Bar Harbor Will Seek Enforcement Action Against Dock Owners
Main Street Closure Begins Today, Comprehensive Plan Meeting Tonight!
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Andy’s Home Improvement Inc.
BAR HARBOR—The Bar Harbor Town Council agreed Tuesday night to seek enforcement against 55 West Street, Golden Anchor, LC, which is where cruise ships tender passengers visiting Mount Desert Island. Under the new disembarkation rules voted in by citizens in 2022 and upheld by a narrow margin this November, inspiring a recount to be held November 23, the business is required to apply for a permit to allow disembarkation of cruise ship passengers. The rules state that 1,000 cruise ship passengers can disembark each day before fees occur.
“The dock owners have yet, to date, applied for a permit,” Town Council Chair Valerie Peacock said during the November 19 council meeting, meaning that a permit has not been applied for. “We’ve been aware of the violations.”
Peacock said that now the town has to decide what to do with those violations. It decided to head to court.
The councilors unanimously approved the authorization to bring enforcement action through the courts.
Councilor Kyle Shank thanked the code enforcement office for its copious documentation. The council’s packet of information shows multiple photos from multiple angles of disembarkations and tendering.
“I’m pleased that the town manager and code enforcement officers are taking actions to enforce the citizens’ initiative as passed,” Council Vice Chair and newly elected State Representative Gary Friedmann said.
The documented events have been ongoing since August, according to Town Manager James Smith.
“It is a process. We have to be careful that we follow it properly. We’re going to have to make our arguments before the court now,” Smith said. He said he appreciated people’s patience with that process.
The business at 55 West Street has argued that it had a pre-existing use and had been disembarking cruise ship passengers previously legally.
In a 96-page administrative appeal, of the town’s August 5 notice of violation to the Golden Anchor that is part of the company’s application for appeal within the town (not the outside court), attorney Andrew Hamilton argued that the company already has an approved site plan and a Wharves and Weirs Act permit that had been issued by the town. Therefore, he argues, the company should not be required to file for new permits.
During public comment Tuesday, Diane Vreeland asked that the business pay for the town’s court fees and wondered if there would be a fine for each person that disembarked without a permit.
MAIN STREET CLOSURE FROM PARK STREET TO CROMWELL HARBOR ROAD
The town announced November 19 that it had just learned that due to paving operations, Main Street from Park Street to Cromwell Harbor Road will be closed from Wednesday, November 20, through Wednesday, November 27.
Detour signage will be in place.
The Future Vision of Bar Harbor
The Bar Harbor Planning Department will introduce the future vision of Bar Harbor, also referred to as the Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan. This is an opportunity to better understand the plan that will guide the town’s decisions about future changes for the next 10+ years. This plan will likely be voted on in 2025 to decide whether or not it should be adopted.
Following a presentation providing an overview of the Plan, town staff will hold a questions and answers session to provide further clarity.
“The comprehensive plan is critical to our community’s approach to change. The plan sets a vision and shapes where we are collectively going as a community. The plan sets the tone for future changes to the land use ordinance because, most importantly, land use changes need to be consistent with the comprehensive plan,” says Michele Gagnon, planning director. “We want to improve accessibility and transparency, and that involves doing some things differently. We want to make this plan feel less overwhelming and more accessible, meaningful, and clear.”
Event Details:
Date & Time: Wednesday, November 20, 2024 from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Location: Municipal Building in the Town Council Chambers on (FREE PIZZA will be provided)
There will also be a Zoom participation option which can be accessed on the Town’s website.
The event will also be streamed and recorded on Town Hall Streams.
You can visit the Town’s Comprehensive Planning Committee webpage to view the event flyer among more event details on https://www.barharbormaine.gov/517/Comprehensive-Planning-Committee .
The Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan and accompanying documents can all be found separately here: https://www.barharbormaine.gov/501/Comprehensive-Plan
A NOTE FROM US
This is Carrie and Shaun, and as you’ve probably noticed, we’ve been working hard at the Bar Harbor Story, providing local news in a way that keeps you informed, but also embraces and promotes community and the good that is within it.
We take so much time—just the two of us, with a special needs kid that has to be homeschooled—to cover our island community’s (plus, Trenton) local news in a way that’s timely, daily, and remembers that underneath the news . . . there are people who are our neighbors.
We are working hard to get the news out there—for free—for everyone. But it’s taking its toll on our family financially and honestly, sometimes, emotionally, because frontline local news in a small community? It’s hard.
Most media isn’t local (even when it claims it is). Most media has paywalls and advertisers. We don’t. That’s not a smart financial decision for us. It’s a moral one. And we’re going to try to do it for as long as we can because we’re local, we’re passionate, and we’re all about getting the news to everyone—no paywalls.
Richard Stengel, writing in The Atlantic, said, "Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism.”
As a paper that is owned and staffed by locals, we make every attempt to gather all of the facts for our readers, information that might not be part of the main story and/or information that may not be known even to our towns’ officials, but is still just as important, if not more important, to the story.
We currently have over 3,000 subscribers, the vast majority of them free, with over 230,000 article reads every month. Every one of our stories is opened at least 2,000 times. Most are opened well over that amount.
To continue to provide you with fact based, non-editorialized news, we really need your support! If you’d like to support us or subscribe? It would mean the world to us, and to the Bar Harbor Story!
There are a few ways to do that:
You can send us a one-time support via this link here. It will say “Carrie Jones Books” because that’s what our PayPal account is through.
Your business or nonprofit can sponsor the Bar Harbor Story with a banner ad. More information on that is here.
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMITMENT TO ALL OF OUR COMMUNITY
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Clarification/Update: After we posted this article, we thought about how Peacock’s first quote included here might not be clear. We have updated the story at 12:12 p.m., November 20, for clarity. “The dock owners have yet, to date, applied for a permit,” Town Council Chair Valerie Peacock said during the November 19 council meeting, meaning that a permit has not been applied for. “We’ve been aware of the violations.”
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here.
If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.