THANK YOU!! I'm so very glad to see that you're continuing to hold the Council (elected to represent the citizens of Bar Harbor) accountable. You are greatly appreciated!
And thank you for your vindication of Charles Sidman and all his efforts in trying to maintain the integrity of the Bar Harbor community and its obligation to its unique and vulnerable location and natural beauty.
I am so thankful that the voters of Bar Harbor and the Island have a top notch reporter and corporate savvy retired executive putting the facts out for all to see. And, I like the way Lincoln Millstein does not hesitate to continuously remind town officials that facts, evidenced based facts , are stubbornly persistent things. And, he offers tutelage in negotiating skills as well! I can only hope the Town Council will dry dock this sinking ship of a repeal and replace of the voters’ wish to have a 1,000 passenger cap and scuttle Chapter 50 tonight. I doubt that will happen as the Town Council has invested the taxpayers’ money, staff time, and Town Council’s tasks with appeasing the Big APPLL, OPI, and Big Cruise in the hope it will thwart those pesky year round residents who would like to live in a community, not an industrial cruise ship port.
The Town could end this shipwreck tonight by bravely voting NO. Then, they could work on a true meeting of minds and hearts of actually involving everyone , not just one faction of the community. It would be extremely difficult, but so many have offered some sensible alternatives.
My preferred solution would include these broad factors: (already suggested by others). Keep the definitions and passenger caps in the LUO. This keeps the voters with a direct voice and vote over the cruise ship presence. As with the seemingly effective short term rental regulations, reference the enforcement of passenger caps in the LUO to be carried out by requirements in the MunicipalCode, Chapterxxxx. This system works now, why not adapt it to another version of short term visitors who arrive by water.
Lin…thanks for the example of the Good Neighbor Agreement…an all parties allowed consensus approach worked in Bar Harbor ( along with some legal work, and firm negotiating) with the location of the new (and huge ) substation several years ago. It is possible and doable.
I am posting this extensive quote from WBUR's On Point because it speaks to a Good Neighbor agreement between a copper mining company and local environmentalists in Montana. An example what can be accomplished by good faith and smart tactics.
It is perverse that the Bar Harbor Town Councilors, their managers, and lawyer continue to take an adversarial stance against Bar Harbor itself - against voters, residents, businesses not affiliated with APPL, the bay and heritage industries, a balance of tourisms, and representative government and the rule of law itself. There are other options. All the council's lip service to some notion of community cannot conceal their contempt for the people who live here.
"[The environmentalists hired] Jim Thomas, a Washington attorney who served on the U. S. team that negotiated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with the former Soviet Union. But before the lawyers sat face to face, Paul Hawks says his groups asked to first meet alone with Sibanye-Stillwater leadership."
The full quote and link to the full transcript.
"Paul Hawks is a retired Montana rancher and one of the architects of the so-called Good Neighbor Agreement, a legally binding contract between Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company, the Northern Plains Resource Council, and local community organizations.
The agreement's goal is to protect natural landscapes, rural quality of life, and minerals development. And Hawks is talking about a 1992 lawsuit against the state of Montana brought by local environmental groups including the Northern Plains Resource Council. Back then, the state had issued Sibanye-Stillwater a new permit to expand operations.
The permit included a notable provision. It allowed the mine to disregard a key element of Montana's Water Quality Act, meaning the pristine rivers nearby, like the Stillwater, wouldn't be protected.
HAWKS: And frankly, it all came down to water. We were, our interest was the water there and making sure it stayed clean.
It's not enough to just have a water quality law that isn't enforced until it's violated. We didn't want that. We wanted our pristine waters kept pristine.
CHAKRABARTI: But in 1995, the state legislature weakened Montana's Water Quality Act, rendering the group's lawsuit moot.
HAWKS: And so we had the option to sue again. Or to approach the company and see if we could sit down and come to some sort of agreement on our issues.
And we decided to see if they would be interested in sitting down and discussing a potential Good Neighbor Agreement.
CHAKRABARTI: Sibanye-Stillwater said yes. Hawks says community and environmental groups were realistic about the challenges they faced negotiating with a well-resourced corporation. So they raised funds to hire one of the United States most celebrated negotiators.
Jim Thomas, a Washington attorney who served on the U. S. team that negotiated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with the former Soviet Union. But before the lawyers sat face to face, Paul Hawks says his groups asked to first meet alone with Sibanye-Stillwater leadership.
HAWKS: We wanted to sit down with the company, and we wanted the people who could make decisions to be there.
Their top three people to be there. We banned having any lawyers in the room from either side. So these were just neighbors talking neighbors and we didn't want the old good guy, bad guy, cop thing about having to go back and talk to the boss. We wanted the boss in the room. Formal negotiations went on for about a year, covering water quality, mine tailings, disposal, emissions, even traffic mitigation.
CHAKRABARTI: Sibanye-Stillwater was willing to meet most of the community's demands with one condition. Residents and activists would give up the right to sue over any new permits. Hawks says they agreed.
HAWKS: We did, so therefore we had to have something in our agreement that gave it some teeth, that gave us some power, should they not meet the standards.
And that took some time to come up with that. What we ended up doing was setting up a system of dispute within the agreement and an arbitration panel.
CHAKRABARTI: The final binding agreement was signed on May 8th, 2000. It continues to be refined. Today, the contract is more than 200 pages long. It requires the mine to uphold water quality standards three times stronger than the state standards, including a mandatory monitoring system to ensure standards are being met.
It also has rules on disposing tailings and traffic mitigation with hundreds of new workers on site. Heather McDowell from Sibanye-Stillwater Mining says the agreement has also been a win for the company.
McDOWELL: We haven't had to ever invoke the dispute resolution mechanisms in the Good Neighbor Agreements.
And really, I think, from a company perspective, perhaps the more amazing statistic is that we've actually had no environmental litigation since the Good Neighbor Agreement was signed, which is, really just amazing.
CHAKRABARTI: McDowell adds that though the agreement comes at a hefty cost for the company, it's led to even more valuable benefits.
McDOWELL: It allows us to solve a lot of problems before they happen, and I think it also gives us some certainty. Where we have questions about what technology might be best, or what the community, what might be the best decision for 10 years from now, we have a group who really is watchdogging us to present that issue to. And sometimes it gives you a whole different viewpoint.
I can think of a number of projects where we would have never thought of some great technology or an activity that we did or didn't do because we had that opposing viewpoint."
Since the Town won at the District Court level, the Town had a clear window of advantage in negotiating an amicable resolution if that's the way the Town wanted to go. But what resulted should be known as "Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
One wonders whether the wording of Article 4 is deliberately obtuse and lacking in context:
"Cruise Ship Disembarkation — Shall an ordinance, dated August 2, 2024 and entitled “An
amendment to repeal and replace the permit requirements for disembarking persons from cruise
ships” be enacted?
SUMMARY
This amendment would repeal § 125-77H, which requires a written permit from the Code
Enforcement Officer for the disembarkation of persons from cruise ships on, over, or across any
property located within the Town of Bar Harbor, and explain that such uses will upon repeal be
governed by Chapter 50: Reservation and Disembarkation Licensing."
Bar Harbor voters must understand that if they want to keep the cap at 1,000 per day, they must vote NO on article 4. It's not clear to me that most voters will know this going into the polls.
It is worth highlighting, in my opinion, that there was direct engagement on rule-making and next steps with Mr. Sidman up through his decision to take legal action against the counsel. I was not a part of these conversations (I believe they were mostly with town staff), but from my understanding he was consistently viewed as a partner in this process up until then. Given his decision to take legal action, I'm not sure how it would have been appropriate to continue working in close partnership with him.
That's true! Those discussions, though, have been mediated by third-party, outside counsel. I believe the same opportunity was offered to Mr. Sidman, but I'm not sure what came of those discussions.
No. He asked for the same consideration but was denied by Wagner and Smith. They made it a condition that he drop the lawsuit ... same condition was not required of APPLL ..
THANK YOU!! I'm so very glad to see that you're continuing to hold the Council (elected to represent the citizens of Bar Harbor) accountable. You are greatly appreciated!
This!! ThankYou Lincoln and Liz!
And thank you for your vindication of Charles Sidman and all his efforts in trying to maintain the integrity of the Bar Harbor community and its obligation to its unique and vulnerable location and natural beauty.
I am so thankful that the voters of Bar Harbor and the Island have a top notch reporter and corporate savvy retired executive putting the facts out for all to see. And, I like the way Lincoln Millstein does not hesitate to continuously remind town officials that facts, evidenced based facts , are stubbornly persistent things. And, he offers tutelage in negotiating skills as well! I can only hope the Town Council will dry dock this sinking ship of a repeal and replace of the voters’ wish to have a 1,000 passenger cap and scuttle Chapter 50 tonight. I doubt that will happen as the Town Council has invested the taxpayers’ money, staff time, and Town Council’s tasks with appeasing the Big APPLL, OPI, and Big Cruise in the hope it will thwart those pesky year round residents who would like to live in a community, not an industrial cruise ship port.
The Town could end this shipwreck tonight by bravely voting NO. Then, they could work on a true meeting of minds and hearts of actually involving everyone , not just one faction of the community. It would be extremely difficult, but so many have offered some sensible alternatives.
My preferred solution would include these broad factors: (already suggested by others). Keep the definitions and passenger caps in the LUO. This keeps the voters with a direct voice and vote over the cruise ship presence. As with the seemingly effective short term rental regulations, reference the enforcement of passenger caps in the LUO to be carried out by requirements in the MunicipalCode, Chapterxxxx. This system works now, why not adapt it to another version of short term visitors who arrive by water.
Lin…thanks for the example of the Good Neighbor Agreement…an all parties allowed consensus approach worked in Bar Harbor ( along with some legal work, and firm negotiating) with the location of the new (and huge ) substation several years ago. It is possible and doable.
I am posting this extensive quote from WBUR's On Point because it speaks to a Good Neighbor agreement between a copper mining company and local environmentalists in Montana. An example what can be accomplished by good faith and smart tactics.
It is perverse that the Bar Harbor Town Councilors, their managers, and lawyer continue to take an adversarial stance against Bar Harbor itself - against voters, residents, businesses not affiliated with APPL, the bay and heritage industries, a balance of tourisms, and representative government and the rule of law itself. There are other options. All the council's lip service to some notion of community cannot conceal their contempt for the people who live here.
"[The environmentalists hired] Jim Thomas, a Washington attorney who served on the U. S. team that negotiated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with the former Soviet Union. But before the lawyers sat face to face, Paul Hawks says his groups asked to first meet alone with Sibanye-Stillwater leadership."
The full quote and link to the full transcript.
"Paul Hawks is a retired Montana rancher and one of the architects of the so-called Good Neighbor Agreement, a legally binding contract between Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company, the Northern Plains Resource Council, and local community organizations.
The agreement's goal is to protect natural landscapes, rural quality of life, and minerals development. And Hawks is talking about a 1992 lawsuit against the state of Montana brought by local environmental groups including the Northern Plains Resource Council. Back then, the state had issued Sibanye-Stillwater a new permit to expand operations.
The permit included a notable provision. It allowed the mine to disregard a key element of Montana's Water Quality Act, meaning the pristine rivers nearby, like the Stillwater, wouldn't be protected.
HAWKS: And frankly, it all came down to water. We were, our interest was the water there and making sure it stayed clean.
It's not enough to just have a water quality law that isn't enforced until it's violated. We didn't want that. We wanted our pristine waters kept pristine.
CHAKRABARTI: But in 1995, the state legislature weakened Montana's Water Quality Act, rendering the group's lawsuit moot.
HAWKS: And so we had the option to sue again. Or to approach the company and see if we could sit down and come to some sort of agreement on our issues.
And we decided to see if they would be interested in sitting down and discussing a potential Good Neighbor Agreement.
CHAKRABARTI: Sibanye-Stillwater said yes. Hawks says community and environmental groups were realistic about the challenges they faced negotiating with a well-resourced corporation. So they raised funds to hire one of the United States most celebrated negotiators.
Jim Thomas, a Washington attorney who served on the U. S. team that negotiated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with the former Soviet Union. But before the lawyers sat face to face, Paul Hawks says his groups asked to first meet alone with Sibanye-Stillwater leadership.
HAWKS: We wanted to sit down with the company, and we wanted the people who could make decisions to be there.
Their top three people to be there. We banned having any lawyers in the room from either side. So these were just neighbors talking neighbors and we didn't want the old good guy, bad guy, cop thing about having to go back and talk to the boss. We wanted the boss in the room. Formal negotiations went on for about a year, covering water quality, mine tailings, disposal, emissions, even traffic mitigation.
CHAKRABARTI: Sibanye-Stillwater was willing to meet most of the community's demands with one condition. Residents and activists would give up the right to sue over any new permits. Hawks says they agreed.
HAWKS: We did, so therefore we had to have something in our agreement that gave it some teeth, that gave us some power, should they not meet the standards.
And that took some time to come up with that. What we ended up doing was setting up a system of dispute within the agreement and an arbitration panel.
CHAKRABARTI: The final binding agreement was signed on May 8th, 2000. It continues to be refined. Today, the contract is more than 200 pages long. It requires the mine to uphold water quality standards three times stronger than the state standards, including a mandatory monitoring system to ensure standards are being met.
It also has rules on disposing tailings and traffic mitigation with hundreds of new workers on site. Heather McDowell from Sibanye-Stillwater Mining says the agreement has also been a win for the company.
McDOWELL: We haven't had to ever invoke the dispute resolution mechanisms in the Good Neighbor Agreements.
And really, I think, from a company perspective, perhaps the more amazing statistic is that we've actually had no environmental litigation since the Good Neighbor Agreement was signed, which is, really just amazing.
CHAKRABARTI: McDowell adds that though the agreement comes at a hefty cost for the company, it's led to even more valuable benefits.
McDOWELL: It allows us to solve a lot of problems before they happen, and I think it also gives us some certainty. Where we have questions about what technology might be best, or what the community, what might be the best decision for 10 years from now, we have a group who really is watchdogging us to present that issue to. And sometimes it gives you a whole different viewpoint.
I can think of a number of projects where we would have never thought of some great technology or an activity that we did or didn't do because we had that opposing viewpoint."
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/03/12/the-copper-trade-off-protecting-todays-lands-versus-preserving-tomorrows-climate
Since the Town won at the District Court level, the Town had a clear window of advantage in negotiating an amicable resolution if that's the way the Town wanted to go. But what resulted should be known as "Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
One wonders whether the wording of Article 4 is deliberately obtuse and lacking in context:
"Cruise Ship Disembarkation — Shall an ordinance, dated August 2, 2024 and entitled “An
amendment to repeal and replace the permit requirements for disembarking persons from cruise
ships” be enacted?
SUMMARY
This amendment would repeal § 125-77H, which requires a written permit from the Code
Enforcement Officer for the disembarkation of persons from cruise ships on, over, or across any
property located within the Town of Bar Harbor, and explain that such uses will upon repeal be
governed by Chapter 50: Reservation and Disembarkation Licensing."
Bar Harbor voters must understand that if they want to keep the cap at 1,000 per day, they must vote NO on article 4. It's not clear to me that most voters will know this going into the polls.
“How Bar Harbor squandered the opportunity to effect ____________” could be written for a dozen different issues over the last decade+
The town has been lacking in any real leadership for so long, and half the citizenry is stuck in a 40 year old mindset.
Good morning Lincoln and QSJ readers!
It is worth highlighting, in my opinion, that there was direct engagement on rule-making and next steps with Mr. Sidman up through his decision to take legal action against the counsel. I was not a part of these conversations (I believe they were mostly with town staff), but from my understanding he was consistently viewed as a partner in this process up until then. Given his decision to take legal action, I'm not sure how it would have been appropriate to continue working in close partnership with him.
Thanks, as always, for your time and engagement.
Kyle Shank
You have no problem talking to Ocean Properties which is suing the town.
ThankYou Lincoln Millstein.
That's true! Those discussions, though, have been mediated by third-party, outside counsel. I believe the same opportunity was offered to Mr. Sidman, but I'm not sure what came of those discussions.
No. He asked for the same consideration but was denied by Wagner and Smith. They made it a condition that he drop the lawsuit ... same condition was not required of APPLL ..
Thank you for sharing! That was not my understanding of events, so I'll follow up on my end as well.
Please do follow up Kyle, that would be very much appreciated by many folks who voted for you.
You certainly should follow up but I doubt you'll get the legitimate version of events from talking to the council.