harbor” by professor Todd Gabe and a 2019 study, “Survey of Cruise Visitors to Maine,” that had been commissioned by the Maine Office of Tourism.
That same memo said that of the 140 ships surveyed in 2017, 83 (59%) were not fully booked.
ANCHORAGES AND WHO CONTROLS THEM
The Town of Bar Harbor has two federally recognized anchorages. These were established by the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2002 and they are called anchorage A and anchorage B.
According to the document, these anchorages were established because “this action is necessary to provide designated anchorage grounds on Frenchman Bay thereby facilitating safe and secure anchorages, and improved Captain of the Port and Harbormaster coordination and management of congested harbor areas for an increasing number of large passenger vessels calling on the Port of Bar Harbor.”
The rule making describes the anchorages as “anchorage A is a general anchorage ground reserved for passenger vessels, small commercial vessels and pleasure craft. Anchorage B is a general anchorage ground reserved primarily for passenger vessels 200 feet and greater.”
According to Wharff, “Anchorage B is larger than A, so we split that into B1 and B2. Never more than one ship in A, but two can fit in B, even two larger ships.” This means that there is a three-ship limit on any given day for the two federal anchorages.
During discussions about future lawsuits based upon chapter 50 if it is put into place, Papazian said at the Tuesday meeting, “I think, yes, while certain current lawsuits will go away if our ordinance is repealed, new ones would crop up out of the woodwork, instantaneously. Not only on the side of the voters, of the town, but also, the way that they have crafted chapter 50 is so vulnerable to litigation, and I am going to get a little bit in the weeds here, but they wrote this thing; they wrote chapter 50 with these constitutional flaws that are going to lose in court. I have no doubt in my mind that it will lose in court. Sections 50-10 and 50-12 directly regulate anchorages and interferes with anchorage access. That’s federal preemption, right. So, federal law regulates anchorages.”
However, the federal anchorage rulemaking document referenced above specifically says, “The anchoring of vessels is under the coordination of the local harbormaster,” with the Captain of the Port of the U.S. Coast Guard being the ultimate local authority.
HOW PASSENGER FEES ARE SPENT BY THE TOWN
There was also discussion about how passenger fees are spent by the town.
“I actually just learned something about this. Peter (Scott) brought up schedule c and I understood that the passenger fees could be used for the ships and for the enjoyment of the passengers coming off. You know, like the bathrooms, that money we spent. That is absolutely false! The money, it can only be spent for the vessel,” Vreeland said.
“It’s not false yet, it will only be false if we vote it through,” Scott said.
Vreeland replied, “I am shocked!”
“Yep, I can’t believe that they gave that away,” Scott replied.
Vreeland said, “Only the vessel. And it also states in here, Bobby (Papazian) I wanted to ask you, can this happen? Because it says that they are going to agree about the fees collected and it can be service such as infrastructure and service to further the marine enterprise operation of such vessels. Does that mean that we would have to pay the infrastructure? You know, a pier for them? That’s the way I take it.”
Schedule c says this in regards to the spending of passenger fees.
How passenger fees are spent was ruled on by the United States District Court for the District of Alaska in 2018 in the case Cruise Lines International Association Alaska and Cruise Lines International Association, Plaintiffs, v. The City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska.
The court ruled that “fees imposed by defendants (the City of Juneau) upon vessels and used for services to passengers are unconstitutional and unlawful unless the services in question constitute a service to a vessel.”
According to Smith, it is accurate to say that the wording in schedule c regarding the spending of passenger fees is an attempt to abide by the rulings of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska in 2018 in the case, Cruise Lines International Association Alaska and Cruise Lines International Association, Plaintiffs, v. The City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska, and to avoid future litigation from the cruise line industry.
HOW MUCH MONEY IS MADE FROM TENDERING
During the meeting, Sidman made the statement that for more than 20 years, Ocean Properties has been making approximately $3 million a year from tendering.
The Bar Harbor Story has not been unable to confirm how much Ocean Properties earns from tendering.
There is not much town-owned waterfront property that has the ability to accept tenders in Bar Harbor. The town would have two possibilities if it decided to accept tenders to its own property.
The first possibility would be the ferry terminal, which according to GEI Consultants, the company working with the town on possible configurations for the town’s use of the ferry terminal, would be an estimated construction cost of $14 million (in 2022) as a working marina not necessarily including tendering capabilities.
The second possibility would be Ell’s Pier, an already crowded space that is one of the last bastions of Bar Harbor’s working waterfront.
POTENTIAL FOR LAWSUITS
At an August 27 Bar Harbor Town Council meeting, Gary Friedmann, who was the sole no vote on the subject of adoption of Chapter 50, said, this was the best Council he’s dealt with and all members were of high integrity. When they began working on Chapter 50, he said, “we were looking for a way to get out of the courtroom.”
It has been the Council’s contention that Chapter 50 is a compromise for the various cruise ship factions in town and also a potential end to nonstop litigation.
At the Sidman cruise ship meeting, Lynn Jebbia said, “One thing that they are espousing is that we have so many legal fees that we pay, that’s just going to continue, it’s going to get worse, and a lot of it has to do with weaknesses in the land use ordinance. My question is, is that true? Are we going to be constantly defending?”
“I think it’s false. I think the legal fees will subside if our ordinance continues and is enforced because all of the legal grounds and arguments will have been settled. If chapter 50 goes into effect, we are going to be litigating until all of us are in the grave,” responded Sidman.
While the town argues that having the Chapter 52 cruise ship ordinance in the land use ordinance is a litigious battleground when it comes to collecting fines, Sidman argues that the contract-based Chapter 50 is based upon contracts that open the town up to constant lawsuits.
One of Sidman’s co-presenters, Scott, said, “I don’t want to impugn any ill motives to any of the councilors, I haven’t met with them or even talked to them personally, but all I can say is looking at the documents that they are presenting to the voters, something is fundamentally wrong here. These are the most one-sided set of contracts that I have ever seen.”
The Council states the town cannot quickly or easily collect fines for violations of the Chapter 52 disembarkation facility permitting process. The first step is that a notice of violation (NOV) needs to be served to the alleged offender, which there was a NOV served to Golden Anchor, LC by Chamberlain on August 5, and then the process continues.
If the actions that precipitated the alleged violation are not corrected, then at some time after 30 days, a second notice of violation will be served helping to prove to the court that the town has made every effort to gain compliance before seeking court remediation.
According to Chamberlain, in this situation, no second notice has been served because Golden Anchor, LC immediately appealed the first NOV and the town “will wait to see the results of that before taking additional enforcement action.”
Normally, if the actions are not corrected after the second notice, then Chamberlain would have to ask the Town Council to authorize enforcement action through the court.
According to Smith, “the court has discretion in deciding the amount of the fine and there is a lot of uncertainty about how the fines would be calculated. It is not as simple as multiplying the fine by the number of persons disembarking.”
Normally, this NOV process would be more of a one-time process because LUO violations are not normally ongoing and it is not yet known how a court would treat repetitive violations within a short or seasonal timeframe. Whether or not they would require a trial for every violation is not known and according to Smith, the town “can request to combine the violations, but the court would ultimately decide if they will allow that.”
If the town prevails in court, the defendant can then appeal the decision to a higher court.
The Council also contends that with the repeal of Chapter 52, the current federal litigation will be moot and go away.
During Sidman’s meeting, he responded to a question by an attendee who said, “I assume the answer, if the voters say yes to the new chapter 50, it all goes away,” by saying that he feels that most of the current suits would be moot and go away if Chapter 50 is passed. Sidman then asked Papazian to speak on the attendee’s comment.
Papazian said, “So yes, I think that if our ordinance is repealed, it would certainly moot our federal lawsuits, the federal cases that we are involved with, right.”
DIVISIVENESS AND ACCUSATIONS OF CORRUPTION
During discussions at Sidman’s cruise ship meeting concerning potential disembarkation limit changes, Vreeland said, “I think it is important to vote out the Council as who voted for this.”
Sidman responded, “Well, that is a separate issue; it’s not on the ballot on November 5. I will tell you, I will tell you, that when you come to vote, if you come to vote in person on November 5, and you go through the auditorium, gymnasium, to cast your vote, as you come out and go by the Council chamber, I am going to be there with a recall petition for you to sign to get it on to a legitimate ballot next year in 2025. To be able to recall town councilors. We don’t have it now, other towns have it. But I think we need it. So, put it on the ballot, help me put it on the ballot, if you think that’s worthwhile.”
“So, I do think that the recall provision that you just talked (about) is going to be a really important mechanism here. Right now, I think that the Council is like the Supreme Court, our Supreme Court, it enforces its own ethics code which is like saying it doesn’t really have an ethics code at all. There needs to be a way to remove Councilors from office,” Papazian added.
An audience member spoke about previous cruise ship related referendums that took place in Key West, Florida. This same audience member also made reference to alleged political maneuvering and political donations that seemingly altered the course of the outcome in Key West and asked do “you have any insight or any of your attorney friends have insight into what the motivation was by the city council to ignore the requirements of previous ordinances, to not press OPL to pay the fines, or to curtail having people come ashore? Do you think that there was undue pressure placed on the elected officials of Bar Harbor? Are they acting in good faith on behalf of the people who elected them or are they acting in good faith on behalf of the people with the money in their hand?”
“Well, that’s not a legal question, it’s an opinion, and my view as a citizen and voter in this town through all the whole cruise ship decades is that when they first came to town there was a lot of concern for economic development in any way shape or form and means,” Sidman said. “The Town Council quickly bought into that this is economic development and there is a coterie of businesses which is very close to the disembarking passengers, you know, that primarily benefit from it and Ocean Properties we have to recognize is the biggest financial beneficiary because the town ceded the exclusive tendering rights and reception. It used to be that the tenders came into the town pier, but the town ceded that which means that Ocean Properties, for 20-plus years now has had an unreported, dark, undeclared revenue stream of 3 millionish dollars a year. During that time, the town has gotten, let’s say a million a year which state law says has to be spent primarily, or exclusively, to benefit the cruise ship experience which means we have a nice set of bathrooms on Agamont Park and we can put flowerpots on our sidewalks, but we can’t replace our sewer system or build a school. That’s chicken feed compared to the 3 million that Ocean Properties is getting every single year. So, the Town Council aligned itself with the devil. I don’t see them as Council and private business, I see them as totally intertwined. They are two faces of the same entity.”
Papazian said, “I like that people are recognizing the similarities of what’s going on in Bar Harbor and what went on in Key West. Ocean Properties can’t undo the ordinance here like they did in Key West, but they are showing the same disdain for voters. Their tactics, both in and out of court, are what young people would call blatant gaslighting. They argue that there is no congestion problem in town, that the voters didn’t know what they were voting for, that (Judge Lance) Walker didn’t mean what he wrote, and they are pulling a lot of different levers here in town. And, from my perspective, there’s a lot of what you would call blatant corruption in town and then there is the typical, but no less harmful, protectionism that protects the powerful players in town.”
“The attorneys, examples, right?” he continued. “The attorneys for Ocean Properties hand-picked the former town manager who pushed a pro-cruise ship agenda for years. The steward of Ocean Properties doesn’t recuse himself for Warrant Committee votes, a contract in which his company was a central player in negotiations. So, those are examples of what I would consider blatant corruption, right? But then there is the more benign, but still harmful, avenues that they are using to like look, to look to use councilors to compromise and appease the economically powerful in the town. I think that’s the tactic that the Town Council has been trying, and I just think it’s unfortunate that it comes at the will of the voters and the sacrifice of the voters.”
The Warrant Committee has held conflict of interest votes (2022 and 2024) that allowed Eben Salvatore to vote on cruise ship issues. The committee members are elected by residents and issue recommendations that residents see on warrant articles.
Salvatore oversees the Walsh properties in Bar Harbor. Those properties include the site where cruise ships tender, which he said was a small portion of his overall job. He receives no bonus, he said, according to the number of ships visiting or tendering amounts. The companies are part of the federal lawsuit against the town that is currently in appeals. The tendering location has also been issued a notice of violation from the town for not having a permit under the existing ordinance.
Warrant Committee Member Julie Berberian brought up a potential conflict of interest with Salvatore. Her motion was seconded by Chappell.
At that September meeting, multiple Warrant Committee members referenced an ethics workshop that occurred August 28. There, John Hamer a lawyer with Rudman Winchell, explained distinctions between town boards, councils, and committees and the work they do as legislative and quasi-judiciary when it comes to conflicts of interest.
Hamer said that as an appointed or elected official, those serving have a duty to the board and to carry out those duties. When enacting legislation or recommending ordinances—which is quasi-legislative—there is broader discretion to have opinion, listen to others, and take action. People who are elected are elected by others who likely know their jobs and their concerns and interests, he said.
The committee voted that Salvatore did not have a conflict of interest with Berberian, Carol Chappell, and Barbara Dunphey saying that he did.
In response to Papazian’s statements, Peacock wrote, “The Town Council is working hard to find a strong policy solution that the community can support. The voters will have the final say at the ballot box this November. There is nothing corrupt or protectionist about placing an item on the ballot for the citizens of Bar Harbor to vote on. It's democracy.
“Each year, candidates make their case to voters if they wish to serve their community. It’s called an election. If voters are not happy with the way incumbent councilors conduct themselves or the direction the town is going, they can vote the candidate of their choice into office. This past election saw strong public support to return both incumbent councilors. Incidentally, voters also overwhelmingly rejected Mr. Sidman’s bid for election to the Town Council for a second year in a row.
“It is unfortunate that Mr. Sidman continues to take such a hostile position and is now using his paid attorney to slander the Town Council. Councilors have the difficult and challenging job of listening to all voices in the community as we work to find a strong policy to manage cruise visitation.
“The Council has largely agreed with Mr. Sidman and has publicly stated so numerous times. We share the same goal of better regulation of cruise ship tourism in Bar Harbor and want to see a significant reduction in passengers disembarking. The only dispute is a policy preference of how to best achieve our shared goals.”
Also in response to Papazian’s statement, Eben Salvatore responded as a citizen of Bar Harbor, “It is sadly helpful that Mr. Sidman and his team continue to behave in this manner. By repeating their barrage of false and callous attacks on our friends and neighbors, including myself, that dare to volunteer for their community, the true intent of this group is becoming clearer. I think the big city bully tactics are helping people realize what is really going on here. This is not about capacity or congestion. It never was. From the beginning, this was an underhanded attempt to cleanse our town of a certain type of person that was deemed inferior. Those of you that have participated in this know who you are."
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
The ballot language is below:
Article 4 - LAND USE ORDINANCE AMENDMENT – Cruise Ship Disembarkation– This amendment would repeal § 125-77 H., which requires a written permit from the Code Enforcement Officer for the disembarkation of persons from cruise ships on, over, or across any property located within the Town of Bar Harbor, and explain that such uses will upon repeal be governed by Chapter 50: Reservation and Disembarkation Licensing. For more information on Chapter 50 and cruise ship management, see the Cruise Ship Information page.
Establishment of anchorage A and anchorage B
General Information on Voting in Bar Harbor
For November election information in Bar Harbor
Disclosure: Shaun Farrar is an elected member of the town’s Warrant Committee, which is mentioned in this article.
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Following the totally absurd example of Ocean Properties recent "Grandfathered Access" lawsuit I have decided to file a lawsuit of my own against the town of Bar Harbor. My lawsuit concerns the installation of parking meters and subsequent introduction of parking fees. For many decades I was able to park my cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and horse drawn carriages anywhere I wanted to (except in front of fire hydrants) without incurring a charge! I therefore maintain that my fee free parking options in Bar Harbor are "grandfathered." My attorney has advised me to "stonewall" any and all rules and regulations pertaining to in town parking fees! I have no intention of paying any parking fees. When, not if, I lose in court I am just going to keep filing appeals until the town goes bankrupt! The international FPFA organization (Free Parking For All) has graciously offered to pay all court costs.