Dentist Asks Council to Reconsider Lodging Moratorium

Bar Harbor Council & Planning Board Discuss Comprehensive Plan

Oct 06, 2024

BAR HARBOR—Bar Harbor Dentist Mathilde Resnick stood before the Town Council on Tuesday night with a plea—to think again about a moratorium on lodgings (transient accommodations) in town.

The topic came up after she was approached that day by a bed and breakfast owner about purchasing her property, she said. That owner was not identified.

However, Nina St.Germain has verified that it was not her or her husband, Tom, who own a property adjacent to Dr. Resnick’s on Main Street. That property, she said, the Water Company building, is currently employee housing with one seasonal rental, and one long-term rental.

In Dr. Resnick’s remarks, she stressed that her concern is about Bar Harbor losing services like hers because of competing demands for lodging. If they didn’t have the dedication to their 3,500 patients, they could sell, she said, “there would be another bed and breakfast in Bar Harbor. That would be terrible.”

“We have great difficulties in having employees come and live here,” she said. “It’s hard for them to find anything to rent.

“We won’t do that,” she said of selling to someone wanting to build lodging at the site. “It’s just something for you to consider.”

“If we decide that we really don’t want any more services in Bar Harbor and we just want to be tourism and transient housing that can be the direction we take,” or she said, the town could try to have a “little bit of everything” and keep services like hers in town.

Resnick’s statements came during the public comment portion of the Town Council meeting, but moratoriums and development and tourism were all touched on during the workshop that followed the quick meeting.

PAST MORATORIUM DISCUSSION

A potential moratorium on five types of transient accommodations in several zones in Bar Harbor failed to become a reality this April. It was also discussed late summer into fall 2023.

In September 2023, the town’s attorney Steven Wagner explained that a moratorium is “essentially a pause on development” and a pause on processing the applications for transient accommodations. To do that, the councilors would have to make certain findings: that the moratorium is necessary to stop a burden on public facilities and other aspects; that the existing comprehensive plan is inadequate. It was not passed or tabled, but sent to staff.

That potential moratorium had been initially suggested by Councilor Earl Brechlin at an April 2 meeting after a citizen’s email suggesting a pause on bed and breakfasts that only require code enforcement officer approval rather than the town’s planning board approval.

Bar Harbor’s Code Enforcement Officer, Angela Chamberlain, is currently changing the definitions of many transient accommodations. Those changes come before the voters this November.

When people visit Bar Harbor and stay overnight, they stay in what the town calls transient accommodations (TA). Those include rooms in hotels and motels and bed and breakfasts. They also include campsites and RV sites. Short-term rentals in houses are a different category than rooms rented in hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts. Short-term rentals that are not owner-occupied are capped in Bar Harbor.

In April, it was said that in the past five years, there have been approximately ten building permits dealing with transient accommodations.

What Councilor Kyle Shank found of those ten is:

Three were for the KOA campgrounds and did not result in net-new accommodations being built – they were simply replacements to existing infrastructure;
Two were related to conversions of short-term rentals to transient accommodations (both in 2019);
One was a transfer of a single family dwelling unit into a a seven-guest room bed and breakfast;
One was a change from one kind of transient accommodation to another, with no net change in rooms;
One was for an existing campground to add two new tent sites;
One was for the Bluenose Inn to construct a new building to replace the one that had been decimated by a fire. This has 21 suites.

CURRENT DISCUSSION

During the workshop portion of the Council’s Tuesday meeting, Vice Chair Gary Friedmann said that he wanted the Council to have a discussion about what a moratorium involves and issues about transient accommodation of every type. He also wanted to start a sustainable tourism group to talk about those issues. This would include whether employee housing is required for any new transient accommodations.

“That’s what I’m hearing people want—is a breather,” Friedmann said.

“The things that I’ve been hearing are a moratorium on transient accommodations until we can generate land use regulations that look at things like if there should be a cap on an annual growth,” as well as if there should be on-site employee housing and parking requirements of any new transient accommodations, Friedmann said.

Town Manager James Smith said he wasn’t sure if they needed to jump to a hard break when there could be tools and policy the Council might be able to use to regulate. He’d like to have an internal discussion with staff if there are simple policy tools to address those sort of concerns immediately. The staff can explore those options, he said.

Shank asked what the objective would be.

“The objective is to stop building more TAs and converting other existing uses into TAs of any kind until they can get a handle as a community on what the annual growth rate or total cap of TA units should be in this town,” as well as whether the town should require on-site employee housing as well as looking into parking, Friedmann said.

He wanted to have that discussion by the first meeting of November so that it doesn’t get away from the Council.

“It’s time for us to act on something other than cruise ships,” he said.

Others didn’t want to move too quickly without looking into data and allowing the staff to explore options.

Councilor Joe Minutolo said he was worried about rushing into possibilities that could create ripple effects and impact other communities and Bar Harbor’s own traffic if Bar Harbor did something such as stop any new hotels being built in the town. Is that really going to fix it, he wondered.

“It’s bigger than just Bar Harbor,” Minutolo said of the problem and the impacts. He added that Acadia National Park was no longer enjoyable because of the amount of traffic within it. He said he wished there were no cars allowed in the park and that it had caps though he understands the point of national parks to provide access to people to nature.

Acadia National Park Management Assistant John Kelly, who is also the chair of the town’s Parks and Recreation Committee and on the town’s Comprehensive Planning Committee, said the park’s visitation is flat, but that still makes it the third busiest season ever.

Planning Board Vice Chair Ruth Eveland said that eighteen years ago the town had a moratorium on subdivisions because the Planning Board couldn’t cope with all the work it was doing without getting the processes under control.

“There is a time and a place for that kind of action,” she said and mentioned that moratorium had been helpful.

Former Town Councilor Stephen Coston said,”I feel like I just sat through six rounds with Mike Tyson. You guys are going to have bricks coming through my window. That was a lot of blaming and attacking.”

Coston’s property has been vandalized in the past. He is a parter in the Pathmaker Hotel and owns other lodgings. He added that taxes on projects such as the Pathmaker add revenue to the town’s tax base. He said he just paid the six-month property tax bill on the Pathmaker, which was approximately $21,000 on the new multi-million property. He believes that prior to the property’s purchase, the tax on the land annually was approximately $3,500.

“There’s pros and cons to this and we need to talk about both sides. We need to have a balanced reasonable conversation,” he said without blaming language that pits one side against another. “There are differences of opinion. You can’t categorize people and sift people into tiny ideological pillars. I really, really wish we could get away from this and have the conversation. If it could be not so charged for once, that would be really, really awesome.”

Former Planning Board Chair and Pathmaker partner and restauranteur, Tom St.Germain said, “There was data that was submitted last time and that data showed an actual contraction in the number of lodging units that have been brought on line since 2019.”

St.Germain also referenced the last vote at a mid April Council meeting about a potential moratorium in TAs.

After a 4-3 vote, the split Council directed Smith to alert the Council if an application comes in for the five listed accommodations before the November vote.

That April motion had passed 4-3. Brechlin, Friedmann, Councilor Matthew Hochman, and Minutolo voted in favor. Councilor Maya Caines, Council Chair Val Peacock, and Shank voted against the motion. St.Germain characterized that April discussion as different than last week’s.

“Tonight, it felt like it was a crises. I believe that governing by crisis is not the right way to go about it,” St.Germain said.

OTHER BUSINESS

The Bar Harbor Town Council approved the special amusement license for Finback on Cottage Street during its October 1 meeting.

The meeting involved only two orders, the Finback renewal and the state-mandated municipal officers’ acceptance return on the public hearing.

The Finback had two substantiated violations of the town’s amusement ordinance due to decibel level readings that were over the maximum allowed of 71. The first was on August 3 when it was 84.2 decibels 15-30 feet from the entrance. The second was on September 18, when there was a decibel reading of 74, taken 10 feet away. The readers were at 11:30 and 11:45 p.m. Police officers took the readings.

No members of the public spoke to the permit. There was no discussion. It was unanimously approved.

WORKSHOP DISCUSSION ABOUT THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN

Planning Director Michele Gagnon gave the Town Council a quick explanation of the Comprehensive Plan after thanking the committee members for their service. Later in the week, she also workshopped the plan with the town’s Planning Board.

Gagnon said the town’s Comprehensive Plan is close to being presented. It will be likely voted on in June after a three-year process.

“For three years just to stay with this project? That’s a tough thing,” Gagnon said. She also thanked Eveland for attending all the Comprehensive Plan meetings though she wasn’t appointed to the committee.

Gagnon spoke to the outreach that the committee has done. More than 2,000 people went to the website for 7,000 visits, she said. 1,300 responded to PolCo surveys.

“It is truly a community comprehensive plan,” Gagnon said.

The plan has five parts including an existing conditions report, which includes a housing analysis.

“We’re building a fifty-year plan,” Gagnon said. Ten years in the government world is a blink of the eye.

At the Planning Board workshop, the wide-ranging discussion delved into septic system inventories, the process of bringing potential ordinance changes to the voters, exclusionary zoning, and changing instances of the term “grandfathering” to “pre-existing nonconforming uses” because of the first term’s history in relationship to laws enacted in the 1890 through 1910s in reaction to the 15th Amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

They also discussed potentially reducing the 32 zoning districts, shore land zoning, campgrounds, parking for lodging, and the needs for homes in Bar Harbor. Items that might be on a November 2025 ballot have to be worked on now.

“There’s a serious issue in front of us,” Gagnon said of people finding homes in Bar Harbor.

“It’s just luck if you find a rental,” Planning Board Chair Millard Dority said.

New member Guy Dunphey asked how can the town build homes and protect them as a use for year-round residents.

“How do we move this forward before we lose everything and everyone is living in Ellsworth?” Dority said. A similar sentiment was echoed at the Trenton Select Board meeting last week. An upcoming League of Towns meeting on October 17 brings elected officials from throughout the region to specifically look at housing and transportation issues in the area.

Gagnon and staff also discussed the town’s safety plan.

The Safety Action Plan will identify safety risks to people traveling on Bar Harbor’s streets and then formulate a plan to mitigate those risks. It will be developed this year and next year. The town is currently seeking community input. The survey is open until October 18.

The survey includes an interactive webmap where you can point out specific streets where you experience unsafe conditions.

https://www.barharbormaine.gov/666/Safe-Streets-for-All-SS4A