NORTHEAST HARBOR, May 7, 2024 - Vacation rental owners, businesses which cater to tourists and rental brokers swarmed the town meeting tonight and voted 134 to 72 against the proposed ordinance seeking to cap short-term vacation rentals.
That meant the ordinance was rejected by 6.6 percent of the registered voters in town.
It is a stark example of how a highly motivated cohort of self-interested residents can take over a town meeting.
The rhetoric reached such a strident pitch that moderator Jerry Miller had to interrupt a speaker, Tracey Aberman, when she said the proposed ordinance was “communism.”
Aberman operates a catering business and restaurant at 123 Maine Street and is also the administrator for the Summer Residents Association.
The anti-ordinance forces who spoke outnumbered the supporters by a huge margin - easily 10-1.
Many speakers did not identify themselves. A significant number were generational residents who inherited homes and worried the ordinance would prevent them from renting their homes for supplemental income or transferring their properties to their children as rentals.
Select board members Geoff Wood and newly re-elected Martha Dudman said it would do neither.
The QSJ will unpack it all in a future post.
“When you are involved in public planning of a space, demand that its social and environmental services are at the forefront of the conversation. Show up to council meetings, and remind your leaders that parks are essential and should be funded as so. Try also to challenge yourself to rethink what is valuable about your parks, and use and improve your parks, on whatever level you can, in the way that you would like to see them working for your community.
Speaking (and thinking) the language that reinforces parks as space for community building gives the power back to the land and the locals.”
https://parkspeople.substack.com/p/its-time-to-start-serving-our-communities?pos=0&utm_source=%2Fbrowse%2Frecommendations&utm_medium=reader2
This article, like many that are written by this journalist from away, is filled with inaccurate details and is obviously biased to the facts. It seems he thrives on creating division and is a trouble stirrer. The gym wasn't filled with businesses and rental brokers at the meeting. The majority of the over 200 people who filled the gymnasium at MDES to make their voices heard were local, year round residents who have lived here generationally. Most of whom went to that school from k-8. I resent the lies in this article especially from someone from away. Some of us are small business owners and yes, we cater to tourists because this is and has always been a seasonal community that relies on tourism. His anti-tourism rhetoric is typical from someone from away trying to change our community to suit his needs. If you didn't know, there is a National Park here and there will always be tourism. We rely on short term rental income to provide us with affordable housing. None of us are doing it to create wealth. We are trying to survive. We also care more about this island community than any of the folks from away because we want our kids to be able to stay and live here and have the opportunities like we have had to live on this beautiful island. I am an 8th generation Mainer and my 3rd great grandfather brought the lumber to this island on Windjammers to build a lot of these mansions you see today. We have roots. Folks want to move here but complain about affordability. Housing hasn't been affordable here since as far back as I can remember. We were fortunate to buy a house under foreclosure in 2000 and do the work ourselves to improve our property. My husband and I built a small cottage and by renting it to vacation renters, we were then able to build our family home on the property and rent out the old house to a guy year round for a decade now at $800 per month. It also allowed us to buy my parents a home so they could be close to us and we rent that to them for only $1000 per month annually. We need short term rental income to pay for the rising property taxes, insurance, upkeep and maintenance, etc. Nobody is getting rich here. There is a problem with people from away buying up homes but nobody wants more regulations and permits imposed on the property of the middle class. That will not solve the affordable housing problem. Logical solutions that we are actually seeing work in other communities are to incentivize property owners to build affordable housing through tax breaks and fixing the zoning to allow for dwellings to be built on our existing properties to be used for year round affordable rentals. Without that, there will never be affordable housing here. Also, everyone should know that of the approximately 500 vacation rental permits in Bar Harbor, a significant number of those permits are owned by local non-profits like COA who have 18 vacation rental permits. Why should they get any when they get significant tax breaks, they get millions each year in endowments and they have the money to build affordable housing to contribute to this community? When the permitting ordinance was passed in Bar Harbor, there was a mad dash for people to get VR permits even if they don't need them or intend to use them. But just in case they ever need them, and that takes away from a family who might need that income to survive here due to the cap on permits. There are many reasons why locals do NOT want this to pass. Just look at Bar Harbor. This ordinance has done nothing to create affordable housing like so many said it would. It's actually driving out small business and when you lose small businesses in a small community like ours, you end up with a lot of corporate investors taking over and creating a resort community. Or in the town of Mount Desert, you will end up with all people from away and you are already seeing so many local middle class families born and raised here being driven out. I would like to correct a statement made by Gail Marshall, because it is also not true. She keeps saying that the enrollment at the local school has gone down significantly and it's a direct result of families not being able to afford to live here. Enrollment is twice it was in the 80's. We also now have a pre-k program at the school that is doing quite well. Fortunately a lot of the families that go to the school are able to still move out of their homes in the summer, and rent them out to afford their homes. Gail is a lawyer married to a doctor so she probably doesn't fall into the middle class bracket. For those of us who are not lawyers married to doctors, but have always relied on tourism for our bread and butter, we sure do want to protect what we have worked so very hard for.