MIDWEEK REPORT: Bar Harbor town meetings back online - sort of; council upset at public disclosures

BAR HARBOR, Dec. 6, 2023 - The technical glitch which prevented the Town Council meeting from being aired last night on Town Hall Streams will not affect today’s Planning Board meeting scheduled for 4 p.m. to discuss the massive subdivision proposed for the rural section of Town Hill, according to the town’s technical manager Steve Cornell.

The board will conduct a Sketch Plan Review for the Brigadoon Subdivision proposed by property owners Christopher Bettencourt and Denise Carey Bettencourt to create 14 residential lots on more than 207 acres on Crooked Road.

Some residents in Town Hill have expressed concern about disruption to vernal pools and other critical wetland in the area.

The QSJ covered their concerns in a report Nov. 11.

Cornell said the council meeting was recorded on a disc and should be uploaded by Town Hall Stream “in a day or two.”

The failure to stream the meeting occurred ironically on a night when the council discussed an issue of public transparency.

Carrie Jones of the Bar Harbor Story reported that several council members were upset by the QSJ’s disclosure of the details of the troubled Higgins Pit solar project which was discussed in executive session Nov. 17. They did not mention the QSJ by name, one attendee said.

The council may solve its dilemma with a simple solution: Stop conducting the public’s business in secret.

The council replaced its attorney two years ago with another attorney from the same firm, Rudman Winchell, who has been an active user of the state’s “executive session” clause.

(The fees for the firm has also increased almost tenfold during that period, most of it for the lawsuit against the town on the visitor cap for cruise ships.)

The town manager and council chair Val Peacock did not reply to specific questions about why the council went into executive session to discuss Higgins Pit, which has been openly shared with the public for four years, except to cite the statute.

One attendee was told the town attorney said there could be legal action or weakening of bargaining positions if the details were made public.

But the potential exists for that likelihood in virtually every item which comes before council members, who don’t seem the understand that the lawyer works for them and not the other way around.

Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt had been waiting since Aug. 11 for an estimate from Versant Power after taxpayers approved $3.5 million for the project in 2022 and the town budgeted $500,000 for Versant’s connection fees.

Instead of disclosing that Versant came in with a whopping $1.1 million estimate, newly named Town Manager James Smith, in his first meeting, scheduled the Higgins Pit discussion for behind closed doors.

Smith has adopted the same practice from former managers Kevin Sutherland and Cornell Knight to require the QSJ to invoke the state’s Freedom of Access Act in any request for information from him.

Many of the town’s other boards and committees are doing business virtually behind close doors. The Harbor Committee, for instance, does not record its meetings and has submitted minutes for only three meetings for all of 2023.

It has yet to share publicly that the town’s proposal to build a marina at its terminal on Rt. 3 has hit a major roadblock as reported by the Bar Harbor Story. Some of its meeting are streamed online but not all.