Attorney Advises Board To Stop Making Individual Site Visits
Jesup Memorial Library Presents Updated Addition Plans
BAR HARBOR—A town attorney advised Design Review Board members to no longer visit application sites by themselves if their intent is to gather information about an application that is before the board, or as is the case of the Jesup Memorial Library, known to be coming to the board and has already been presented.
Tim Pease of Bangor’s Rudman Winchell advised the board about unofficial visits for information gathering or better understanding of the site during its June 22 meeting and workshop. The meeting was originally meant to stream live, but did not due to a glitch, according to interim Town Manager Sarah Gilbert.
The worry about the visits, according to Pease, is that they invite lawsuits even if the board members’ intentions are good. Board members said that they had visited sites when applications were incomplete. For example, an application might be missing a required photo. However, according to Pease, information shouldn’t be gathered outside of a meeting and not in a public setting. Visiting a restaurant or other nonprofit or business without the express purpose of taking a photo or looking at a sign is fine. Personal business is fine. Walking your dog nearby is fine. Trying to better understand an application because the applicant doesn’t have all the material in it or if it is confusing is not fine.
Board Chair Barbara Sassaman asked, “If we have an applicant (application) and it's on the north side of the street, when I walk past the building, do I have to look south?”
Town Planning Director Michele Gagnon backed up Pease’s assessment and advice, saying. “Once the application is submitted, you should not go gather information individually that everyone is not privy to. The burden of proof, for demonstration of information, is always on the applicant for quasi-judicial boards.”
Site visits can occur, but they need to be done with advanced public notice, on the agenda, and open to the public.
“I want to go and look at a building so that I can feel the scale of a building,” Sassaman said. She said a two-dimension photo can’t show something in three dimensions.
Secretary Andrea Lepcio said that the applicant should be the one who gives the board everything they need. It’s on the applicant to bring in the material rather than the board members doing what they think is due diligence.
BAR HARBOR LOBSTER POUND
The board also heard regular business at its meeting and the multiple signs of Bar Harbor Lobster Pound inspired questions from the Design Review Board last week.
Sassaman suggested putting frames around the signs. “We’re trying to keep the town from looking too tacky,” she said.
She said that when she looked at them, she thought they resembled campaign signs. All the signs are for traffic coming in to town and facing one way.
“I can pretty it up,” Aaron Jackson, the applicant, said, adding later that nothing about him wants to make it look chintzy or cheap.
A certificate of appropriateness was given for signs with added framing and backing.
“You’ve made a beautiful spot there,” Lepcio said.
“Go forth and pretty,” Sassaman said.
EXPLORE ACADIA COTTAGES
Sara O’Connell looked for sign approval for nine cottages at Wagonwheel Farm at 937 State Highway 3. The plan is also in the approval process for the Planning Board. The sign would be removed each winter. The sign was approved.
JESUP MEMORIAL LIBRARY
This is the project’s second presentation before the Design Review Board. Matthew Maiello from Simons Architects said that he wanted the board to see the changes since the last presentation.
Sassaman said she used to be on the library’s board and does book sales at the library. There was no formal vote about whether she had a conflict of interest after the disclosure, but there seemed to be no objection. Planning Board Chair Millard Dority assisted the library with its presentation (not in his capacity as board chair) and suggested that the Design Review Board members also ask the applicant if he had an objection. The library director said that he didn’t.
Dority requested that if the board members had a comment that they directed it toward a section of the ordinance.
The exterior windows on the addition match in scale to the existing windows. The roof will be slate. The addition would be lower than the original building, which will still be prominent with its façade, Maiello said. The finish will be live and with texture with a matching Flemish bond pattern. There will be bird-safe glazing on the windows.
Vehicles will come in and out of the parking area behind the library via School Street.
Cole said he liked what he saw. Sassaman asked about the front roof over the kids’ section and if it would maintain its current greenness and said that she was sorry to see a glass feature in an earlier plan no longer included. Dority said that the roof material depended on cost. Sassaman said the board didn’t favor a transformer being viewable at the front of the building and visible from two streets. She asked the applicant to voluntarily consider hiding that transformer from view. It is not required.
Sassaman asked for photos of the neighboring buildings and how they fit with the scale of the library when the group comes in with an official application.
Vice Chair Pancho Cole said the presentation was an improvement over the first one he saw.
Former library director and current Planning Board member Ruth Eveland said she was delighted with the project and happy to hear that board members thought it was a better iteration.
OTHER BUSINESS
The board will begin work on Appendix A in July. This is the appendix that catalogues historic property. It is part of the land use ordinance and changes that are voted on in November each year.