Marginalized as a group, renters struggle for representation in island housing confabs

OTHER NEWS: NEH library acquires director housing; Old Town landfill in crisis mode; Jellison seeks conservation board seat; MD planning board loses member

TREMONT - The plaintive pleas of the island’s renters, the largest group of victims of the housing crisis, are seldom heard in any local officialdom - hearings, meetings, workshops.

They are too busy tending to their jobs than to attend night meetings when they are working. They are gripped by housing insecurity constantly. They scour social media for any tips on available apartments. Their huddled breaks for coffee or drinks inevitably turn to sharing tales of their common plight.

They probably don’t vote here. For sure, they don’t pay property taxes.

And yet they are the lubricant of a community that had an unspoken pact: We will take of of you if you take care of us.

They are of two camps: workers who tend bar, wait on tables and other seasonal jobs and year-round workers at Jackson Labs, Hinckley Yachts, schools, hospitals, libraries, first response units and the YMCA.

At the recent Bar Harbor Town Council “workshop” to address the housing crisis Oct. 10 - which interim Town Manager Cornell Knight decided not to allow public video participation - town planner Michele Gagnon spent virtually the entire time talking about how to make it easier for developers to build more houses.

Will that be enough to create the 522 rental units which the town’s own analysis stated are needed over the next decade?

She brushed off a question from newly appointed member of the Planning Board Cosmo Nims on the town’ short-term rental ordinance. Gagnon told Nims that town’s current ordinance was sufficient.

“We have established a strong program with the 9 percent that we have seen a decrease. She added that if the town ever reached that 9 percent, more discussion may be needed with the council. “But at this point, we're more into management and enforcement.”

The town reached a peak of 740 licensed STRs by the end of 2021, when an ordinance went into effect to cap STRs until they came down to 9 percent of the housing stock.

By the deadline for renewal May 31, 2023, that number had declined to 632, a 14 percent drop. But the bad news was that the percentage of STRs still exceeded 20 percent of the housing stock.

It’s easy to misread the signals.

There was a hysteria leading up the the November 2021 referendum as even some without intention to rent their homes applied for the registration. Also, some simply forgot to register by the May 31 deadline this year. (Some then began to rent their properties illegally, as reported by the QSJ.)

Will they make that mistake next May 31?

Nims and Town Council member Maya Caines are renters and political outliers - two young, brash representatives of an entirely different segment of the population, one without a voice, disenfranchised from the controlling deity.

Caines was the highest voter getter in the June town elections. Nims was named to the Planning Board after falling short in the race for the council.

They have a vantage point not represented by most boards on the island. They have ideas. A full expression of their views would be valuable.

On the other side of the island, Edith Cook is trying to be heard as well.

Edith Cook at Tremont hearing

She was the only renter who spoke Monday night in the town office building at a hearing packed mostly by landlords, real estate agents and others opposed to an ordinance to license short term rentals.

Land-use expert Noel Musson, hired by the town to moderate the licensing proposal, said, “There is a lot of evidence that shows that short term rentals contribute to a lack of affordability or lack of year-round housing.”

It was a reprise of similar hearings in the town of Mount Desert, where the select board finally decided not to bring an identical, proposed ordinance to town meeting for a vote.

The same confusion, questions and criticisms dominated the hearing here.

What’s the fee for licensing STRs?

What’s are the fines?

Why are you telling me what I can do with my property?

They were interspersed with comments from other homeowners fed up with the party-happy Airbnb crowd next door.

Marc Fink, who lives on Bass Harbor Woods Road, asked about the consequences of bad behavior by STR renters.

“These kids come in. They do their thing. Oops. Somebody starts a fire and it spreads and it damages the neighbor's place or burns down or whatever. Who specifically is liable for it? So that's an example of what I'm asking about. Is there something implicit about what happens as a consequence of that property being used as a rental in the event of something like that?”

Fink said his neighborhood was approaching “50 percent” STRs, which drew some skeptical looks.

A search on Airdna, which the QSJ is a subscriber, provided this view, showing all active STR listings and their income in Fink’s neighborhood.

Edith Cook came here nine years ago and worked in one of Bar Harbor’s established restaurants, which reserved its “employee” housing for foreign workers on J1 or H2B visas crammed into tight spaces.

“I picked up a second job bartending down at Thurston’s, and that's where my love for this area came from.” Thurston’s is a lobster pound in Bernard.

Cook started “getting involved in the community on this side of the island.”

“ I made some really great friends just being behind the bar at Thurston’s. I met all the fishermen and a lot of the locals that would come in because it was the first year they had the bar and it was really exciting and everybody really loved it.”

Her housing resume is typical of many workforce renters. She was kicked out of a apartment in Bar Harbor after the owner changed the building to all STRs. She lived out of a camper at Thurston’s before scoring her current apartment where she has an arrangement with the landlord to keep a watchful eye on the other three units which are STRs.

She described her situation at the select board public hearing Monday which may be viewed in this video starting at Minute 58:50.

Cook, who now works in landscape construction, said after the hearing, “These people don't seem to understand that if you just have a community of rich people and old people, and the rest of your occupancy is short term tourist rentals. you're not going to have a community. You're not going to have a school. You're not going to have emergency services.

“You're not going to have anybody to work in your stores. You're not going to have anybody to provide the amenities that cater to the lifestyle that you want to have.”

Northeast Harbor Library acquires village house for director

NORTHEAST HARBOR - The library has purchased a house in the village as permanent lodging for its director, as real estate prices in town “have rocketed through the roof,” said library chair Arthur C. Martinez.

“When we were successful in getting Amy Wisehart to leave the Ellsworth library and come to be our director at the Northeast Harbor Library, there was a question about affordability and access to housing that would be appropriate for her.

Amy Wisehart

“Our view is that the director is an integral part of the community, and critically important, if at all possible, for that director to be a living participant in the community day in and day out, weekends and evenings - not necessarily working but participating in the social and community life.

“And if there was a way - and she doesn't have the resources to do it - to ensure that she and others after her - we tried to take the long view here - we'd have a place that they could consider their home during a period of time they were director.

“And I want to make this clear that the house is not Amy's house. It's the director's house.

“And as the current director of the library, she is entitled and expected to reside in that in that house, puts her closer to the community, with her closer to her workplace.

“We only have nine people on the staff, so the director is very much a hands-on job. And reasonable and easy access to the library is an important benefit.

“The Northeast Harbor library also serves as the library for the elementary school. So it's not just a community issue. It's an educational issue and it's another ball for the director to juggle and to try to do that and live remotely and take care of your family seem to us to be asking too much of a person and in fact not giving the person the opportunity to integrate fully with the community.”

Wisehart has been renting on the western side of the island - about a 20-minute drive to the library. Her new home is a 4-minute walk to the library and the school, where her son attends.

Serendipity led Martinez to the small three-bedroom, one-bath house.

“I was driving home up Maple Lane on the way to my house which is on the other side of town and I saw a real estate sign in front of this home. And I knew the broker and I got home and I said what's the story? And she told me the story. And I said I think this could be the right answer for the library.

“When this opportunity presented itself, I brought it to our executive committee first to discuss whether or not it made sense. We took it to our board and we had unanimous support at each stage to proceed to acquire the house and make some modest improvements.”

The purchase price was $465,000, according to a published listing.

“We were able to do it from our own resources. We didn't have to borrow any money or raise any new money to do it. And we think it's a great investment whatever happens down the road.”

Wisehart graduated from Hampshire College in 2002, and received an MS in library science from Simmons College.

She started as NEH director in May 2022.

Panic sets in as record amount of trash hauled to Old Town

ORRINGTON - Unless a last-minute buyer emerges, the regional garbage incinerator here will be foreclosed by the town for back taxes the week after Thanksgiving, adding pressure to an already full-blown solid waste crisis affecting 159 towns.

The Penobscot Energy Recovery Company is the only viable “short-term” solution available to relieve the Juniper Ridge landfill in Old Town which was not intended to be the primary solid waste solution in the region.

But the waste-to-energy plant in Hampden, the primary source for 115 towns, has been closed since June 2020 and is not expected to reopen fully under new owners until 2025.

Orrington Town Manager Chris Blackman is hoping a buyer will emerge at an auction next week to avoid the foreclosure by the town, which is not equipped to operate the incinerator.

PERC owes the town $655,000 in back taxes over three years. To stave off foreclosure, a new owner would need to pay off a full year of back taxes, Blackman said. In addition, he estimated that it would cost about $1 million to get the plant back into operation.

There are about 11,000 tons of garbage sitting on the floor at PERC. It would make more sense to incinerate that garbage to produce electricity than to haul it to landfill.

Victor Horton, director of the recycler Maine Resource Recovery Association, estimated that incineration saves about 90 percent of the garbage from going to landfill, the least desirable choice for garbage disposal.

“I just don’t know why we're not more worried. I think we should be more worried than we are. We've got the Hampden plant taking a while. We don't know what's going on with PERC. We got a landfill sitting here with some space, but how much space?”

“Garbage is notoriously difficult to see”, wrote Max Liboiron, author of Pollution is Colonialism. “Though we deal with municipal solid waste every day, waste infrastructure keeps waste out of sight through bins, black bags, covered trucks, fenced transfer stations, proprietary routes, publicly inaccessible landfills, and laws criminalizing scavenging.”

“Why do we know so much about the supply chain and so little about the ‘removal chain?’ “ asked the MIT Trash Tracker.

When the hired garbage collector comes to the the West Street Hotel in Bar Harbor to empty its bins full of beer cans, uneaten nachos and other flotsam from a wasted weekend, it doesn’t distinguish among the ruination.

A small amount of that - a very small amount - is being recycled.

Most of it is being trucked, at an inordinate expense, to the landfill in Old Town, about an hour-and-half haul from Bar Harbor.

The handling of this trash is now costing about $1 million for Bar Harbor.

And Old Town is saying “enough.”

This week, the Bangor Daily News reported that Rep. James Dill, D-Old Town, is sponsoring emergency legislation for the state to investigate solutions to the solid waste management crisis and report its findings by June 1, 2024.

People are worried that Maine’s largest landfill could fill five years prematurely, according to a draft of the legislation.

“There are 159 towns sending direct, unprocessed trash to Old Town,” City Manager Bill Mayo told the BDN. “This has never happened in the past, and it has people in town worried.”

Blackman is hoping other legislators in the region will help sponsor Dill’s legislation.

BDN reported Juniper Ridge accepted 73,338 tons of waste in September, according to its monthly status report. Nine complaints, all of them about odor, were documented last month, a notable increase from previous months. Data show one or two complaints per month was typical during 2023.

As a result of the DEP’s approval of “temporary” increases in municipal solid waste and wastewater treatment plant sludge at Juniper Ridge, the partial expansion, which was expected to last through 2033, is now expected to use that capacity by 2028, the reports said.

George Jellison, loud opponent of Chris’s Pond project, seeks voting seat on conservation board

SOUTHWEST HARBOR - Three persons are vying for two voting memberships on the Conservation Committee, including former select member George Jellison who has a long record of opposing and disrupting the committee’s signature project to upgrade the town’s skating pond.

“I am totally mystified why GG (Jellison’s nickname) would want this,” said one committee member.

The select board has the authority to fill the two vacancies for voting members. The committee also has non-voting associate members.

Besides Jellison, other applicants are former select chair Kristin Hutchins, who is a non-voting member of the conservation committee, and Kathleen B. Lindquist.

Louise Soucy is applying as a non-voting associate member of the committee.

Jellison is also seeking to join the shellfish committee for the remainder of a three-year term until June 30, 2026.

More changes in offing for Mount Desert Planning Board

MOUNT DESERT - Gail Marshall, an outspoken supporter of workforce housing, may soon have her chance at being seated as a full voting member of the Planning Board after all.

Longtime member Dave Ashmore said at the board meeting last week this will be his last week as a member, as he is moving out of town.

Marshall was slated to join the full board in early September until chair Bill Hanley changed his recommendation to alternate member Allen Kimmerly. Instead, Marshall became the alternate. She has attended every board meeting since, either in person or on Zoom.

Marshall, a retired attorney, was witness to the sharp decline of enrollment at Mount Desert Elementary School in her years on the school committee, as both a member and chair.

“No one who lives here needs to be told that our communities are greatly imperiled by the extreme imbalance in our housing availability,” she wrote in a commentary June 19 in the Islander. “We need far more housing for families who are not wealthy and want to live, work and contribute to the community year-round. We need many more nurses, ed techs, bus drivers, grocery clerks, plumbers, public safety workers, etc.”

With her knowledge of the town and her parliamentary experience, Marshall would make a natural replacement as board chair should Hanley vacate that position. Hanley has been chair since May 2015.

In two of the town’s most important planning board decisions, Hanley was the odd man out - in June 2017 when he was the lone nay vote in the 4-1 board decision that the operation at Hall Quarry had been dormant for so long that it did not qualify for grandfathering.

On Oct. 10, Hanley disagreed with members Meredith Randolph, Tracy Loftus Keller and Ashmore that a proposed workforce project in the village complied with town ordinance on density requirements.

The board has scheduled a special meeting to complete its work on the project for Tuesday, so that Ashmore may participate before leaving.

Marshall stated in an email in early September that her support for workforce housing does not mean she has a specific agenda.

If the select board names Marshall as a full member, the town would likely advertise for a replacement for her alternate seat, Town Manager Durlin Lunt said.

Name for Cottage Street ‘B&B?” The Pathmaker ‘Hotel’

Developers of the “bed and breakfast” on Cottage Street who assiduously avoided applying for a permit as a hotel so not to have to get Planning Board approval, has named its B&B as “The Pathmaker Hotel.” Code Enforcement Officer Angela Chamberlain said a commercial name on a building has nothing to do with its permitted use. Glad to have that clarification.