How ethics became a casualty of MDI's self interests - towns' boards rife with conflicts
Other news: QandA with land culturist/activist Dennis Bracale; Is MRC salvageable?
BAR HARBOR - The Nov. 8 referendum on cruise ships laid bare town officials’ disregard for ethics and codes of conduct of a normally functioning municipality.
In the few weeks before the vote, which overwhelmingly approved an aggressive reduction of cruise ship visits, the campaign against the initiative reached a fevered pitch, with the three most important town boards acting more like agents for the cruise ship industry than as representatives of citizens.
The town manager used taxpayer’s resources to distribute flyers against the initiative with the blessing of the council. The council chair was out every day hustling support for the alternative - a weak industry-influenced proposal which voters saw through.
In its aftermath and the recent Superior Court’s overturn of the town’s charter changes in 2021, some are calling out the lack of ethical guardrails and want to tighten them.
Even the Town Council itself delved into this thorny subject at its recent workshop on future priorities. “There is interest in this issue,” said member Gary Friedmann.
Another member said the political optics of a hotel on Cottage Street being built by the former Planning Board chairman was unfortunate and that it reinforced the public’s view that Bar Harbor benefits only a clique of insiders.
Adding to that perception was the Warrant Committee’s blessing of two members who clearly benefitted from the largesse of the cruise ship industry to vote against recommending the initiative.
Ethics codes on MDI are treated the way Bostonians treat stop signs, like they were mere suggestions.
Charles Sidman, leader of the citizens initiative to cap cruise ship visits, stated that the vote Nov. 8 was essentially an ethics complaint and judgement against town officials by citizens.
He wrote in the Islander Nov. 17 that the council needed to strengthen the conflict of interest policies “that even Town Council members and committee members violate while making pronouncements about the importance of ethics.”
A week later resident Dixie Hathaway added, “Bar Harbor needs to ‘make ethics complaints into an open proceeding, and establish a public ombudsman to proactively adjudge the legality of officials' words or actions while avoiding costly after-the-fact court adjudications.’ Town Council members have their work cut out for them.”
Depending on who is calling the shots, enforcement of ethics is uneven. In the fall of 2021, six members of the Warrant Committee who owned vacation rentals recused themselves from voting on the proposed ordinance to cap the rentals, while two Planning Board members under similar circumstances refused to. Same issue. Different boards. Different outcomes.
Bar Harbor was not the only town on MDI that took a sharp turn toward the dark side the last few years. (Perhaps public officials thought no one was watching during the pandemic.)
Even squeaky clean Town of Mount Desert has its peccadillos, allowing a real estate agent with a robust short-term rental business to help fashion the town’s new short-term rental “regulation.”
Katrina Carter was appointed by the select board to its Land Use Zoning advisory committee, which has no chair and has been managed by an outside consultant with no authority to declare any member ineligible to participate.
The committee was asked by the select board to draft proposed regulations for short-term vacation rentals out of a concern they were contributing to the island’s housing crisis.
Katrina Carter did not recuse herself even though her firm has been doing business with short-term rentals for years.
On Oct. 18, the committee heard a complaint from Diana Mei, who owns a summer house at 27 Millbrook Road, about short-term renters of the abutting house and their disregard for the neighborhood, setting an illegal fire in the backyard and forcing her to call the fire department.
At no time did Katrina Carter disclose that she was under contract as an agent for the neighbor in question, 25 Millbrook Road.
Carter has been been an outspoken member of the committee, especially on defining “short-term rentals.”
In two in-person interviews with the QSJ, she talked about the economic benefit to businesses in the village, where her office is located. She did not respond to a question by email about her conflict.
One member of the advisory board gave the oft-repeated canard that “everyone in town has a conflict. It’s a small town.” But not everyone has a real estate license.
The Oct. 18 meeting was attended by select board members Rick Mooers and Martha Dudman, who asked the matter be placed on the board meeting agenda for discussion Monday night Dec. 5 starting at 6. This is the Zoom address for the meeting.
In Southwest Harbor, an agenda item on the appeal board Wednesday Dec. 7 promises to be binge worthy as well. One of the largest landowner in town is under some heat for his role on the Planning Board. This is the Zoom address for the meeting starting at 6 p.m.
Lee Worcester, who also goes by the name Ben, is charged with a conflict of interest for voting for a subdivision over which he still maintains legal rights and ownership of the only access road, according to Ken Rozsahegyi, abutter to the lot at 4 Blueberry Lane in the Long Pond Road area of town. (Rozsahegyi was a member of the town’s comprehensive plan task force which just submitted its recommendations to the select board to update the plan.)
That lot is owned by Jesse Dunbar, town manager in Tremont and a former code enforcement officer in Southwest Harbor. He wants to cut it in half and sell the second lot.
The complicated story and cast of characters would take a Netflix series for proper exposition. But I’ll do my best.
At the Oct. 20 meeting of the Planning Board, Rozsahegyi produced what appeared to be a smoking gun - a page of the 2010 deed filed with the Hancock County Registry of Deeds which disclosed a covenance prohibiting subdividing the lot without permission from its previous owner, Lee Worcester.
That page was not included in the application.
Jesse Dunbar stated in an email to the QSJ that the page was left out because of a simple clerical error - that it was on the back of a two-side document and only one side was copied for distribution to board members.
Nevertheless, Rozsahegyi and board member John Blaine began asking probing questions as to Worcester’s role and whether it was proper for him to vote on the application.
Suddenly, Blaine threw a bombshell and accused the board of improprieties, saying, according to a recording of the meeting, “I don't agree with the planning board. I don't want to be on the planning board anymore. If the meeting is adjourned, adjourn it. I'm done with you guys. There's too much stuff that's done wrong here.”
Blaine did not return several calls seeking more detail.
But in an interview he gave to the Islander, he was quoted as saying, “I mean, Lee’s normally pretty good with recusing himself but he was the previous owner, he still should have walked away from that.”
The Islander reported his resignation was not in direct reaction to any specific case but to the handling of Planning Board processes more broadly. “I don’t think procedures are followed correctly. We get hired to follow a list. If the list doesn’t get followed correctly, things get out of hand. That’s why the meetings take so long because there’s just too much stuff that’s allowed to happen that shouldn’t happen,” said Blain told the Islander. “It happens almost every meeting.”
A pet peeve of abutters like Rozsahegyi is the short notice given. He said he only had two days to prepare a response. Many homeowners are summer residents whose forwarding mail can take weeks.
Worcester is a big target. He and his family businesses are among the largest landowners in town, if not the largest. They founded the Smuggler’s Den Campgrounds on Rt. 102 in 1969 and still run it. They are one of the town’s largest vendors, Eastern Maine Recycling (E.M.R.), which hauls all the town’s garbage to various disposal sites.
In addition to his role on the Planning Board, he chairs the water and sewer board and the town’s housing commission.
On Nov. 3, the Planning Board reconvened and voted that Worcester did not have a conflict of interest and approved Jesse Dunbar’s subdivision 5-0, with one abstention.
Rozsahegyi’s challenge cited a conduct policy adopted by the select board in August which stated, “Members with a conflict of interest or an appearance of a conflict of interest should disclose to entire board or committee and shall not vote on any matter in which it is deemed a financial interest, personal interest, or benefit.”
Did Worcester disclose his interest before Rozsahegyi uncovered the deed’s second page? The phrase “appearance of a conflict” will also weigh heavily on the appeals board Wednesday.
“My goal in bringing this appeal is to clarify my understanding of municipal application of conflict of interest policy and related ordinances,” Rozsahegyi wrote to the appeals board.
Some other examples of conflicts on the Quietside:
In Southwest Harbor last summer, select board member George Jellison was asked numerous times by fellow members to recuse himself from his sister’s complaint about parking at the lobster pound across her street. He did not. When he was chair, he even ordered the police to enforce parking regulations which were not in the town ordinance. He brought the issue to the select board six different times, starting in 2021.
Fellow member Jim Vallette recused himself when Jellison’s bid to create a no-parking zone included Vallette’s house on Seawall in Road. Jellison also owns a house in the zone but did not recuse himself. The bid failed.
In Tremont, the select board was asked by Planning Board chair Mark Good in 2021 not to appoint Beth Gott, co-owner of the largest heavy equipment company on MDI, to the PB board. She was appointed anyway. Two of the Tremont select board are in the construction businesses. Two other members have water-related businesses.
QandA with landscape architect Dennis Bracale - businessman, activist, steward of the land
BAR HARBOR - Dennis Bracale has laid low for a decade, but recent events have made him restive. He’s ruminating once again about the challenges and potential of of the 63 square miles of land called Bar Harbor. Even though he’s got plenty of scars from combating the scourge of development, he still believes the community can make this place special again.
Bracale is a rare combination of businessman, activist and responsible steward. He received a masters degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia, and is a practitioner of the craft of creating art at the scale of nature. He has gifted the Island with the creation of more than 200 gardens and has always realized what a special place this Island is, and more importantly what it can become.
Bracale was the leading plaintiff of a lawsuit which overturned hundreds of illegal zoning actions favoring developers in 2013. That lawsuit took four years.
The QSJ caught up with Bracale in the aftermath of the recent upheavals in town, as he was the vanguard of the citizens initiatives and lawsuits which have become commonplace today to check the impulses of the Town Council and other municipal boards and committees.
The QSJ: How are you feeling about the recent victories by citizens to cap cruise ship visits and to overturn the council’s charter changes?
“It is with great sadness that I have watched Bar Harbor politics since the four years I spent bringing a lawsuit against the Town of Bar Harbor.
“For those who have forgotten, in 2010 the Town passed the largest change to land use in its history. It was a development agenda so wide ranging, so contorted and so full of errors that a group of us tried to get the Town to realize the nature of the mistakes they made. Instead the Town decided that it could win a lawsuit in court, explaining in mediation that the judge would not be able to understand the case and would not vote against the Town.
“Luckily the judge was replaced before the case was heard. In the end the new justice, Ann Murray, overturned the peoples’ votes. How often have you heard of this being done? How egregious were the Town’s actions? Afterwards I would write in The Islander and in a WordPress document the following:
“ … the lawsuit was not about hotels or development, as alleged in the Islander. It was about transparency and the need for proper public notices, and clear explanations of proposed zoning changes. It was about having zoning ordinances that are consistent with the Bar Harbor’s Comprehensive Plan, and that represent the rights of citizens, summer residents, and the business community. A balance among them has always made, and will continue to make Bar Harbor a very special place. When reflecting on all of the individuals who have given so much, we owe nothing less.
The Plaintiffs believe that because the Town spent such a large sum pursuing this case, Bar Harbor citizens deserve to understand what this case was really about. We invite the public to view a series of articles now on a new website: barharborzoning.wordpress.com ….. In it “ we explore a few crucial episodes that will shed light on the politics of development and why it will be necessary to make changes to the Town’s planning process. The gravity of the findings by the Court, with its overturned election results, calls for nothing less.”
The QSJ: Talk a bit more about the planning process.
“This last idea became something that I would say multiple times at Planning and Town council meetings as well as at design events. Finally the Town responded. A group, which I joined, spent three months coming up with ideas for the Town pier only to have our hopes dashed. Town manger (Cornell) Knight, who was told that Canada wanted to bring the ferry back, went into executive session, disbanded the citizen advisory group, and made a backroom deal. Of course backroom deals are standard fare in Bar Harbor.
The QSJ: And cruise ships?
“For years we were an expanding group who would ask: how many cruise ships were too many? Furthermore, multiple times we asked: when were citizens ever asked if they even wanted cruise ships? The answer of course was never, at least until the citizens petition. Next was the vendetta against the warrant committee, the committee which provided citizens with a check on power politics. Again, a lawsuit was brought and the Town, losing yet another lawsuit, has more than egg on its face. None of this is easy for me to write as someone that loves this Town, as someone who has spent my whole working life trying to make this an extraordinary place.
The QSJ: So How do we entangle this mess?
“Bar Harbor needs a community design process. Community design is a movement focused on the creation and management of environments for people. This process promotes change to the built environment from the neighborhood to regional scale, and aims to meet community needs through participatory decision-making at all levels.
“In watching other communities, it is often true that after major setbacks some of the greatest opportunities arise. Bar Harbor has the opportunity to become an example and a model for other gateway communities that border national parks. We already have Friends of Acadia, which has become a model for other Friends groups, the Jackson lab, Bio lab, COA and many other thought leaders. It is time to come together as the time is truly getting late.
“In the past ten years I have heard so many wonderful ideas about how to make Bar Harbor a thriving community. Each of these should be explored including a transportation plan with a ferry that links Boston, Portland and Bar Harbor to get people out of their cars. It is this last idea that I believe has the best chance of transforming Bar Harbor. By doing so we would be in lock step with Acadia NP which is already moving in this direction.
The QSJ: Are there examples of this elsewhere?
“All around the world communities have created more pedestrian friendly area within their cities. Some examples are Boulder Colorado’s walking Mall, Charlottesville Virginia’s old Main Street, and recently Time Square and other walking promenades in New York City. All over Europe, city centers, once choked with traffic, have closed off areas and built parking areas on the edge. People could now get out of their cars and wander in historic districts. This is exactly what Bar Harbor needs. Four small town streets packed with millions of visitors is unpleasant, and dangerous to the point that most island residents have abandoned Bar Harbor. Many feel that it is an unpleasant car city. Now we have the perfect situation to change.
The QSJ: What do you mean about putting parking on the edge?
Currently the Town is grappling with the need to replace its schools. From a design standpoint the school would be better located near the YMCA and the current school yard is the perfect place to become a parking and transportation center. A pedestrian walkway could be built across Eden Street to Cottage Street. Buses could run during the season taking visitors down Cottage, up Main street, then return on historic Mount Desert Street. Cottage and Lower main to Mount Desert street would be one way allowing bus stops with tree lined wide walkways, restaurants with outdoor seating, and a relaxed place to gather after a day in the park.
The QSJ: What else are we missing?
Regardless of what you think of this idea, or the many ideas to explore, we have to look at the big picture. As a business owner I was recently asked about housing and what my business’s housing needs were. Instead I asked: “what is the town’s goal as far as carrying capacity. Needs never end. Does Bar Harbor want to plan for 10 million visitors a year or does the Town want to start thinking about an appropriate number that works within a community’s agreed-upon plan. Ultimately Community design is the answer and I believe now is the time to bring this community together to create a vision for a brighter future. Because of the great sacrifice of those who designed Eden, we owe nothing less.”
(Bar Harbor was originally incorporated as the Town of Eden, the original document signed by Samuel Adams in 1796 and a warrant calling the first town meeting, according to the Bar Harbor Historical Society. The town’s name was changed to Bar Harbor in 1918.)
Has Bar Harbor school committee considered alternatives to a new school? Some council members are asking
BAR HARBOR - The website for the proposal for a new school building, which will cost at least $50 million, has little useful information. It has some dated calendar information and some timelines for its ambitions.
But it has no cost estimates, no consideration of alternatives and not even any any of the presentations by its design consultant.
The committee seems to be speeding forward without any regard for the work by the larger MDI school committee for consolidation, merging operations across the island’s disparate districts to achieve shared purpose as MDI did in 1968 when the high school was created.
This must be a hot button issue because the QSJ could not get a return call from a usually responsive superintendent, Mike Zboray, despite three attempts. Bar Harbor school committee chair Alexandra Simis appeared briefly before the Town Council Tuesday to ask for its support but instead got some pointed questions from council member Gary Friedmann about whether the school committee has explored sharing resources with the Town of Mount Desert and details about cost instead of only the designs of the new school.
Other questions from council members and others remain.
The Conners Emerson School was built on land that is at the juncture of a major entry into downtown.
Some have suggested if a new school is to be build, it should be re-sited to the ball fields near the YMCA, and it would serve the town well to re-imagine the current space (see above).
Whether the school committee has considered any of this in unknown. Chair Simis is not returning calls.
The QSJ reported on how three towns in Maine rejected bond proposals for school buildings on Nov. 8. Bar Harbor school committee appears to believe it does not have to provide meaningful details and still get citizens support. It is scheduled to present to the Town Council Tuesday Dec. 6.
MRC at a precipice; so many questions, unknowns, doubts
MOUNT DESERT - The Municipal Review Committee could not have picked a worst time for its annual meeting on Dec. 14 which you may attend by registering here:
Its very existence is now in question after the latest attempt to find investors and operators to restart its defunct waste disposal plant in Hampden failed this week.
As if to punctuate the dire situation, the MRC also announced this week that all solid waste produced by its 115 members towns were being hauled directly to landfills in Old Town and Norridgewock because of “suspension of operations as the result of contractual issues with key counterparties.
“Also, PERC is still filling staffing voids and completing maintenance,” it stated.
PERC is Penobscot Energy Recovery Company, the incinerator in Orrington which has provided backup since the close of the Hampden plant in June 2020. But it also has had challenges hiring staff and maintaining its infrastructure. Frequently, like this week, most of the trash has been trucked to landfills, with some towns providing recycling services on their own.
MRC chair Karen Fussell confirmed to the QSJ that Revere Capital Advisors failed to pay its $150,000 deposit as a condition of the extension of its rights to negotiate exclusively to operate the plant in Hampden, and has lost that exclusivity as a result.
The MRC is now back to Square One, even though Fussell continues to toe the line that “Revere feels that, despite this delay, they can still meet the original plan of getting waste flowing into the plant in 2023.”
But the MRC is no longer banking on that. It has opened discussions with other companies who may be interested in operating the plant. It created a subcommittee to drive that process, including Fussell, Waldoboro select chair Bob Butler, Bangor public works director Aaron Huotori and Bradley Town manager Melissa Doane.
Coastal Resources of Maine was the company created by investors to launch and operate the waste-to-energy plant using technology from Fiberight Corp. The major investor was Ultra Capital, which chose an operator with no experience running such a waste plant.
The plant leased land in Hampden owned by the MRC and opened to great fanfare in late 2019, after raising between $70 to $90 million, most of which was debt. The plant consisted of three major components: A “front end” where garbage would be sorted and washed, distribution of waste to either landfill or recycling and a “back end” where remaining waste would be turned into “biomass” to produce fuel products.
It was the back end which was the most troubling and cost intensive, according to sources familiar with the operation. By early 2020, Coastal Resources was burning cash at a worrisome rate and sought another infusion which the MRC provided in a $1.5 million loan only about a month before CRM ran out of money on May 28, 2020.
The MRC board moved quickly to look for companies to restart operations. It never paused to ask the most basic question: is this plant viable? Its board consisted mostly of municipal finance officials, local select board members and a few public works directors more schooled in maintaining roads and sewer systems.
It relied heavily on a lone technical consultant and a lawyer from Eaton Peabody for guidance.
In the 10 years since the plant was envisioned the world changed its thinking on waste management. Instead of centralized industrial-sized solutions like a hulking plant, Zero Waste became the mantra: Let us all produce less garbage.
Meanwhile, there was plenty of innovation in Maine, which in June 2021 became the first state in the nation to require companies that create consumer packaging to pay for the costs of recycling. The “extended producer responsibility” program was sponsored by then State Rep. Nicole Grohoski of Ellsworth (she is now a state senator).
Has the MRC consultant ever had a conversation with Grohoski? Or with Bar Harbor council member Gary Friedmann, who specializes in supporting environmental initiatives, or with Southwest Harbor select member Jim Vallette, who runs a materials research firm, or with any members of Don’t Waste ME, its biggest critic?
A year was wasted by the MRC and bondholders with Delta Thermo Energy despite reporting by the Bangor Daily News and the QSJ questioning some of DTE’s claims.
After DTE flamed out, the MRC went underground. It conducted virtually all its business in secret, invoking questionable use of the state’s Freedom of Access Act’s exemption for “executive sessions.” It continued to issue rosy claims in public, expressing optimism that its latest candidate, Revere Capital Advisors, would raise the money needed - more than $20 million - to restart operations.
Despite all this, the MRC does have some pluses. It owns the plant and the land outright. It forced a successful financial “workout” with the bondholders to relinquish control at very little cost to the MRC - about $2 million for the plant which cost $70-$90 million to build.
But it continues to ask all the wrong questions.
Its annual meeting is an opportunity. Instead of a one-way conversation guided by a lawyer, the MRC needs to listen and explore alternatives to its flawed business model, as it rewards tonnage at a time when the rest of the world is trying to reduce it. Why would it be surprised that two companies now have been unable to convince investors to support this old model?
Can the MRC help with composting, recycling? Can it pass some of the burden to consumers as Ecomaine has done successfully with its curbside program in Portland where consumers pay more for a bag of trash than they do for a bag of recycling?
Can the MRC engage its members to go after the billions of federal money available in the Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program where towns and cities may apply for grants between $500,000 and $4 million to improve materials management and infrastructure for recycling and composting?
The game is not over, but it’s very late. We’re in extra innings.
There is not much at stake, only the future of the planet.
CORRECTION:
NORTHEAST HARBOR - George McVetty, who owned the drug store here, was the first year-round resident to sell his home to a summer resident, according to resident John Adams, whose father was the village barber. McVetty sold his home on Rock End Road in February 1971 to Nancy Shaw of Baltimore, MD, according to the Hancock County Registry of Deeds. Adams challenged the the QSJ report of a later sale as the beginning of the encroachment of summer residents into the part of the village traditionally occupied by year-round residents.
There are 5,500 residents in this town and about 550 registered VR2 licenses - 10 percent. The Planning Board had 40 percent VR2 licensees and the Warrant Committee had 33 percent that night.
The ethics accusations are somewhat off-base. Yes, when someone votes on a property issue where they have a direct ownership or easement right, or are party to a transaction or contract, that presents a conflict issue. But the suggestion that the Bar Harbor planning board members who did vacation rentals were conflicted is a misapplication of conflict principles. Every property owner in Bar Harbor is affected by placing limitations on the ability to do short term rentals, whether they presently do so or not. It affects the property value, and affects the ability of someone who is not renting now from doing so in the future. There is no conflict if the involved interest is widely applicable to a large portion of the general population. The Warrant Committee deliberations, which I listened to, were ridiculous on this point. I recall that there were many members, perhaps a majority, who did vacation rentals, including the chairperson. Someone raised the conflict issue, and the Chairperson correctly made my point -- that conflict principles did not apply to this situation. But there was some push-back, and I think people were aware of the hub-bub caused by the complaints about the recent Planning Board vote, and so there was a vote on whether there was a conflict. The members who did vacation rentals were not allowed to vote on whether there was a conflict, and unsurprisingly the remaining members voted that there was a conflict. I remember one person "refuted" the chairperson's point by saying "I have no intention of ever renting, so the conflict doesn't apply to me." So everyone should assume that she won't change her mind, or ever sell her now-discounted property?