Sidman Files Against Bar Harbor About Board of Appeals Decision

Jun 27, 2024

BAR HARBOR—In the latest in Bar Harbor’s cruise ship related legal saga, resident Charles Sidman, lead petitioner in the citizens’ initiative to limit cruise ship disembarkations to the town has filed another suit against the town.

The new complaint, filed June 25, asks for judicial review of the Board of Appeals’ May decision, where the board found that it did not have jurisdiction over his appeal of the Town Council’s March press release.

He has asked the court to vacate the Board of Appeal’s decision, send it back to the board, and have the board decide the appeal.

Sidman had also brought that matter directly to Hancock County Superior Court and suggested that the Town Council’s March 6 press release and public statement that discussed the enforcement for the 2024 season was in error. The court has not yet made a decision in the case.

The statement deals with the town’s rule creation and enforcement of the ordinance changes, which cap cruise ship disembarkations to 1,000 or less a day without fines. The initiative also places the changes within the town’s land use ordinance under the code enforcement officer’s and harbormaster’s purview.

Voters approved those limits in November 2022. Some local businesses have said that cruise ship visits help bring income to the town as well as their businesses. There were more than 150 visits in 2019 prior to the COVID pandemic.

The town also is dealing with a federal court appeal from multiple businesses, the Penobscot Bay Pilots Association, and a coalition of businesses and others called Association to Preserve and Protect Local Livelihoods.

After the federal bench trial in 2023, which was ruled mostly in favor of the town on February 29, the Town Council authorized staff to proceed with making those rules dealing with the mechanisms of how to cap and count and fine cruise ship disembarkations that are more than 1,000 a day. The council announced this in a March 6 statement. The season began May 5 and is scheduled to end October 28. On June 18, the Town Council approved the ordinance. It will be enacted July 18. The town is also working on a second track to potentially bring other changes to the rules to the voters this November.

In May, the Appeals Board unanimously decided that it did not have jurisdiction over Sidman’s appeal of a March 6 press release from the Town Council about cruise ship rule-making.

In determining whether or not it had jurisdiction, the Appeals Board had decided that the Town Council didn’t have the authority to interpret the town’s land use ordinance, that the Council’s statement did not have the force of law, and that there wasn’t a concrete decision made that was in the purview of the Appeals Board to adjudicate.

In this newest filing, Sidman’s attorneys, Jason Theobald and David Silk of Curtis Thaxter LLC, argue that the Town Council’s March action was without legal basis and harms the petitioner (Sidman) because the decision allowed ships to come in the 2024 cruise ship season that had not been scheduled as of April 1, 2022. At that time, he writes, there were 56 ships scheduled. Now, he writes, “either 134 or 149 ships are scheduled.” This, they reason, increases the amount of passengers coming ashore without permitting, per the ordinance’s requirements.

They write, “Plaintiff’s clientele—collectors of fine art—frequently complain and refuse to come to his business in downtown Bar Harbor on days cruise ships are disembarking passengers into the town because the town is overrun with cruise ship passengers.”

Sidman and his wife own Argosy Gallery on Mount Desert Street, which is in downtown Bar Harbor.

The filing also states that the Appeals Board should have found that it had jurisdiction over Sidman’s appeal of the Town Council statement.