Chamber president applies for 9 board seats, after losing in two elections

BAR HARBOR, July 9, 2024 - Will the Town Council provide a willing back door for Bo Jennings, president of the Chamber of Commerce, to gain a seat on one of the town’s major boards? He has failed twice trying to use the front door - election by citizens.

He lost a bid for the Town Council in 2023 with the second lowest vote’ count out of seven candidates vying for three seats for a full three-year term. A separate race for a two-year term to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of Jeff Dobbs was won by Earl Brechlin.

Then a few weeks ago on June 11, he was the only candidate for Warrant Committee who did not get enough votes to win election to that important committee which serves as a check on the town’s fiscal matters.

Now, Jennings is seeking council appointment to the powerful Planning Board and eight other committees and boards. The Planning Board is the ultimate authority on the land-use ordinance which governs zoning and code enforcement.

The land-use ordinance was the principal vehicle used to propel 58 percent of the electorate on Nov. 8, 2022 to approve an amendment to prohibit property owners from disembarking more than 1,000 cruise ship passengers on any single day.

That was challenged in a suit brought by local businesses called Association to Protect and Preserve Local Livelihoods, led by Ocean Properties, whose local manager Eben Salvatore is a member of the Chamber board. A federal judge upheld that amendment and APPLL is appealing in federal circuit court.

In March 2023 it was disclosed that the Chamber joined APPLL as a member which prompted an outcry at the June 2023 town meeting when the voters stripped the Chamber of $60,000 in town support.

Jennings claimed that the Chamber was merely joining APPLL because it liked its “Bar Harbor Welcomes All” advertising campaign.

In an email to me, he wrote,

“The Chamber Board did deliberate for a few months on joining APPLL (and if it was something we should do), in which we ultimately did, in support of their Bar Harbor Welcomes All campaign.”

On June 24, 2023, I published the actual motion approved by the Chamber board which had no mention of “Bar Harbor Welcomes All.”

Instead it stated,

“To join APPLL and express support for their efforts in overturning the citizens petition through the active lawsuit; to work on messaging to members, the Town, and staff; and to consider Chamber membership in APPLL quarterly.”

The citizens abhorrence at the Chamber action lingered to this day.

Three candidates with strong ties to the Chamber who ran for local offices in June were all defeated. Besides Jennings, former Chamber presidents Nina St. Germain and Michael Borland were sent packing by incumbents Joe Minutolo and Gary Friedmann.

On paper, Jennings is clearly the weakest of the candidates with no obvious aptitude nor experience in land-use governance. Democracy is not a lottery which favors those with more chits in the pot, but, hey, this is Bar Harbor.

In his haste to fill out nine applications, Jennings even applied for a seat on the Cruise Ship committee which no longer exists.

While the other candidates stated specific qualifications when asked, Jennings wrote,

“In my 4 years in Bar Harbor, I have learned a lot, not just about ‘how things are/have been done,’ but also what the opportunities are for improvement. The word ‘growth’ to many people simply means ‘more’. But growth, more importantly, means better. And in that sense, I would like to help Bar Harbor grow.’

The applications may be accessed here.

There are four openings for five candidates. That belies the recent suggestion at a Town Council meeting by PB Chair Millard Dority and Vice Chair Ruth Eveland that not enough citizens were volunteering to serve. At the same meeting, citizen Diane Vreeland came to the mic to state that she was an available candidate.

Dority and Eveland should have been more precise. They probably meant to say there weren’t enough “pro growth” candidates.

Vreeland is an outspoken citizen who has publicly questioned recent development projects and ordinances which she fears could cause environmental harm, especially in the Town Hill section of town.

The other candidates are Eveland for re-appointment, Guy Dunphey, who has great knowledge of the island having served on the staff at Acadia National Park, and retired IT executive Teresa Wagner.

The council’s nominations committee, consisting of Brechlin, Kyle Shank and Maya Caines, will make a first pass at the candidates. Its recommendations have not always been adopted by the full council as members are free to pick friends and insiders.

In an email to the council and Planning Board, Appeals Board member Cara Ryan objected to recent remarks by PB Chair Millard Dority, who seemed to join the sarcastic mocking by developer Tom St. Germain of opponents to his projects, including the hotel on Cottage Street.

“At last week's meeting, the PB chair laughed with the developer about his ‘opponents’ coming forward. I, for one, am no one's opponent--I'm a PROponent for our town and our residential neighborhoods. And I'm tired of fighting for it at every turn, Ryan wrote.

In the Islander this week, she wrote,

“Last week, a local developer presented a proposal (not yet a formal application) to the Bar Harbor Planning Board to see if they had any problem with his plan to move the old Water Company building on Lower Main Street into a Downtown Residential neighborhood and turn it into a new TA-4 — in other words, a B & B with 11 to 25 guest rooms. While important questions were asked by board members, I’m afraid the key issue got lost.

“Currently, Downtown Residential basically consists of residential neighborhoods sandwiched between downtown commercial areas (think Spring Street to School Street, the houses between Cottage and Mount Desert [streets], and most of the area behind Main Street, from Albert Meadow to Livingston Road). It’s not 100 percent residential — there are inns and other businesses — but in an effort to protect these islands of in-town housing from further commercial development, our land use ordinance restricts all new lodging (aka ‘transient accommodations’) to very small (three room max.) B & Bs or, for larger B & Bs, to ‘existing buildings constructed before 1986, where it is felt that lodging for transients is necessary to preserve or maintain ... Bar Harbor’s residential structures.”

“Where the LUO speaks of ‘existing buildings constructed before 1986,’ it seems plainly clear this refers to structures already in the district we’re trying to protect. Otherwise, the goal of protecting residential zones gets subordinated and potentially lost to an unrestricted preservation goal — in which case, any older structure anywhere could be moved to Ledgelawn [Avenue] or Rodick [Street] to become a B & B. How many older buildings, in town and beyond, might then be ‘saved’ and turned to profit if relocated to Bar Harbor’s Downtown Residential? But does anyone believe this was the intent of the pre-1986 restriction? Making our residential neighborhoods serve as a refuge for buildings developers don’t know how to save elsewhere?

“Beyond this creative interpretation of the word ‘existing,’ there’s also the problem of applicability: the LUO definition speaks of wanting to ‘preserve or maintain ... Bar Harbor’s residential structures’ (my emphasis). The Bar Harbor Water Company building, however, has been a commercial structure in a commercial district for over 150 years. It is not a residential structure already existing in the heart of our residential district, in danger of demolition if not allowed a new life as a B & B.

“While the developer deserves credit for trying to preserve a fine piece of town history, this is no argument for sacrificing true residential use in the precious resource that is our downtown neighborhoods.

“Finally, we don’t know the precise lot where the developer would like to move the Water Company building, but we doubt any downtown residential lot has parking for an 11- to 25-room B & B. That’s yet another burden of this proposal.”

In her email to the council, Ryan stated, “Over the winter, you decided there was no emergency warranting a moratorium on new Lodging. What about now? Proposals like the latest suggest Bar Harbor is still vulnerable to overdevelopment, and in places we don't want it and our LUO doesn't allow.”