BREAKING NEWS: Tremont votes overwhelmingly to halt campground activity in rebuke of planning board, glamping resort applicant ..
TREMONT - Democracy is still alive and well in this small town in Maine despite a tone-deaf planning board and an opportunistic developer.
Residents voted 428-215 in an extraordinary showing to halt new campground applications, putting on ice the proposal to build the largest development on the western part of MDI in a residential neighborhood here.
The vote will give Concerned Tremont Residents a political voice unmatched in Tremont history, for citizens to dictate their own future, rather than rely on local boards and commissions so fraught with conflicts and self interest - contractors and architects and business people.
Acadia Wilderness Lodge wants to build a 55-yurt campground off a dangerous section of West Tremont where a fatal accident occurred in 2009.
The matter has been before the planning board since January, until the citizens group lost confidence in the deliberations under chairman Mark Good, who previously was the deciding vote in the approval of AWL’s first campground for 11 cabins off Kelleytown Road.
Except the cabins turned into yurts with twice the footprint. Town Manager Jesse Dunbar told QSJ he is still investigating whether AWL breached its permit, a matter of ostensible interest to a planning board deciding on AWL’s second application for a project 10 times the size of the Kelleytown Road project.
Throughout the deliberations, Good showed enormous deference to AWL’s lawyer, often allowing AWL to take over the proceedings.
Several appeals are no doubt in order and the matter is likely to take months if not years to resolve.
Read QSJ’s weekend edition for the latest on Saturday.