Town Council Pauses All Lodging Construction for 180 Days
Maya Caines Appointed Vice Chair, Comprehensive Plan Moves Ahead
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by First National Bank.
BAR HARBOR—After enacting two 60-day emergency moratoriums, the Bar Harbor Town Council, on February 4, unanimously voted for a 180-day moratorium on lodging. Councilor Joe Minutolo was not present.
“I really struggle with this one,” Councilor Randy Sprague said.
The moratorium will pause the construction of new lodgings and enlargement of others. It applies in all districts in Bar Harbor. This most recent effort was brought forward by former Town Council Vice Chair and newly elected State Representative Gary Friedmann in November. That 60-day emergency moratorium was renewed and set to expire in March. The language of the moratorium speaks to infrastructure pressure that it says comes from lodging.
Back in September 2023, the town’s attorney Steven Wagner explained that a moratorium is “essentially a pause on development.” 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 to do so.
Sprague said his heart was with the residents of Bar Harbor. However, he worried about stopping growth completely.
He said the potential construction of lodging across from the school and the “behemoth” across from Jordan’s Restaurant on Cottage Street was worrisome. He said he thinks the zoning laws could be enhanced to protect the infrastructure more than it has been and wished that public works representatives were at the meeting to discuss that.
“The problem is down here, not out of town so much,” Sprague said. “I really struggle with this a lot.”
Councilor Matthew Hochman said a lot of Sprague’s comments are the points of the moratorium—to figure out the issues the town faces and how to fix them.
“This is not a permanent stop on development. This is a pause while we work on all the things,” that the town can work on, Hochman said.
“When is enough, enough?” Councilor Earl Brechlin said as he indicated his support for the moratorium.
The ordinance itself can be amended and even repealed within its 180 days.
Both Vice Chair Maya Caines and Chair Valerie Peacock expressed concern about potentially divisive rhetoric around the issue, which can create polarized camps of opinion.
“To me this isn’t to say ‘shame on you’ and punish anyone,” Caines said. She agreed with public comment that other organizations have an impact on town infrastructure as well. “I do not want people to feel like it’s a direct attack on one industry.”
She added that the moratorium isn’t pausing the construction of employee living quarters and shared accommodation housing, which had been a worry of some residents.
“There aren’t really clear sides of this issue,” Peacock said. She’s said she’s talked to a lot of people who understand the history of tourism in the community as well as the stresses that a tourism economy can cause. “I think there’s a lot more middle ground than we’re being led to believe.”
“Is this about the rhetoric or is this about the community coming together” and deciding what it is and what it wants to be, Peacock asked.
Peacock connected the need for housing to the moratorium. She also said that the town has been doing hard work creating shared accommodations, employee living quarters, capping short-term rentals, cleaning up lodging definitions, and creating a comprehensive plan that prioritizes housing.
“We want you to get us out of the moratorium,” she said to the planning board members and stressed that the council looked to that board to help.
She tasked the planning board with creating conversations about codifying residential areas in the downtown center and protecting them, setbacks, height restrictions, and other aspects for transient accommodations in the area, and those accommodations near schools.
“We have a lot of work to get through our differences. Maybe this moratorium isn’t actually a war,” she said. “Maybe it’s a chance to come together.”
PUBLIC COMMENT ABOUT THE MORATORIUM
Bar Harbor School Committee Chair Lilea Simis said the school committee doesn’t have a stance as a group about the moratorium, but that several members have been approached by community members worried about transient accommodations adjacent to the school.
“I want to ask if we could be part of the conversations, part of the work,” Simis said.
Bar Harbor resident Tonya Ivanow asked what the parameters for the moratorium were.
“If you don’t extend the moratorium, why not?” she asked councilors.
Town Hill resident Maureen Donnelly said she wanted the town to cap all future tourist accommodations and redo zoning to maintain residential-only zones and go back to 2010 parking requirements. She said over-tourism has inhibited cell phone use and overwhelmed Acadia National Park.
“Our community is dying,” she said. “We are a community only from November through April.”
Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Director Everal Eaton reiterated some of his previous concerns expressed at earlier meetings.
“At the planning board’s July 2023 meeting, 2,940 rooms were outlined across 84 properties in Bar Harbor. Over the past decade and since that July 2023 meeting, very few lodging rooms have been added to the town’s inventory. Most of the growth we’ve seen in accommodations over the past decade has been driven by short-term rentals. However, since the short-term rental ordinance was passed, we’ve seen vacation rental 2s decrease by 9.96%, from 522 licenses registered in 2022 to 470 in 2024 and overall short-term rentals decrease from 681 to 662 in that same period representing a 2.79% decrease. The perception that there is rapid growth with accommodations is misguided and unsupported by the data,” Eaton said.
“Second, three months into this moratorium, its specific goals remain undefined,” Eaton added. “The preamble's concerns are complex and would require years to address. This open-ended approach risks wasting time and resources, not accomplishing any meaningful change, and degrading the public’s support of the town.”
“Last, I believe that this ordinance will be counterproductive to what is intended. Forcing visitors to stay outside of town will increase reliance on vehicles, exacerbating traffic congestion and parking issues,” Eaton said. “Bar Harbor benefits significantly from its locally owned businesses, including many of our lodging establishments. Two-thirds of every dollar spent at these businesses stays local, supporting our infrastructure, hospital, and non-profits among others while creating careers that sustain our year-round population. Pushing this economic activity outside the town undermines the town's stated goals.”
Jeremy Dougherty, managing director at Witham Family Hotels and the Bar Harbor Inn and Bar Harbor resident, spoke toward bringing the issue away from polarities.
“I am also someone deeply interested in the history of a place and how that history might translate into the future. Over my years of living in Bar Harbor and leading the Bar Harbor Inn team, I’ve become fascinated at the depth of history our hotel has, but also the lodging and tourism industry of our town,” Dougherty said. “I’ve read all the history books and all the newspaper articles I could find that cover the last 170+ years of the hotel business here. It’s a fascinating review of such a transcendent era of our country’s history, all wrapped up in one little island.”
When he looked at that history, he said, he saw two common themes that have existed in every era.
“One being the existence of tourism. The other being the existence of resistance to tourism. Consider this quote from a 1956 newspaper article by Herbert J. Seligmann: ‘Bar Harbor & Mount Desert Island, however much the old-timers may regret it, are now definitely in the tourist business,’” Dougherty read. “The tourism industry has both created this town, and also been its biggest challenge.”
Dougherty said that some in the town felt that “the tourism pendulum has swung too far in one direction.”
“In some ways it’s hard to disagree as our little town has welcomed record numbers of visitors to Acadia over the last four years. Last year had a higher visitation than 2023 did for Acadia, and subsequently we had another busy season in our village. Much like they did in 1890 when, as another article stated, ‘20,000 some summer people’ came to the island,” Dougherty said. “In each era, these volumes stressed the infrastructure of those respective eras. In each era, the growth of tourism came along with it the negative consequences of rapid growth. In each era, there was a major correction of one kind or another and the tourism industry was forced to rebuild completely. From shoddy construction, fires, disease, wars and recessions, lodging in Bar Harbor has been re-born over and over again.”
That rebirth, he said, is “a testament to both the resilience of the generations of this town and to the never ending demand of such a beautiful location. But, is this moratorium our era’s turning point that creates the next correction? Does it stifle all responsible future investments?”
He asked that if the council moved forward with the moratorium that they allow enlargements of properties if those enlargements don’t allow expansion of guest rooms over a set percentage, such as 5 or 10%.
Dougherty also worried that the moratorium felt too open-ended.
“Whatever you decide, please consider the value that tourism has held and will continue to hold in our community,” Dougherty said. “We are a huge collection of people who spend a lot of time working to provide memorable experiences for guests coming from all over the world. I believe it to be an honorable profession, and career. So many people come to this island because they are attracted to the natural beauty of our area. They come back year after year because of the people they meet. In the hotels. In the restaurants. In the visitor center. In the grocery store. Sitting next to them at dinner. We collectively are all a part of the tourism community, whether you realize it or not.”
Bar Harbor Resorts Director of Operations Eben Salvatore read a few of the whereas clauses of the moratorium. Those clauses emphasize the point and logic of the moratorium. One clause states that the town is seeing ongoing pressure on public infrastructure because of the increase of lodgings.
He said he’s yet to see the strain or evidence of that.
“In FY2016 the largest wastewater customer in Bar Harbor was the Jackson Lab, at 17.8% of the total wastewater produced.” By FY2023, the lab had grown to be 23.5%, he said. “Annually, the Jackson Lab produces more wastewater ever year than all the Witham family and Walsh family hotels combined. Right? That’s year in and year out. That’s the infrastructure strain. That’s not hotels.”
He said he’d like to see utility reports that support the whereas clauses of the moratorium.
“Three months ago, we overhauled the entire transient accommodations ordinance, every zone, every definition,” he said of the land use amendments approved by voters in November. “It just feels like this is about a certain thing and if we could address that directly we could save this whole process.“
Bar Harbor resident, Chamber Board President, and Side Street Operations Manager Gary “Bo” Jennings praised the planning department and board as exceptional. He applauded the creation of the tourism task force, but he said that it’s important to have data to back decisions up.
“Let’s empower our planning board and planning department,” while the councilors work on the budget, he said, then, ”let’s knock this thing out of the park together.”
Resident, restaurateur, and hotelier Tom St.Germain agreed that the whereas document was inaccurate. He said all transient accommodations are reviewed by the planning board and that’s there is no data to support the moratorium.
”I am concerned that the lodging industry is being blamed and we are not getting equal protection under the law under this moratorium,” he said. Unlike lodgings, expansions at the MDI Hospital and Jackson Lab, he said, is green lighted.
Resident, restaurateur, and lodging business owner, Diwas Thapa said the moratorium’s scope was too wide. He said that it’s hard to justify how his property in Salisbury Cove, for example, with its own sewer and water, falls under the whereas clauses of the moratorium.
Resident Enoch Albert said, “I believe the quality of life in this town trumps the business concerns at this point.”
He said the moratorium, which is time limited, won’t stop growth or the business owners from making money.
The council went into executive session at 7:55 p.m. concerning the moratorium. There was no action coming out of the session. They councilors took their vote after this.
A workshop scheduled after the meeting was cancelled.
THE MORATORIUM
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN
Staff Planner Hailey Bondy, Comprehensive Plan Committee Vice Chair John Kelly, and Housing and Community Planner Cali Martinez presented the comprehensive plan, which had been approved by the comprehensive planning committee the night before. Planning Director Michele Gagnon was out of town.
The committee worked on the plan for three years.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Kelly told the council.
Kelly said he felt the process was very inclusive of the community. He also shouted out the planning department staff. “The staff has been amazing. We are very lucky as a community to have Cali and Hailey and Michelle…. I think they’ve done a terrific job.”
“A comprehensive plan is a long range vision for the future” that allows a town to respond to change and plan for change. They are meant to inform and set the stage for short term and long term actions such as land use changes, policies, and other similar actions, Bondy said. It is the legal basis to future changes on zoning maps, which is a regulatory document shaped by a land use ordinance that outlines dimensional uses and allowances in specific areas.
It is not, she said, an ordinance itself. It is also meant to be broadly specific, not detail-specific.
The most important part of the plan, Martinez said, is likely the section titled “Bar Harbor Today and Tomorrow.”
Bondy went through the issues that the public and committee members identified and then the vision that came from those issues. Those included: the impacts of housing and labor shortages throughout Mount Desert Island, limited land available for future development, cost implications of sprawling development, infrastructure investments needed to support future development, impacts of over-tourism and over-crowding, lack of revenue.
Infill development in Bar Harbor’s downtown area was mentioned. Development of varying degrees was also mentioned in the Hulls Cove and Town Hill areas.
“Bar Harbor’s remaining rural areas account for 65% of the town’s land area outside of the National Park, and there is a strong desire by residents to retain this rural landscape. Routes 3 and 102, critical local routes, pass through this area. These roadways provide visual and physical access to these lands and the low density residential and commercial uses present. A network of protected lands, natural resources, and cultural resources shape the character of these areas and should be retained and buffered from future development,” the plan reads.
Sprague mentioned that there is a bit of a commercial district in Town Hill, which isn’t shown specifically on the map. The lines on the maps in the plan are not absolute Kelly said, but are more generalized and conceptual.
Peacock thanked the committee and staff, which she said was a detail-oriented group with diverse views. Kelly thanked Chair Greg Cox who was unable to attend the council meeting.
“This is not the town council’s plan. This is the citizens of Bar Harbor’s plan,” Hochman said, stressing the committee’s three years of public engagement and multiple meetings. “I think it’s very important for people to realize that this was a very long, very public process.”
At the council meeting, there was some discussion on amenity traps, which is mentioned in the plan. Brechlin said he appreciated it being in there.
The council unanimously thanked the committee for its work, requested the planning board to consider the plan and to schedule a public hearing.
The plan will go to the planning board, today, February 5. A. public hearing will be held for the planning board on March 10. There will be a public hearing at the town council on March 18. It will be before the voters at the June 10 election. Kelly stressed that the plan will be in the residents’ hands.
Smith thanked the staff and committee members and citizens who participated. “Kudos to all the staff, all the citizens.”
VICE CHAIR
With the recent resignation of former Vice Chair Gary Friedmann, the councilors needed to elect a vice chair.
Earl Brechlin nominated Maya Caines for vice chair. There were no other nominations. She was unanimously elected.
Caines ran for council in 2023 with a background of advocacy work and employment at The Jackson Laboratory and town staff. She has a background in economics and environmental policy, years of experience advocating for equity for marginalized groups across the country.
“Congratulations,” Peacock said.
PERMITS
The councilors approved a taxi license for Island Wonders Tour Company and approved a multiple sewer connection permit for 43 Degregoire Park.
Sprague said asked about the process of sewer connection permit.
“I do have concerns about this situation which I’ve come across many times in Bar Harbor,” Sprague said. In the future, he said, that these connections can create complexities with lines.
Smith said he recognizes that concern and seen what Sprague mentions, happen before when a single owner of a property asked for the multiple sewer connection and then the property is divided and then something breaks and disputes between neighbors are the result. He said the council may want staff to review and come back with standards about those multiple sewer connections.
APPOINTMENTS
The council appointed three councilors to its appointments committee. Caines and Brechlin are currently serving on that committee. Hochman was on last year, which means he is ineligible.
Councilor Meg Kelly, Sprague, and Minutolo were the only eligible options because of the rules of the committee.
Kelly was nominated to fill the empty seat on the committee, which will likely soon be interviewing for the newly created sustainable tourism task force.
The council appointed Peacock as a council representative to the Bar Harbor Task Force on the Climate Emergency. It also appointed Taylor Ehrlich as student representative, term expiring July 31, 2025 and Annabel Curry, term expiring July 31, 2025. The current student representative, Linnea Goh, moved to a regular seat on the task force.
“Welcome aboard,” Peacock said.
PUBLIC COMMENT: THE STREETLIGHT
Albert said over a month ago he requested that the only stop light in town proper be changed to blinking. He said he hopes someone contacts MaineDOT before the winter is over.
“I think it really facilitates traffic at that intersection to have that blinking,” Albert said.
\Ivanow said that she’s also had difficulty with that light, which had such a long cycle that cars behind her turned around because they thought the light was broken.
RECAP OF SOME OF THE OTHER TOWN COUNCIL BUSINESS FROM ITS LAST MEETING
Through a series of resolves, at its meeting two weeks earlier, the council also indicated its support for legislation for a local option lodging tax to reduce dependency on property taxes by municipalities, voted to upgrade the town’s pier (Ells’ Pier) for use as a cruise ship disembarkation facility for small cruise ship tendering, established a sustainable tourism management task force, and authorized the use of local building, electrical, and plumbing permit fees associated with the proposed Hamilton Station subdivision to help secure funding from the MaineHousing Rural Affordable Rental Housing Program.
It adopted rate increases for the town’s water and sewer users, which is primarily the people with property in Bar Harbor proper.
The council also scheduled a public hearing on the Port and Harbor ordinance. That second ordinance is about changes to how the town handles abandoned moorings.
The councilors also issued two separate resolves recognizing Ron Beard and Tom Crikelair for their service on the Jesup Library Board of Directors.
Water Main Shutdown Planned on Lower Ledgelawn Avenue on February 5, 2025
On Wednesday, February 5, 2025, the Town’s Construction Contractor will work on the water main along lower Ledgelawn Avenue near the Cromwell Brook bridge (Maine DOT bridge headed to the Transfer Station). This work will require a water main shut-down. Select customers on lower Ledgelawn Avenue, Strawberry Hill Road, Great Meadow Drive, and Short Cake Way are expected to be without water from 10 am to 4 pm. The Water Division crews will notify these customers via door hangers. Traffic impacts are expected to be minimal, but be prepared to seek alternate routes if possible.
If you have questions, please contact the Bar Harbor Water Division at 1-207-288-3555 or email water@barharbormaine.gov.
COUNCILOR COMMENTS
Kelly thanked everyone for being welcoming.
Hochman welcomed Kelly and Sprague and said he was excited to work with them.
Caines asked for a general update for applications for the sustainable tourism task force, which are now available, and encouraged people to apply. There is currently no application deadline.
Sprague had no additional comments.
Peacock said that the decisions that come in front of the council can be hard when you’re a new councilor.
“I don’t take any of these decisions—even the little ones—lightly,” she said.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Comprehensive plan presentation slides: /DocumentCenter/View/7875/Bar-Harbor-2035-Presentation-slides-112124
Draft Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan and Accompanying Documents: https://www.barharbormaine.gov/501/Comprehensive-Plan
Contact Information:
If you have comments or questions on the Bar Harbor 2035 Comprehensive Plan, call the Planning Office at 288-3329 or email planner@barharbormaine.gov.
Bar Harbor's Proposed Comprehensive Plan Tweaked and Unveiled
Carrie Jones, September 22, 2024, Read full story
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Great article and good coverage of a wide range of views on the moratorium.