Two Seats, Five Contenders: Bar Harbor Council Candidates Discuss Issues at Town Hill Forum
Election June 11, Town Meeting June 4
TOWN HILL—A packed Town Hill Village Hall Wednesday night greeted the six Bar Harbor candidates vying for two Town Council seats in a live forum hosted by the Town Hill Village Improvement Society. The forum was moderated by Faith DeAmbrose of the Mount Desert Islander and Carrie Jones of the Bar Harbor Story. Approximately 60 people attended.
Michael Boland, Gary Friedmann, Joseph Minutolo, Charles Sidman, Nina Barufaldi St.Germain, and Nathan Young gave opening and closing statements and answered questions about the town’s municipal budget, land use ordinance familiarity, cruise ships, housing, and conflicts of interest. They also answered a question about who in the community has personally impacted them.
DEFINITIONS OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND AVOIDING IT
The candidates each gave quick explanations about conflict of interest and perceptions of bias.
“Conflict of interest is when you’re getting the benefit as an actor,” Sidman said and added that it’s tightly tied up with non-transparency, a subject that he said he’s been speaking and teaching about throughout his career.
Minutolo and Friedmann said the Town Council has made strides with applying the code of conduct and the town’s Ethic Ordinance.
“It’s hard in this small town,” where everyone knows each other. Minutolo said, but that it’s imperative. It happens when someone in a powerful position can benefit from what the issue is.
“It’s important that we have the highest ethical standards in everything we do,” Friedmann said, and added that he’s always tried to carry himself that way.
St.Germain said a conflict of interest is something that keeps you from being unbiased. She advocated more training and legal advice to board members as they enter service to the town. Great ground rules, she said, would help both the perception and actuality.
Young mentioned that even making committee appointments can be steered by bias.
“If someone has a direct pecuniary interest, I don’t care what it is,” they should disclose it and be recused, including if the issues impact their employers, he said. “It’s really hard to not have a potential conflict of interest…. We meet each other. We know each other, and people are really passionate about the town.”
“It’s a really small town,” Boland said. Following the ordinance to a “T,” he said, is important, as is potentially tweaking the town’s Ethics Ordinance if it isn’t working optimally.
BUDGET
Candidates were asked how versed they were in the town budget, what they’d tweak in parts of the budget the Town Council can impact, and how they would balance the needs of residents facing escalating property taxes with the expectations for a continuation of receiving services from the town.
Boland said that he was well versed in budgets.
“I live with them every single day,” he said because he has a couple of hundred employees at his restaurants and has to make payroll and pay expenses and take in income each week. “I’m very versed with financials.”
He said as a business person, he’s been much more focused on revenues. He’d look to departments for cuts, but with the understanding that by cutting departments, you can try.
“You want to increase your revenue as much as possible as you can,” Sidman said, but every business person, every homeowner, knows that you also have to look to expenses.
“But the town has not done that,” he said.
The taxpayer has finite salaries and resources, and the town needs to make potentially painful decisions.
“Budgets are tricky,” said Minutolo who spoke about his time on the Warrant Committee as well. “We honestly try to do a good job of providing good services for our community and trying to be fiscally responsible.”
The employees of the town have a good handle on that fiscal responsibility, he said, and said they are up to speed with budgets and understand the town needs.
The problem with the budget, he said, is how it’s funded. The state needs a lodging tax, he said. “The town of Bar Harbor has to put together a dog and pony show” for the state he said to show that the town has needs. Only a small number of people are prospering from tourism, he added.
Young said that he’d prepared and submitted 22 budgets as Bar Harbor’s police chief. The budget goals, then, he said, were set by Council and department heads would prepare budgets to meet those amounts. “I’ve sat through many colorful meetings with Warrant Committees through the year,” he said and while he doesn’t advocate to going back to the time of thread-bare police cruiser tires, “I just don’t understand the willingness to spend today.”
“You may know me as a liberal, but I’ve been a budget hawk since I got elected to the Council,” Friedmann said.
For the first years he was on Council, he said, the tax bill didn’t go up a lot. During that time, there was a lot of deferred maintenance. The total budget is mostly impacted by the voter-approved bonds (like for the new Conners Emerson School and the town’s infrastructure project), school budget, high school budget, and county budget.
St.Germain said she’s worked on both for-profit and nonprofit budgets and is more versed on ways of increasing budgets rather than cutting. “I think a lot of spending as opposed to payroll,” is a place to look and that the town’s been fortunate and lucky to not have to had major cuts to services and personnel in the past ten years.
She suggested increasing parking prices to visitors while also giving stipends to locals, and also advocated for the local options tax.
CRUISE SHIPS
In a five-part question, candidates were asked what they thought of the current cruise ship trajectory, what they’d have done differently in the process, how they’d mitigate the financial loss to the town’s budget with less cruise ship disembarkations occurring now and in the future, what is the right number of cruise ships visits in a year, and if the public should be engaged more in the process currently.
“There was a vote of the decision in November 2022. I’m not one to question the will of the voters,” Young said.
“The ordinance was passed and that’s the ordinance that stands,” he said unless the citizens make a new petition to change it.
Boland said that the public should always be as involved as possible. He said people are concerned about tourism and the volume of tourism. Cruise ships, he said, are an easy target, literally and figuratively. The question is whether it’s the real problem or if that’s effective advertising that brings people to the island, short-term rentals, or other factors. “I don’t think it’s only cruise ships.”
He doesn’t think an entire elimination of cruise ships should happen, and there should be less than 200 and more than zero visits each year. He doesn’t have a solution to mitigate the town’s losses.
“The citizens voted and they did so intelligently,” Sidman said. He would create the ordinance “pretty much” the same way. He is distressed that it hasn’t been implemented yet, and he said he disagrees with the notion that its implementation will decrease cruise ships completely. He said the ordinance doesn’t prevent small cruise ships from visiting.
He also reminded attendees, “the big reason for the ordinance is that our streets got absolutely swamped and congested.”
Minutolo mentioned his time on the Ferry Terminal Advisory Committee.
“This has been the most controversial and hottest issue that we’ve had in my time on the Council,” Minutolo said.
The people have spoken for a dramatic reduction, he said. The Council is trying to implement the voter’s will but do so by listening to stakeholders and legal counsel. “The Council hears loud and clear that the town wanted a reduction. There’s no doubt about that. Going about it is the issue and that’s what we’re trying to figure out right now.”
St.Germain said the town is heading to a court decision because the town was slow to create a community decision together.
“The days of the four cruise ships are gone and I think we’re all very clear on that. I think there’s a way that we can make a decision together,” she said.
The status quo, she said, of reducing revenue and increasing costs can’t continue, and advocated for a solution that would supplement taxes “without gutting local businesses,” and increasing citizen access to the waterfront.
Friedmann said, “When I first got on the Council, the town thought that cruise ships were the answers to everything.”
Then, he said, they realized that they had too much of a good thing. He consider the ships a bane environmentally and in terms of their impact to the town.
The problem with the citizens initiative, he said, is that because it’s in the land use ordinance, there are problems with its implementation that makes the town vulnerable to lawsuits. He thinks that the town can put another plan before voters that would allow up to 2,000 passengers a day and well under 100,000 a year total.
PERSONAL IMPACT
The candidates were asked who in the community, past or present, had really made an impact on them personally.
For Minutolo, his mother and her unceasing work ethic impacted him greatly though there were many people others who had as well. His dad passed when he was eight and his mom “had to grab the reigns and raise us as a family.”
“She was something. She had the worker’s gene. She just loved people, and she really had a great sense of people’s value and communications skills,” he said.
Harry Owen, former owner of the Stone Barn, was the one Friedmann mentioned.
“Not only did Harry give of himself, in terms of sharing (the barn and its land) with people of the town,” Friedmann said, but he’d took upon it himself to do things like survey the wells of his neighbors. When he couldn’t maintain the property any longer, he made sure that it was open to the public by being sold to Maine Coast Heritage Trust.
“Harry kept giving,” Friedmann said.
Young said, “I can’t name a single individual within the town because there’s so many people” that he’s met during the decades and growing up in the town. His grandson is the one who is making the most impact on him now.
“We’re putting future generations on the hook for what we’re doing as a town. We need to recognize that,” Young said.
He added that it took going to basic training for him to realize how wonderful the island is: the land, the people.
“It’s a comfortable, safe place to live. Regardless of how much we can get angry with each other, not like what someone’s decision was . . . At the end of the day we are a community.” It’s home, he said.
Boland also said so many people had personally impacted him. His first job was with Robin Young at Fisherman’s Landing, and there were many people at College of the Atlantic, but he singled out Les Brewer as being one of the most impactful.
“He had this frugality-this yankee frugality and efficiency and thoughtfulness, of course.” He was, Boland said, a special guy and an important part of the town’s history.
St.Germain said she’d narrowed it down to her own past coaches and the Burt Barker, who was not her own coach, but was one who had great influence. She was appreciative how Barker worked on the Town Council and treated it as a team, and just like a team, would adapt when things weren’t working well.
She said, “I really appreciated that. And then, probably Liz Cutler. I’m an artist when I’m not doing business.” Watching Cutler launch ArtWaves and realize her dream as a woman and artist was impactful for St.Germain.
Sidman also gave credit to his family and teachers. “Neither of which anybody in this room knows.”
One was a high school science teacher who watched the students thrash around, trying to find the right answer. One time, Sidman asked him for guidance and a hint on how to solve a difficult. He was essentially told to find the answer himself. That was a lesson he carries with him. Another was an artist who went into the gallery he and his wife own in downtown Bar Harbor.
“He was an amazing humble man,” Sidman said of the man who was a Marine, a father, and a grandfather. “He gave his life to creating art and supporting people.” When he passed, it was one of Sidman’s saddest days in his life, he said. “I recognized him as a real human being.”
AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND SHORT-TERM RENTALS
The candidates were asked about housing needs in Bar Harbor and if short-term rental regulations and caps have made an impact on housing opportunities and thoughts on short-term rentals.
St.Germain said that both she and her son have vacation rentals.
“It’s been a really important thing to my livelihood because I work from home,” she said.
When she stopped working at the family’s restaurant, they started renting their small house. She said that after talking to real estate agencies, she’s learned that there hasn’t been more housing since the caps. What the town needs to do is reduce minimum lot sizes and encourage multifamily housing. She advocated for projects like the YWCA at Hamilton station, which is in progress.
Friedmann said, “I think that non hosted short-term rentals are the scourge of Bar Harbor.”
He said they increase the prices for all homes in the community. His neighborhood used to be filled with kids. “Now in the winter most of the homes are dark.”
Friedmann said that’s because they are either employee housing or short-term rentals. He believes the regulations have made a difference and that the number of rentals are decreasing. He is fine with people renting while also living on the property.
“I’m sorry it’s not a scourge. There’s a lot of problems we have with housing,” Boland disagreed.
Boland said he’s had a weekly rental, had voted in favor of the ordinance, and wishes he still had the rental. He thinks the ordinance should have been tweaked to allow permits to transfer between family members.
He said he bought his weekly rental in town for $300,000, fixed it up, and eventually sold it without the permit for $900,000, which would be evidence against the rising housing sales prices being correlated with vacation rental use. The problem of housing, he said, is complex, and advocated working with agencies like MDI365 and Island Housing Trust and tweaking zoning, but to do so in a way that is sustainable and would impact wells. He cited another home on Roberts Avenue that went for $100k over its asking price without having the weekly rental permit transfer.
“We need to do a lot of things on affordable housing,” he said.
Sidman said that he doesn’t believe the rules are doing a lot at all.
“They came about through market forces,” he said and there are families that need those rentals as part of their income stream. He understood the motivation for the rules, he said, but they aren’t having the desired effect.
“I think they stopped the hemorrhaging,” Minutolo said. “It seemed like houses were disappearing at an incredibly fast rate.”
The ordinance is not perfect, he said, nothing is, but it’s reasonable, especially distinguishing different types of rental ownership. “Property values are unbelievably high because of the interest in living in Bar Harbor,” he said. “Our zoning is still a disaster.”
There are 40 zones in the town, and to change that and incentivize housing and disincentivize things the town doesn’t want, while protecting and preserving residential areas is important, Minutolo said.
“I do not believe the vacation rental ordinance is going to have an impact on housing,” Young said. The area’s market value is established by the nature of where the town is, he said. Weekly rental ordinances first came into play with life safety inspections, he said, a long while ago. “I’m real hesitant to step on people’s individual property rights.”
Still, he said that when you don’t have consistency in a neighborhood, it’s hard to have a neighborhood. That’s been something that’s been going on for a long time on Mount Desert Island, he said.
“What we need to do is like we do with everything. You don’t wait 18 years or 10 years or 12 years to make adjustments to the ordinance.” The town needs to keep a running tally on what’s going on, he said, instead of letting things fester for years.
LAND USE ORDINANCE
Candidates were asked about their familiarity with the town’s Land Use Ordinance , the rules of the town, and following them. And how would they become more knowledgeable about those rules.
“I think I’m pretty up on the town rules” about what the Council can and can’t do, Sidman said. He said he’s struggled to get the Council to treat the Land Use Ordinance properly. He’s said that his work on the cruise ship initiative has made him especially knowledgable.
“My husband lives, breathes, and sleeps with the Land Use Ordinance,” St.Germain said. They try to find ways to create multifamily housing and approach it like a puzzle. She said she knows it well and has resources for when she has questions. She believes streamlining the ordinance would be helpful to help everyone to navigate the vast document.
Minutolo said that “to navigate is incredibly tricky.” He said as a councilor he relies on the Planning Board and staff to help navigate it, and that it’s one of the many plates that councilors deal with during their service.
Boland said he believes he’s pretty knowledgeable about the ordinance and town rules and has recently navigated it via a home project that split a 20-acre parcel into two 10-acre parcels.
“I’m a knowledge junkie. I’m an NPR junkie. I’m a knowledge junkie,” he said. “So, I think I’d become quickly acclimated to the rules that I don’t know.”
Young said he had worked with the land use ordinance as a police chief, trying to close doors on loop holes and other work.
“I’ve been involved in the creation of different ordinances,” Young said. Those included special amusement ordinances and parking ordinances and knows how to go through the document and its changes.
Friedmann said there is no manual for becoming a councilor and when he first began, he went to then Town Manager Dana Reed and asked him what should he know, what could Reed give him to do a good job. Reed gave Friedmann the land use ordinance, the budget, and the town’s charter. He said that the council needs to work with the town staff to make components of the ordinance the best it can be.
AUDIO RECORDING
The full audio of the debate is below. Candidates begin opening statements at the 3:30 mark. The closing statements are closer to the end of the file.
The hall’s wi-fi does not have live streaming abilities. If there is an event next year, we’ll try to video the event and then upload that. Please let us know if you’d like to volunteer to help with that.
ELECTION DETAILS
The town meeting is June 4, Tuesday, 6 p.m. at Conners Emerson School. This will be where voters decide the fate of budget articles. The Warrant Committee recommends a $27,272,143 budget. The Council recommends a $27,268,529 budget. This is an approximately $4 million increase from last year’s recommendations.
The election for councilors, Warrant Committee members, School Committee, and MDI High School trustees occurs June 11, a Tuesday, at the Bar Harbor Municipal Building’s third-floor auditorium. Voting is from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Councilors are elected to three-year terms. There are two seats.
Warrant Committee members are for three-year terms. There are five spots open. Meg Kelly and Bailey Stillman are running for their seats. Also running are Brooke “Zana” Blomquist, Steven Boucher, Barbara Dunphey, and Gary “Bo” Jennings.
Marie Yarborough is running unopposed for the School Committee. Robert Jordan Jr. is running unopposed for the MDI High School Board of Trustees.
Land Use Ordinance amendments will be on the June 11 ballot.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Disclosure: As made apparent in the first paragraph, I both wrote this article and co-moderated the debate. It’s just the two of us here at the Bar Harbor Story, so our options were a bit limited. Apologies. And apologies for the title typo on the original email. The changes didn’t hold and I didn’t notice because my brain is very tired.
Update and clarification: We listed the Higgins Pit under voter-approved bonds, however, Gary Friedmann definitely did not include that on his list because it’s a revenue bond meant to pay for itself over time. For clarity’s sake and to make sure that people don’t think he included that in his comments, we’ve taken it out. Many apologies and thanks to him for the correction. We’ve also clarified a sentence to make sure that no one thought that Burt Barker ever coached Nina St.Germain.
All photos: Shaun Farrar/BHS
Town Council and Warrant Committee candidates’ profiles posted earlier this spring can be found here.
Our earlier article about the online League of Women Voter’s forum is below.
Town Hill Village Improvement Society
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