BREAKING NEWS: SWH select board seeks to rein in waste agency; cruise ships push Acadia close to record visits
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Oct. 26, 2022 - The select board voted 3-1 Tuesday night to seek a special meeting of the of Municipal Review Committee, which is asking to extend the agreement with its 115 member towns for waste disposal for a new 15-year term.
The town joined Blue Hill in taking a largely ceremonial stance, since it’s unlikely the two towns have the votes for such a meeting. Towns with an aggregate tonnage of 60,000 tons (out of 110,000) are needed to call such a meeting.
The original agreement was signed in 2017. The MRC now wants to extend the agreement from 2023 to 2038 to give its chosen operator the entire 15 years to hold exclusive rights from the towns.
Council member Gary Friedmann made the same request last week in Bar Harbor, but it’s unlikely to meet the Oct. 29 deadline for such a request. Tremont and Mount Desert share a disposal district but its chair Tony Smith is conflicted because he is also a member of the MRC board.
The MRC’s massive plant in Hampden has been closed since June 2020 when the operator ran out of money after running the new plant for only six months. Last week, three environmental groups called for the MRC to change its model charging fees according to the tonnage produced by each town, instead of implementing “zero waste” strategies.
The MRC has named Revere Capital Advisors as the new operator. Revere has until Nov. 10 to raise more than $20 million needed to restart the plant.
Select member George Jellison voted against the motion saying it was improper to act on an item not on the published agenda.
That’s exactly what the previous board did in July 2021 when it allowed Jellison’s sister and other Seawall residents to state concerns about road traffic which was not on the published agenda. That board voted 5-0 to request the police chief investigate.
FOOTNOTE: Since I published my mostly complimentary profile two weeks ago of select board candidate Luke Damon, some readers suggested he lacked the temperament to hold such an important position. As if to validate those concerns, Damon called the local police to have me stop asking him questions last night.
Damon said he does not like the QSJ blog.
Lt. Mike Miller called me at 9:38 p.m. to tell me to stop texting Damon questions “or there will be consequences.”
Miller is a good cop. He and I have had several positive interactions. But I am not a resident here, and this department has a record of favoring its citizens.
I learned after my first article that Damon lives on the ridge above Main Street where a $3 million project to build sidewalks, fix drainage and storm water flow will benefit him immensely. His Facebook page, which he has since removed, was critical of the town’s handling of the project. He did not seem to know, until I told him, that the project was delayed by the numerous easements which had to be negotiated.
Last night the Comprehensive Plan task force presented its final recommendations to the select board which cited short-term vacation rentals as a major cause of the decline of affordable housing in town.
I wanted to get Damon’s reaction because he owns such a short-term rental property and whether that would color his views about solving the housing crisis.
Another select board candidate Charlotte Gill fears Damon is just another member of the “old boy network.” She worries about a return to the cage fight type meetings under chair Jellison.
She believes she is the only candidate who is independent and hews to no outside influence.
Cruise ships rack up record fall attendance at Acadia NP
BAR HARBOR - Last year is turning out not to be an anomaly for visitation at Acadia National Park, and there is a chance 2022 could set a new record.
Cruise ships are being blamed for this influx.
Record September visits increased by 4.5 percent, from 667,000 in 2021 to 697,000 this year.
With 3.35 million total visits for the first 9 months of the year, the number of tourists to Acadia is within 2 percent of where it was for the first 9 months of 2021.
Bar Harbor had no large cruise ship visits between November 2019 and April 2022 during the pandemic.
More than half of the 150 cruise ships visiting Bar Harbor occur in September and October.
Despite the lack of large cruise ships last year, Acadia had more than 4 million visits last year, its highest annual total since the park was founded in 1916.
Alf Anderson, director of the BH Chamber of Commerce, told the Bangor Daily News the park’s numbers show a jump in commercial tour bus passengers from around 10,000 in September 2021 to nearly 30,000 last month, because of the return of cruise ships to Bar Harbor. Cruise ship passengers frequently go on bus tours of the park once they come ashore.
Last year, Town Council member Jeff Dobbs said he believed the 2021 visitation record was a one-time event caused by the pandemic and doubted 2022 would be a repeat. Next year is scheduled to be a repeat of 2022 because the town council agreed to accept all cruise ships already booked through its current system.
Just a reminder that to fix a problem it needs to be correctly identified. Just saying short-term rentals causes the housing crisis is too broad to really find a fix for it. A listing does not mean the property is actually being rented short term. Short-term rentals of properties that could never be part of long term housing should not be included, such as non-winterized seasonal cottages. How many are owners renting some to help cover costs who use the property and would not do long term rentals. If the problem is the conversion of housing from long term to short term it would be interesting to understand how many were converted and why that is happening more now. I understand in destinations popular year round it is possible to make a lot of money with short term rentals. But with the short season here it is really difficult to cover all the tax, maintenance, mortgage/purchase costs, and rental costs and actually make a profit that would be worth the work involved. Many owners are renting simply to be able to keep loved long owned family properties. I've discussed this with a local broker who doubts that doing much more than clearing costs is possible. We use our house several months of the year but have been renting 14 - 18 weeks a year for 16 years and have only broken even once because we deferred all maintenance that year. So if conversions are happening, why? Is there any data on the specific properties that were renting long term and are not currently and what happened with each one?