Northeast Harbor neighbors seek to halt workforce housing projects in village
Dick Broom's journey not over; Covid everywhere on MDI; Tremont gets another campground application
NORTHEAST HARBOR, Nov. 12, 2021 - Neighbors on Neighborhood Road are not feeling very neighborly.
They have launched a preemptive strike against two workforce housing projects with a petition which they claim has garnered 210 signatures as of Tuesday. Their target: Mount Desert 365, one of two non-profits working to increase year-round housing on MDI.
A copy of the petition obtained by QSJ states in part:
“The undersigned are opposed to the Mount Desert 365 plan to create two subdivisions across the street from each other on Neighborhood Road.
MD 365 proposes to anchor its 6-unit project at the corner of Manchester and Neighborhood roads with a single-family house built in 1929.
It then will construct a duplex and three more single-family homes, according to its “pre-application” presentation to the Planning Board on May 26.
“This project will overburden the immediate area with up to 36 new residents and 12 cars on a 3⁄4-acre corner lot,” the petitioners wrote. “Subdivision Two is planned across Neighborhood Road, behind #33. It is even larger with plans to build up to 10 homes. This will further compound traffic and infrastructure problems.”
Joseph and Barbara Rierson, who abut the Manchester Road project, told QSJ in an impromptu interview on their doorstep that the .79-acre lot is too small to accommodate such dense housing. At the May 26 Planning Board meeting, other neighbors who raised questions were Wendy Foulke, Walter Foulke, William Smith, Jay Haberman, James Gowan, Katrina Carter and Chuck Bucklin.
The neighbors are swimming against the current of prevailing town policies and sentiment expressed in the most recent Town Comprehensive Plan, which states the town shall:
“Promote a pattern of residential growth that sustains all aspects of our community and that is affordable for year-round residents.
“The high cost for housing is currently one of the primary driving forces behind many of the issues facing the town of Mount Desert. An appropriate balance of housing should be sought after to support a healthy economy, and it should be kept affordable in order to avoid displacing community members to outlying areas.”
MD 365 director Kathy Miller said the village was chosen because it is exactly what was called for in the town’s long-term plan to develop affordable housing in densely populated areas with existing sewer, water and other services that do not require a disruption of natural habitats.
“Housing should be developed in a way that improves connections between and among community members to create vibrant year-round villages. It should not degrade or exhaust the natural resources that are integral to the success of this community, such as fragmenting or destroying important wildlife habitat, polluting or exhausting water supplies, or negatively impacting either natural or built scenic resources,” the town plan stated.
Since then, this plan has been codified into the town’s ordinances.
Land-use consultant Noel Musson said the town’s subdivision ordinance allows for workforce housing to have more density, to encourage different housing options to attract and keep year-round residents, according to the minutes of the May 26 meeting.
Code Enforcement Officer Kim Keene said the MD 365 project may divide the lot into three and have one single family dwelling, plus an accessory residential dwelling unit, on each lot, resulting in six units. Musson agreed.
This opinion obviously did not sit well with some neighbors.
The petition was initiated last summer even before an application was filed, seeds planted for another village-wide smackdown.
“MD 365's plan to create a condominium ownership structure for buyers means residents will own their modular unit but not the land beneath it. Owners will have little incentive to maintain the units and no opportunity for increase in the value of their property,” the petition stated.
“The signers support workforce housing and point to the Island Housing Trust (IHT) model recently employed in Northeast Harbor, as a better strategy. IHT disperses units by utilizing existing houses within existing neighborhoods, not building new high density subdivisions. The IHT model better preserves the quality and character of life in Northeast Harbor.”
But IHT also has a partnership with MD 365 for a house on 5 Lookout Way which was sold in June for $275,000 to a local workforce family with affordability covenants and a 99-year lease on the land. IHT will manage the land lease, covenants, while Mount Desert 365 will retain ownership of the underlying land.
Converting existing homes as the only strategy is just not realistic today when even the smallest house in town is selling for more than half a million dollars, said Kathy Miller.
IHT’s major projects, such as the Ripples Hill Neighborhood in Somesville, were devloped with a bite off the infrastructure tab. Woods had to cleared, septic fields built, wells dug and habitats eliminated. The result was widely praised but it came at a cost to the environment. IHT is poised to start a bigger project on 30 acres off Rt. 3 in Bar Harbor.
The Northeast Harbor neighbors like the IHT model for a simple reason: It’s not in their backyard, say housing advocates.
Their contention that owners of houses and not the land beneath are less likely to feel full ownership is argumentative and worthy of debate. But is that enough to stop these projects?
Another Mount Desert brawl?
The specter of another big neighborhood row has some residents on edge.
This week’s meeting of the Economic Development Committee, which was held to discuss the housing challenges for year-round and summer workforces, soon devolved into members griping about the village’s Main Street project which was the subject of a similar citizens petition in 2018.
One participant told QSJ, “The whole business really ripped the town apart - lots of bad feelings on all sides. There is a vein of hostility and resentment that runs deep through this town, and this brought out the worst in everyone.”
It started out as an initiative to bury all the unsightly overhead wires and cables hanging over and down Main Street and to create a parklet at the south end of Main Street. The $4 million price tag received town meeting approval in May 2018.
But this town doesn’t wake up until Memorial Day. That’s when opponents to the project went to work to collect enough support to re-litigate the project in the summer of 2018 with more meetings.
In September 2018 the second meeting overrode the May decision and the Board of Selectmen voted in October to cut down the project by burying the wires only on one side of Main Street and to eliminate the parklet. The price tag though will still be slightly under $4 million, Town Manager Durlin Lunt said this week.
A maze of required easements - 35 in all - held up the project which is now behind schedule by 18 months, and is still in flux. Versant Power and the town do not agree on the legal implications of a remaining easement, reported Dick Broom in the Islander.
Mount Desert is a warren of tribal factions. The zoning battle between the homeowners of Hall Quarry and the company which wants to resume stone-cutting there is entering its eighth year in front of the Planning Board.
Even well intentioned and well heeled efforts such as MD 365 are made to grovel at the altar of self interest. MD 365 is largely funded by the billionaire Rales Brothers and summer residents. It acquired several buildings at the south end of Main Street with hope of turning second-floor apartments into workforce housing. It has two apartments in its headquarters on Firehouse Lane. It owns a house on Summit Road.
Mitchell Rales has expressed a strong desire to spend his money philanthropically, saying to the Washington Post in 2018, "When we go, there's not going to be money bestowed on children and grandchildren in any meaningful way. This is about reallocating the money we had the good fortune of making to other causes."
But how long will Mitchell Rales’s ilk continue to fund such projects?
It’s so much easier to choose low-impact giving, to Friends of Acadia, MDI Hospital and the various historical societies, instead of reaching into the briar patch of thorns which is Northeast Harbor.
No letup in covid surge on MDI, as cases head toward record high in November
SOMESVILLE - Everyone on the island seems to know of someone who contracted Covid-19. Six weeks ago Hospital CEO Chrissi Maquire took note of the first cases affecting children. “They are little petri dishes,” she said at the time.
The first week of November brought more worrisome data: 13 positive tests at MDI Hospital. There were 35 cases in each of October and September.
Eight of the nine schools in the MDI regional school system have reported positive covid tests.
Some residents who came down with Covid may have been tested outside of Hancock County bringing the total afflicted with the disease to more than 300 on MDI. The Maine CDC blurs the exact number in rural towns for reasons of privacy. It’s current data shows at least 313 MDI residents and potentially a high of 479 cases who have had Covid.
A record 248 patients were hospitalized in Maine with the virus on Friday, according to data from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, far surpassing the previous record of 235 set in late September. Seventy-two patients were in critical care beds while 31 were on ventilators. Forty-nine critical care beds were still available across the state.
His journey far from over, MDI’s chief scribe soldiers on despite incurable disease
SOMESVILLE - “I’m a very lucky guy,” Dick Broom intoned in a voice without a speck of self-pity, almost as if he were reprising the Lou Gehrig speech in Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939.
Broom is the dean of the MDI press corps, including all the reporters at the Islander, QSJ, stringers, freelancers and a radio reporter.
He is my true north for accurate news and information as an invested citizen on this isle of 55 square miles. He and his wife Sharon planted their stake here in 1999 after moving from their native North Carolina. They are UNC alums but discovered the beauty of MDI along their circuitous “long, strange trip” of life.
As I flip the pages of the Islander each week, grateful that the owners have not cut it down to a tabloid size to save newsprint cost, I hone in on his byline and am assured that the copy will be precise, economical and balanced. I almost never have to read Broom’s articles twice even on complicated zoning stories. It’s written with utter clarity.
Dick and I often find ourselves in the same municipal zoom meetings wrought by the pandemic. In a different time we would be classified as competitors.
But QSJ is much more of a red meat carnivore, raking the muck. Dick is much more of a chronicler, and scoop artist. I read his work and say, “Damn, why didn’t I know that?”
As the senior member of the press corps Broom has memorialized many important institutional events. Many of my articles such as the one in this post about the 2018 imbroglio in Northeast Harbor over its Main Street project relied on Dick’s invaluable historical accounts.
He is a consummate local news reporter, something he discovered accidentally. He was actually a public relations professional. He found no passion in that craft, no fire in the belly.
Then, 12 years ago, while vacationing in Maine, his wife came upon an opportunity as development officer for the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. Dick continued his freelance PR practice until he landed a job with the the Bar Harbor Times, whose office on Cottage Street always struck me as the quintessential local newspaper storefront.
They sold their condo in North Carolina and purchased a small house in Bar Harbor. “Six month later, we wouldn’t have been able to buy the house” because Bar Harbor prices sky-rocketed that year.
Along came the Islander and its first editor Earl Brechlin and we actually had a newspaper war on MDI. The prescient Brechlin saw the talent and hired Broom.
Sharon had taken on the role as a development officer for Friend of Acadia, the blue chip non profit on MDI where she flourished until she retired two years ago.
Around the same time, Dick began to feel “mild symptoms” of cramps and discomfort in his lower body.
In April 2020, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), for which there is no known cure.
He now manages mobility in a electrified wheelchair, having given up going into the newspaper office on Main Street when it became “dangerous” for him to drive and walk to his desk.
Jennifer Osborn, in a well crafted ode in the Islander, wrote about Dick’s two books, clawed out of a cache of fiction that Broom wrote years ago and put aside. This fall, Broom published them, a mystery titled “Death Once Removed” and a novel titled “The Gandhi Lodge.”
“You write something and you think it’s good,” Broom said. “I’ve heard from a number of people either indirectly or directly that they really liked ‘Death Once Removed.’
“The Gandhi Lodge – I don’t know whether people will like it or not,” Broom said. “Questions of right and wrong, good and bad. In what circumstances is it OK to do something wrong to get to that end?”
He mentioned that three characters in “The Gandhi Lodge” were inspired by Brechlin, Ann Rivers of the Acadia Wildlife Center and Douglas Allen, UMaine philosophy professor emeritus whom Broom profiled on a PR assignment before becoming a reporter on Mount Desert.
Broom treasures those memories as he goes about his daily task as a reporter. He continues to discover, ruminate and write.
As long as QSJ publishes, Dick Broom will be an important source. His body of work makes him immortal.
Another Campground seeks approval in Tremont
TREMONT - Look who’s back?
The Pointy Head Campground, which operated illegal lodgings without permits before it was shut down in 2020, has returned to the planning board to seek approval on its third try.
Avoiding the toxic “campground” moniker, Pointy Head is now “transient accommodations” - 15 units on 17.9 acres at 158 Harbor Drive in Bass Harbor. The development would also include two service buildings (restroom and shower facilities) with a new on-site septic system. Associated parking, buffers, utilities, and stormwater management are also part of the proposed development described in the application filed at the town office building on Oct. 28.
QSJ obtained a copy from an abutter who is likely to challenge the application, which was sent back in May by the planning board because it was incomplete. View the video of the May 11 meeting of the Planning Board has the Pointy Head item starting at 1 hour and 30 minutes into the meeting.
Since January 2020 , there have been three land use violations served to owner Madelon “Bunny” Brogdon, according to the Islander. The first notice of violation was issued to the property for four unpermitted structures, three cabins and a platform.
Brogdon is bound to have plenty of opposition from neighbors.
Last year, she arranged to have read into the public record an eight-page diatribe against neighbors and the planning board, some of whom say it just showed her disregard for civic behavior. She accused the planning board of attempting to “extort” money by enforcing town ordinances.
Alina Watt, senior project engineer for Ellworth-based Hedefine Engineering, wrote the new application has been prepared in adherence with the town ordinances. Was this an effort to lower the volume on the owner’s caustic remarks?
Watt listed all the remedies to cure the planning board’s concerns:
Utilization of the Site. The site can support the proposed development, with limited disturbance to the natural areas. Proposed accommodations will be located on a portion of the entire 17.9 acre lot.
Access into the Site. The existing access driveway into the site will be used for the proposed development. The existing driveway (which serves the residence and, in the past, a residential Inn and other businesses located on the property) crosses a Commercial Fishery and Maritime Activities (CFMA) zone at the front of the property. Due to this, in the past it was questioned whether the business use of the Residential-Business (R-B) zone of the site (the majority of this lot) may be accessed by this driveway and served as one reason for denial of a previous site review application for this development.
“Since that time, clarification from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MDEP) and Maine State Attorney General's (AG) office has been received stating that utilizing a preexisting roadway to access another portion of this site is an acceptable use and would not require additional permitting.”
Legal opinion sought to clarify Moratorium dates
TREMONT - What did voters approve exactly on Nov. 2?
Town Manager Jesse Dunbar is seeking an opinion from the town attorney after the Planning Board chairman this week seemed to confuse the dates of the campground moratorium approved by voters 428-215.
PB Chair Mark Good opined that the 180-day moratorium will end on May 1, and if extended another 180 days by the select board, on Oct. 28.
Good apparently missed this paragraph:
“This moratorium shall govern and apply to all proceedings and applications for campgrounds that were or are pending before the Town on or at anytime after August 2, 2021, and, as permitted by 30-A M .R.S.§ 3007(6), shall apply to and nullify(i) any lawful final approval, license or permit for a campground issued less than 45 days prior to the Effective Date.”
Proponents of the moratorium said it was retroactive to Aug. 2 and expires Feb. 2 and that’s why an extension is needed. Also, the Planning Board’s Nov. 1’s conditional approval of Acadia Wilderness Lodge has been nullified by the moratorium because it fell within the 45-day period before Nov. 2.
Good wants the board to conduct yet another public hearing on the matter to air proposed changes to the land use ordinance as dictated by voters. “That was a pretty significant margin in my mind,” Good said of the 428-215 vote. The 643 votes was an extraordinary turnout for an off-year election. The town has 1,244 registered voters.
Good’s failure to understand the dates is important because he was told by the attorney for AWL that its application had to be approved before the Nov. 2 vote for which Good went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate, including holding a six-hour meeting on Nov. 1 which lasted until 11:30 p.m.
Tribute: Michael John Blythe
1939-2021
SALSBURY COVE - Michael John Blythe, storyteller, golfer, world traveler, husband, and father left this mortal soil on 10 November 2021. Born on 2 December 1939, in Plymouth, England, Michael was a staunch believer in the power of ideas, and never shied away from telling you, his opinion.
In the course of his long and storied life, during the Blitz of Plymouth, he survived the bombing of the building in which he lived with his mother and grandmother, where they were buried under rubble for several days. He worked for years on the ocean; on oil rigs in the harsh environs of the North Sea and the waters of West Africa, South America, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Indian Ocean.
He fought in battles in the early days of the Vietnam War, taught Outward Bound in the moors of England, and was, for many years, a Texas oil man in the offshore oil industry. He was a force of nature, an avid reader, a lover of dogs (especially his beloved Toby), and a man of some mystery.
As with all of us, he was made of stardust, and now rejoins the stuff of mountains, air, land, and sea. He leaves behind his wife Tricia, son Carew, daughter Patience and son-in-law Cody, grandson River, and all of his stories that will live on in the memories of family and friends.
No services are planned at this time. If you want to celebrate Michael, please take a drive around MDI with your beloveds, learn about World War 2 history, or tell someone a good (and grandiose) story! We thank especially the staff of MDI Hospital for their loving care of Michael in his last days. We all thank you for your love of our family.
In lieu of flowers, please send donations in Michael’s name to the Ark Animal Shelter, P.O Box 276, Cherryfield, 04622, Acadia Senior College, P.O Box 475, Southwest Harbor, 04679 or MDI Hospital, 11 Wyman Lane, Bar Harbor, 04679.
Condolences may be expressed at www.jordanfernald.com