Bar Harbor dentist to Town Council: Choose essential services or tourism

OTHER NEWS: Council chair, town manager, Harbormaster acknowledge Chapter 50's weak promises

BAR HARBOR, Oct. 6, 2024 - In a busy week dominated by cruise ship debates, the epic struggle for affordable housing on the island got an unexpected wakeup call.

Tuesday night, when the Town Council had a short agenda, citizen petitioner Charles Sidman’s public forum up the street at the YWCA was the big draw. I counted 55 participants there.

Few paid attention to the council meeting that night. The Islander did not report on it nor my favorite news blogger.

That’s when Dr. Mathilde Reznik, who runs one of two general dentistry practices in Bar Harbor, came up to the microphone in the council chambers and told councilors to choose between whether Bar Harbor is to be a community or just a tourist stopover.

She asked for a town moratorium on transient housing, “because we have great difficulties in having employees come and live here … it's hard for them to find anything to rent.”

According to the American Dental Association, the recommended staffing ratio for a typical general dental practice is one dentist for every three to four dental hygienists and one dental assistant.

Reznik did not return my call for more information. But I assumed staffing of hygienists is one of her big worries.

She was the only speaker during the public comment period in the lightly attended meeting.

(Staffing was also cited as a reason by Northern Light Health Care when it closed its home care nursing service on MDI earlier this year and the primary care facility in Southwest Harbor in August.)

Reznik told the council someone who wanted to turn her property at 333 Main Street into transient accommodation for tourists recently offered to buy it.

“We were approached to have our property purchased, to have a hotel - a bed and breakfast really - placed on our property,” Reznik said.

“If we didn't have the dedication to our 3,500 patients, it would mean that we could sell, go, and that would be another bed and breakfast in Bar Harbor.

“That would be terrible. We won't do that. So that's that's a good thing.”

Reznik said a moratorium would buy time, “at least until we come up with a plan in next spring, a comprehensive plan.”

“And if we decide that we really don't want any more services in Bar Harbor, we just want to be only tourism and transient housing, that can be the direction we take.”

Otherwise, “We can take a different direction and try to have a little bit of everything and keep services right here in town,” she said.

Maine has one of the fewest dentists per capita in the Northeast, according to the National Library of Medicine. It ranks below Wyoming nationally. Many dentists like Reznik are at capacity and do not take new patients.

Reznik grew up in France. She moved to the U.S. in 1998. She got her dental degree from Oregon Health and Sciences University in 2011. Reznik and her family relocated to Maine in 2013. She practiced in Bucksport before building her office in Bar Harbor in 2015.

The council adjourned its short meeting and went into a workshop to discuss the comprehensive plan, when councilor Gary Friedmann proposed exactly what Reznik sought.

Friedmann is running for the House seat in District 14 and has been talking to many voters, he said.

“The two top issues that I hear talking to constituents around the town, and Dr. Reznik pointed that out today, is that people want to see a halt to the to the conversion of year-round housing and other things that make this a viable community into transient accommodations.

“I think we should talk about a moratorium until such time as we're able to actually get some regulations in place.”

Friedmann said he didn’t want to wait until the new comprehensive plan is adopted.

His proposal got a tepid reception from chair Val Peacock, councilors Joe Minutolo and Kyle Shank and Town Manager James Smith.

(Minutolo’s life partner is Town Planner Michele Gagnon, the project manager of the Comprehensive Plan. She reports directly to the town manager.)

Reznik’s practice, Bar Harbor Dental Group, is next to the former water company offices now operated as vacation rentals by former Planning Board chair Tom. St. Germain and his wife Nina.

The St. Germains acquired the building in 2013. In July, St. Germain, former chair of the Planning Board, floated the idea of moving the 100-year-old building into a potentially more restrictive residential zone where only buildings built before June 1986 could have up to 12 rooms.

St. Germain and his business partner Stephen Coston built the Pathway Hotel on Cottage Street next to the municipal building after applying for a permit as a bed and breakfast which did not require approval by the Planning Board, while St. Germain was its sitting chair.

They are regular speakers at council and planning board meetings. Tuesday night they each admonished the council for airing Friedmann’s idea for a moratorium.

Back-to-back public meetings force clarification of Chapter 50’s fine print

BAR HARBOR - Harbormaster Chris Wharff admitted Thursday night that the 3,200-passenger cap in the Chapter 50 proposal from the Town Council to replace the citizens cap of 1,000 could easily be 4,000 if a full-capacity ship disembarked here.

That’s because the town agreed to 3,200 in the “lower berth” economy class of a cruise ship as the arbitrary cap in its proposed contracts and not the entire ship which Wharff said could top 4,000 by adding the upper berth passengers.

Unlike council chair Val Peacock and Town Manager James Smith, who sowed confusion all night at the town’s public “QandA,” Wharff didn’t equivocate.

“There could be the maximum capacity of the ship more than the lower birth capacity. That's 100 percent correct,” Wharff replied to a question. A ship with a lower berth capacity of 3,200-passenger ship “might be in the 4,000 range.”

Even then, Wharff did not add what citizen petitioner Charles Sidman and others have been saying, that crew members and ships with fewer than 200 passengers allowed to disembark on the same day could easily engulf the town with more than 5,000 cruise ship visitors.

Crews typically number about a third of the passengers, according to average industry standards. Thus, a 4,000-passenger ship could have more than 1.300 crew members. If half of them disembarked, and the town was also visited by two smaller ships carrying 200 each, that would add up to more than 5,000.

Wharff said that was unlikely, but he was not challenged. His comments came at Hour 1:14:12 into the meeting which was recorded.

Peacock, Smith and councilor Joe Minutolo - the town’s “negotiating team” which came up with Chapter 50 - faced a largely hostile crowd at what was essentially a “make-good” session after Smith was blasted by citizens for an Aug. 19 “QandA” session during which the moderator prohibited any give-and-take and allowed a panel of Peacock, Smith, Wharff and the town attorney to dominate a one-way conversation.

There was no hiding this time, as many citizens came with contracts in hand to force clarifications.

Besides the passenger count, Peacock and Smith publicly admitted:

• The contracts with ships are for at least five years - and perhaps as long as seven years. Chapter 50 allows for the contracts to be renegotiated at the end of Year 2. But any change wouldn’t take effect until Year 6. (Was that clever little gimmick designed to create the false impression that these were two-year contracts? The council and Smith were in no hurry to dispel it.)

• Citizens do not have the direct power under Chapter 50, as they do under the Land Use Ordinance, to amend the contract. Only the council possesses that power.

In multiple sessions previously, Peacock, Smith and town attorney Stephen Wagner claimed voters had the ultimate say in any changes because they would have to approve them at the town’s annual meeting.

Many speakers pointed out that would happen only if the council voted to put it n the ballot. Under Chapter 50, voters may lobby the council but do not have the authority to put in on the ballot, unlike amendments to the land-use ordinance.

I almost laughed out loud when Peacock said, “If you push hard enough, you’re going to get a vote. I think this is a space where the idea is for it to be collaborative, where the council is listening, creating a process in which we can get input from the community about where we're at, and then put that on a ballot and have that vote happen.”

Wait, didn’t this council refuse to implement the wishes of 1,780 voters who on Nov. 8, 2022 enacted an amendment to cap daily cruise ship at 1,000? That was a pretty loud input from the community. To this date the town has failed to fully enforce the cap.

During the Thursday night session, several speakers called out Smith for sowing confusion with legalese and technical speak instead of answering questions in plain language.

There was also plenty of deflection.

Instead of answering a question clearly about the environmental impact of “large oil burning things” in cruise ships, Wharff instead chose to talk about water quality and how the town, working with various partners, test the water in the harbor every two or three years.

Cruise ships are notorious for dumping their waste while at sea, beyond sovereign borders. It should not surprise anyone that they don’t need to discharge waste in the harbor.

The question at Hour 1:18:10 was clearly about air pollution. Ships are among the foulest polluters on the planet. While anchored, the ships continue to run their engines in the harbor. The council nor town managers have ever addressed this question fully.

So it went last week. On Tuesday night, Sidman hosted his own QandA before a full room of citizens at the YWCA.

The Town Council and town manager still own the bully pulpit and has enormous resources and clout to influence opinion.

They also aren’t shy about using taxpayers money in their campaign on behalf of the cruise ship industry.

Smith has yet to answer my question on what other services he is getting from COA professor Jamie McKown, whom, according financial records obtained by the QSJ, was paid a “retainer” of $5,000 to moderate the one-way conversation at the high school auditorium.

Smith also has not responded to my question of why he selected McKown, who was not an unbiased source.

The QSJ reported on Aug. 25 that McKown held the view that voters didn’t know what they were voting on Nov. 8, 2022 when the 1,000-passenger cap was approved.

In an article entitled, “How Bar Harbor’s raging cruise ship debate shaped local elections,” reporter Bill Trotter of the Bangor Daily News on June 13 quoted McKown as saying it is “probable” that many voters supported the 2022 citizens’ referendum in spirit without fully grasping the details of what it meant.