Mount Desert Likely Hosts 420 Weekly Rentals
Select Board Will Continue Discussion Next Week
MOUNT DESERT—A public hearing on a potential short-term rental ordinance in Mount Desert, Monday evening, brought in approximately 75 people in person and on Zoom. Representatives from the Town of Bar Harbor and Town of Sorrento were attending.
The board did not make a recommendation for the town’s warrant due to conflicts of interest on the board and will hold another meeting about the ordinance next week.
Nearby, Tremont has also been wrestling with the question of short-term rentals. Ellsworth has been named one of the most profitable places to own one.
According to the town’s draft ordinance’s introduction, the ordinance is about “legitimate concerns about the increase in the number of vacation rentals and the undue impacts they can have on the year-round community and quality of life of the town.”
The potential ordinance and its cap would be similar to Bar Harbor’s. As proposed, there would be two main categories: vacation rentals and short-term rentals.
The Mount Desert ordinance, if passed, would require short-term rentals and vacation rentals to register with the town. The town would define both as renting a place to dwell in for less than 28 nights in a row.
Short-term rentals would be primary residencies of the property owners and would be year-round dwellings. Owners would not have to be on site when they are renting.
Vacation rentals would not be the primary residence of the owner. Both categories would require those rentals to be licensed if they are to be advertised. The proposed 9% cap would only apply to vacation rentals.
“We estimate that there are approximately 420 rental properties currently,” Mount Desert Select Board member Martha Dudman said. That number is for both short-term rentals and vacation properties. There are approximately 2,611 dwellings in town, she said.
Un-winterized homes are not part of the housing stock for year-round occupancy, so those rentals wouldn’t be capped either, Dudman said.
Voters in Bar Harbor capped rentals that are not the owner’s primary residence (VR-2) at 9% of total dwellings back in 2021. The Bar Harbor Town Council then tweaked a piece of that ordinance in October 2022. The Bar Harbor ordinance was challenged in a lawsuit about whether or not the town had misinterpreted its charter and code. A Maine Superior Court justice denied the suit. That has been appealed.
The Mount Desert ordinance, if approved as is, would also cap vacation rentals at 9% of the town’s total dwellings, but that cap would only apply to rentals that are not seasonal dwellings. It would also allow all current rentals licensed in year one to continue as long as they are licensed each year. The 9% cap would be met as licenses decrease each year.
At Monday’s meeting, Tim Ford said he is a taxpayer, but not a full-time resident. He’d like nothing more than to solve the affordable housing problem, but said he was bothered on a couple of levels. “There’s no doubt it’s a problem. I’m not sure if this by itself is a solution.”
One of his worries?
“I fear this makes a wedge between the full-time residents and the summer residents,” he said. He wanted to make a committee to work on this together. “Bar Harbor’s not alone. Maine’s not alone.”
There are currently regional housing solutions work via the Musson Group and Island Housing Trust and others.
Monday evening, Sam McGee said he had a lot of questions about the proposal specifically about the caps, and asked for the rationale behind the percentage.
“To put a limit on it, you’re going to have unfair outcomes,” he said where one socio-economic class of residents might have an advantage.
Select Board Secretary Geoffrey Wood said the safety issues weren’t the driving force for the potential changes, but that they are meant to promote the viability of the year-round community.
McGee said that was part of his worry. When his mom died twenty years ago, he and his sister inherited her properties.
“I was able to keep our house on ice,” thanks to renting it in the short term, he said, and he was able to move back to the island, rather than being forced to sell his home.
Another community member from Somesville said that he’s lived next to a weekly rental for eight years and said he does not enjoy it. He said short-term and vacation rentals should be zoned commercially if there’s a weekly rental. He said weekly rentals decreased the number of school age children in town. Others also expressed worries over the continuation of the year-round community without the changes. Others worried about the continuation of the year-round community with the changes. That concern was particularly expressed in the Zoom comments. One woman on Zoom said that taxes force them to rent their house.
“I do not want to sell my house,” she wrote. “Mt. Desert is my life-long love, and I am invested in the community.”
Kim Chaplin stressed that there may be a correlation in housing stock’s lowering numbers, but in a vacation community where houses are pricey, and a multi-decade tradition of renting to visitors, there might not be the causation.
Proponents stressed that the ordinance is just one piece of the puzzle in the affordability conversation and that it’s an important piece.
In October, Mount Desert Islander reporter Dick Broom reported that Dudman had said of the rentals, “It’s a growing problem. It’s bad enough now and it’s only going to get worse. Short-term rentals are gutting our communities, turning popular tourist areas all over the world into places where a bunch of people are renting houses, and no one is living there year-round.”
Many on Monday asked about transferability of the permit. Some worried about parking requirements detailed in the ordinance.
Chaplin, a rental agent at the Knowles Company in Northeast Harbor asked about the efficacy and research done to capping weekly rentals and increasing housing.
Houses that can’t be rented have to be sold, she said. If they are sold, those dwellings are going to be sold to someone who doesn’t need to rent the house and then it sits empty.
Within the Zoom chat, Penelope Redmon said, “‘Affordable housing’ is a complicated situation. We will never be able to get housing markets priced so that blue collar workers can live here year-round. Creative solutions (sic) need to be used.”
Noel Musson said short-term rental cap ordinances were new tools and that over time they’d have to do the research to see the effects of the caps and the data.
“It is a tool that more and more communities are starting to think about,” he said.
Musson has been working with Town Manager Durlin Lunt and others to craft the changes.
Another speaker on Monday said that Bar Harbor had unintended consequences of costs trying to manage the caps. Mount Desert would likely use a deputy code enforcement position as a full-time employee rather than part-time to help manage the caps, as well as software. Bar Harbor also uses software, which glitched last year, sending one property owner to the town’s Appeals Board.
Though the Mount Desert Select Board can’t make a recommendation on the change, it can still put it on the warrant. The town can tinker with the wording until March 21. There is a 45-day window where changes can’t be made. If the ordinance is placed on the warrant, the voters will decide its fate at town meeting, May 7.
One man suggested having a flat annual fee for all rental licensing in year one to deal with life safety, rather than the proposed annual fee of $250 for short-term rentals and $500 for vacation rentals. Then, once there is an understanding of the numbers, the town can come back and deal with the other aspects in the future.
Complicating matters a bit, the town’s Select Board couldn’t vote to recommend or not recommend the ordinance because a majority of the five-member board own properties that they rent less than 28 days. During the public hearing, it was voiced that several of the town’s Warrant Committee members, which also makes recommendations, have a similar issue.
Also, complicating matters, the town lost its main connection with the people in the Zoom audience for a portion of the public hearing. The 47 people on Zoom had their own conversation as the Zoom kept running for them, prior to the connection to the main meeting returning.
LINKS TO LEARN AND DO MORE
The Mount Desert Select Board meets again Monday, March 18 at 6 p.m. The Warrant Committee meets at 6 p.m., March 19.
To read the ordinance discussion draft
Here is the Zoom meeting ID info for the recurring Selectboard meetings, taking place on the first and third Mondays each month at 6:30 pm. You can call any of the numbers listed by phone, or connect with a computer using the link. This recurring meeting ID (Meeting ID: 248 566 175) will stay the same until further notice. The printed agendas will also include the link so that the public can participate.
Topic: Mt Desert's Selectboard Meetings
Time: First and third Mondays at 6:30 pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/248566175?pwd=RmozZjBOVWhtUTQrRXR5QzFEZEEyQT09
Meeting ID: 248 566 175
Password: 919872
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,248566175#,,,,0#,,919872# US (Chicago)
+16468769923,,248566175#,,,,0#,,919872# US (New York)
Disclosure: I own a short-term rental in Bar Harbor that I intend to move back into once all our children have graduated.