Doing the Work, Workshop Style
Bar Harbor Council workshops short term rentals, committees, and tourism task force
BAR HARBOR—According to Town Manager James Smith, the focus of the Bar Harbor Town Council’s workshop on Tuesday night was to shape high-level objectives for the town. The seven councilors and staff touched on multiple big-ticket items for the town including changing short-term rental rules for home-owners who rent their primary residence, a sustainable tourism task force, and exactly how the town’s boards, task forces, and committees are defined.
There was no formal action taken during the workshop. Any formal action would have to occur during a council meeting, but Smith and councilors and members of the public were able to voice opinions on the subjects.
SUSTAINABLE TOURISM MANAGEMENT TASK FORCE
Back in September 2023, the Bar Harbor Town Council spoke about creating a sustainable tourism task force plan to try to deal with summertime congestion and other worries.
What the term “sustainable tourism” means to the town and how to plan toward it has not yet been determined.
The discussion gained momentum in September 2023 after the town council disbanded the town’s Cruise Ship Committee. It resurged in February 2024 after a duo of storms the previous month caused considerable damage to some of the coastal areas of the town including the Shore Path, Ells’ Pier at the end of Main and West Street, and parts of Acadia National Park.
The Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce stated then that it would like to be part of that discussion.
“Last year, we stated our support for the Bar Harbor Town Council to form a Sustainable Tourism Committee. Over the past few years, as visitation increased in many places across the country, several towns that are gateways to national parks and popular destinations began to put in sustainable tourism management plans. Sustainable tourism means several different things to several different people. Some of the best plans were built with those different approaches sitting at the table to develop the plan,” said Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Director Everal Eaton.
“We need to be ready to jump in and figure out an overall holistic sustainable tourism plan,” Councilor Matt Hochman had said. “I think a management committee is the only way we can do that.”
At the workshop the councilors agreed that the staff-created proposal for a sustainable tourism task force was close to being ready.
Staff was looking for feedback and to see if the town is moving in the right direction, Smith said.
Eliza Oldach said during public comment, “I think sustainable tourism, a little bit, sounds like an oxymoron.”
This, she said, is because tourism is usually based on consumption. She said she’d be excited to hear how to develop a vision of tourism that feeds back even as it extracts.
“I’m really wondering in looking for the plan for the committee and thinking about composition and how one person’s economic stability may be the same as one person’s cultural erosion of sustainability,” she said.
Hochman said he’s still concerned about the potential group’s composition though he likes what else is in the proposal. He just wanted to make sure it didn’t become an anti-tourism committee.
“Fourteen year-round Bar Harbor residents is kind of nebulous,” he said of the task force’s proposed composition.
He wants the committee to have a fair balance of residents and people who do work in tourism.
Councilor Earl Brechlin said the council needs to establish what sustainable tourism actually is. The council should set that tone and then create a committee that has community interests and not just business interests.
In 2019, a five-year comparison of Bar Harbor’s population over 16 was 4,699. Of that number 1,506 were not in the labor force, or approximately a third of people over 16. Of those, in 2021, approximately 1,752 (a third) were employed in retail trade, accommodation, and food services. That same year, approximately 1,709 (a third) were employed in professional, scientific, and technical services.
Councilor Kyle Shank said defining sustainable tourism is going to be crucial and suggested making a time-bound element to the committee. That way they can make sure that the committee has an actionable, deliverable work product that can be used to guide policy and an expected time to deliver that work.
“This is a big meatball, right? There is a lot going on here,” Shank said.
The issues surrounding tourism aren’t just here, Council Chair Valerie Peacock said. They are worldwide. And the town can look outside how it thinks now to think of different and effective ways to work toward goals in a way that isn’t super prescriptive.
Council Vice Chair Gary Friedmann would rather the task force be smaller and up to twelve members. He suggested that the committee have a budget that allows them to get information from outside sources. He referenced MDI Tomorrow, an initiative led by Ron Beard and others that brought people together to try to help with island-wide issues. During some meetings, the group brought in experts in gateway communities as it explored gateway communities’ issues. That group worked heavily in the late 1980s and early 2000s.
“I think the trick is just finding people who aren’t just super divisive,” Councilor Maya Caines said about the task force’s composition. She also said more clarity around the timeline and structure would be helpful so that people would know what they are getting into.
Speaking as a member of the public, former councilor and current Planning Board Vice Chair Ruth Eveland said, “If you think about this community, there is a business community, but there is an exceptionally strong, vibrant non-profit community.”
That’s a different voice, she said. She wants to be sure that it’s one of the strong voices on the committee.
The number of residents who are employed in retail sales between 2014 and 2020 has gone down from 465 to 388. The number employed in accommodation and food services has stayed relatively steady, but decreased by ten in that same time frame. The number of residents employed in professional, scientific and technical services has increased from 1,388 to 1,709.
The draft proposal discussed at the workshop identifies stakeholder groups, Smith said and added that he and Planning Director Michele Gagnon will look into best practices about councilor interaction and placement in the group.
SHORT TERM RENTALS
Ensuring that the VR-1 program is being used appropriately by year-round residents in their primary homes is another goal, Smith said during the Tuesday night workshop.
Some residents, he said, really need to have access to rental programs to keep them in their homes in Bar Harbor.
Peacock said in November that VR-1s are a really important part of the Bar Harbor community and how people can piece together a living here.
“A majority of people are doing this legally,” she’d said, and it’s been part of the culture and history of the town.
In November, Caines added that she wants to be mindful of individuals who are renting out rooms in their homes to survive here, which is the VR-1 category that was initially included in the moratorium.
However, there is some concern that there may be gaming of the system and loopholes.
“It’s come to council attention that there are property owners in town who are perverting the ordinance,” Friedmann had said in November.
According to Friedmann, some property owners are obtaining one-percent ownership on a deed and calling it a residence so that they can apply as VR-1s, which is not capped. Bar Harbor has capped homes that are not primary residences (VR-2s) to 9% of housing stock.
“It’s very easy to get a VR-1 right now in this town. This has happened more than once,” Friedmann had said before asking if the council can act quickly enough to create changes to the registration process.
The planning department has already been working on some changes to registration requirements.
Brechlin said Tuesday night that the potential proposed order was a fine piece of anti-skullduggery work. He stressed that VR-1s should be the permanent residence of all the owners of the property. He said a utility bill is too easy to fake to use as a verification of residence.
He cited the possibilities of putting a minor child’s name on the deed of one property the family owns or putting down the name of a sister who owns 1% of a property and then gets a VR-1 for the dwelling in her name as potential ways people can subvert the system.
“You get one permanent property you rent out on a VR-1. You don’t get three. You don’t get four,” Brechlin said.
Caines said that she also wants to make sure that non-U.S. citizens can provide documentation to prove that their home is a primary residence.
BOARDS, COMMITTEES, AND COMMISSIONS
Town Clerk Liz Graves went through the potential board, committees, and commissions changes.
It’s an attempt to start the conversation about those definitions and their differences, Smith explained. The definitions are the first step to setting the tone for everything else. It’s a very big undertaking, he said.
That section of potential changes defines resident as “a person who is a registered voter in the Town of Bar Harbor, as defined by Title 21-A of the Maine Revised Statutes. A person who is under the age of 18 but otherwise would qualify as a resident may be appointed to a board, committee, commission, or task force where a youth representative is designated.”
Smith said that when cleaning up the committees, boards, commissions, and task forces that’s it’s important that it is done with care and to make sure that it heavily encourages civic engagement.
Potential definitions are as follow:
“Board: A formally established body with decision-making authority granted by law or ordinance.
“Committee: An advisory body tasked with providing recommendations to the Town Council or Town Manager.
“Commission: A body with a specialized focus, often governed by state or federal law, with regulatory or advisory powers.
“Task Force: A temporary body established by Council order to address a specific issue, project, or goal, with a defined scope and timeline, dissolving upon completion of its mission.
“Legislative Body: A body with authority to create or recommend policies, ordinances, or regulations (e.g., the Town Council, Planning Board in ordinance recommendations).
“Quasi-Judicial Body: A body that conducts hearings, makes legally binding decisions, and applies established laws and ordinances to specific cases or circumstances (e.g., Planning Board in site plan review, Appeals Board).
“Advisory Body: A body tasked with providing research, recommendations, or guidance to the Town Council or Town Manager without decision-making authority (e.g., Harbor Committee).”
Some bodies might be two things at once, such as the Bar Harbor Parks and Recreation Committee, which acts as a quasi-judicial body when it approves a permit to use the town’s village green, but as an advisory body when it recommends changes to plans for things such as the Glen Mary Pool.
The definitions of quasi-judicial body and legislative body are important in terms of ethics questions and recusal issues, Peacock said. She also suggested more uniform quorum guidelines and more regularity or ways to increase town council and committee/board communications.
Peacock also suggested looking at a remote participation policy that is less casual.
Smith said that each board or committee should have a staff member working with the group and then that staff member reports back to the council. That technically laborious work of communication happens via the professional staff, he said.
Councilor Joe Minutolo said the communication component is really important and it feels like it is lacking and there is a disconnect between the council and other boards, task forces, and committees. He said that while he knows there is paid staff it is nice to hear from committee members as well.
Canes has said similar things throughout the year. At this meeting, she advised that if the town wants a diverse group of people involved then it should have easy remote participation allowed.
Some concerns will be in a policy handbook that is being created, Smith said.
Note: We’ll have another story about the cruise ship portion of this workshop. It was a bit long of a piece already, and we also want to get out some news from Mount Desert, Tremont, and Trenton.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
https://www.barharbormaine.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/3528?html=true
https://www.townhallstreams.com/stream.php?location_id=37&id=64393
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