SPECIAL REPORT: Bar Harbor's false cruise ship narrative step by fact-free step ...

BAR HARBOR, Aug. 13, 2024 - Planning Board Chairman Millard Dority argued last week after 12 citizens spoke in opposition to the Town Council’s proposed repeal of the cruise ship visitation cap that the council had as much political skin in the game as the electorate.

“It does feel to me like there is a mistrust in the community with the council which have been just voted on … obviously a majority of people voted for the people to come on the council.”

Just like his previous statements, it contained a kernel of truth. Yes, the seven members of the council did get elected - but not all by a majority and not in the same year. Councilors only have to get the most votes for the vacant seats in staggered terms.

In June, Joe Minutolo and Gary Friedmann were-elected, but neither by a majority. They were the top voter-getters for two vacant seats out of a field of six. The entire council did not get “just voted on” as Dority stated. And by the way, Minutolo and Friedmann also voted against a similar council plan to sign contracts with individual cruise lines to reduce passenger visitation which was superseded by the citizens vote Nov. 8, 2022, which Council Chair Val Peacock now wants to throw out.

This all may sound like hair splitting but Dority was trying to make an important point - that the council had a public mandate equal that of voters.

When Peacock and three others won seats in 2023, voters didn’t know that a federal judge would strike a blow for the town’s right for “home rule” which set the stage for a new battle front against cruise ships. Peacock didn’t know at the time either.

She was the lowest vote-getter of four who won council seats in 2023. To suggest that she and others from that class had a public mandate to launch her current campaign is either deliberate obfuscation or plain false.

I reported Sunday that Dority also erroneously answered in the affirmative to board member Teresa Wagner’s question on whether the town was now fully enforcing the cruise ship cap as articulated in the LUO.

Dority isn’t the only one who is fact-challenged. Even Earl Brechlin, considered a moderate councilor, called the 1,000-passenger cap a “ban” on cruise ships last week - a sound bite right out of APPLL’s playbook.

So how does he explain that the town has published the 2025 schedule on its website showing 24 ships with fewer than 1,000 passengers in September and October? How is that a “ban?” And a full year remains to book more ships.

These are the numerous ways the council and Planning Board - either out of ignorance or with full intention - skew the information shared with the public as they campaign for their cruise ship management plan.

When citizen Charles Sidman tried to correct Dority’s mistake, the PB chair refused to allow him to speak.

The two men have a long history.

In June 2019 Sidman used a similar amendment to the Land Use Ordinance to block cruise ships with more than 500 passengers from being allowed to tie up to town piers. That citizens initiative was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 493 to 384.

But Sidman discovered and later disclosed efforts by Dority, who used his College of the Atlantic email privilege to urge the COA community to reject the initiative days before the referendum.

Dority then was COA’s director of campus planning, buildings and public safety.

Sidman, who called himself a friend and supporter of COA for 40 years, wrote an email to COA President Darron Collins on June 10, 2019 expressing shock that COA would side with the cruise ship industry and campaign against his initiative.

“This email clearly aligns COA with the wealthy, privileged and powerful who reject any constraint whatsoever on their freedom of action (they feel they should be able to do whatever they want, when they want, regardless of others’ interests),” Sidman wrote. “The Citizens’ Initiative concerns a matter of deep social and environmental significance, that should in fact have COA’s support rather than covert opposition.

“This last minute directive and plea from a senior leader (Dority) flies in the face of COA’s admirable tradition of open community discussion and consensus decision-making. You are better than this.

“In summary, I hope and trust that COA’s students, faculty and staff are wise enough to reject a slanted and inappropriate political urging and make up their own minds on how to vote.  Nevertheless, an open recognition and remediation of this unfortunate communication, that violates so much of COA’s true self interest and what it stands for, would be appropriate and expected.”

Collins replied in an email:

“As Campus Planning and Building Committee chairman, Millard was concerned about Initiative #5 because, if approved, our pier would become non-conforming. Even with grandfathering, changes to our structure, like adding a float to serve student and faculty research in Frenchman Bay, would exacerbate the non-conforming status and therefore be disallowed. 

“I personally (and the college, institutionally) will continue to work with the Town Council to ensure no berthing pier is ever built to our north (or south, east, west., for that matter). The Council is currently developing language to eliminate the possibility of such a berthing pier. I will continue to be vocal about the issue because such a pier would have a negative impact on our ability to operate effectively. For the same reason, we also have standing on Initiative #5.

“I have spoken to Millard about this--he understands your concern. I think we've gotten things all squared away.”

Sidman rejected Collins’s position:

“The email in question adopts and reiterates the Town Council and Town Manager’s repeated, inaccurate and distorted representations of fact.  Specifically, non-conforming structures can continue to be used, repaired, modified, etc.; per the LUO, they just cannot be changed in a way that exacerbates their non-conformity.  Second, the administrator (Dority) writes that the amendment "is poorly developed, not well thought through…”; in fact, it was prepared through extensive community discussions, and the involvement and supervision of two (one primary, one cross-checking) local law firms with substantial local government expertise.

Other than Dority, there was the unvarnished support last week from Ruth Eveland, vice chair of the Planning Board, for the repeal of the citizens November 2022 land-use ordinance to limit cruise ship visitation.

Three years ago, after Eveland was just named to the Planning Board, her first action was to join the board’s 5-0 vote to approve Ocean Properties’ long contested application to expand employee housing at Acadia Apartments on West Street Extension.

At no time did Eveland declare that while director of the Jesup Library, she successfully, along with others, landed a $500,000 donation from the Walsh family which owns Ocean Properties. It was the largest single gift in the library’s 2020 Next Chapter campaign. In 2013, the Walsh family donated $100,000 for architectural designs to kick start the campaign.

The QSJ asked Eveland whether she had a conflict of interest.

Eveland replied by email but did not answer the question. The library is “supported widely by many members of the community.  I am participating in a few active solicitations, but am not now involved in seeking funds from Ocean Properties,” she wrote. She resigned as director in 2021.

QSJ is also an occasional donor to the library but certainly not in the amount equal to the Walshes. And QSJ does not operate a business which requires approval from the planning board.

”I was unaware at the time of the 8-4-21 PB hearing that Ms. Eveland was helping to raise money for the Jesup's capital campaign to which the owners of Ocean Properties had been and might continue to be major donors,” said the late attorney Arthur Greif who represented a neighbor opposing the expansion. 

“Bar Harbor's ethics ordinance stresses the need for full disclosure by any board or committee member of potential conflicts of interest. A board member has far better knowledge of such potential conflicts than does any member of the public or a party appearing before that board.  I regret that Ms. Eveland did not raise this issue for her fellow Planning Board members to consider,” Greif stated

Ironically, at the same meeting, Eveland, who was chair of the Town Council when large cruise ships began to visit Bar Harbor, boasted about her work on an ethics policy for the town.

In June 2012, Bill Trotter, the eminent reporter for the Bangor Daily News, wrote about the wholesale eviction of the families in the 16 apartments which were acquired by Ocean Properties to house employees. Trotter quoted one ousted tenant as saying, “I think it’s cruel. Why not fix the place up and let low-income people live here? These are nice people and working people. It breaks my heart. I feel sorry for them.”

FOOTNOTE: Eben Salvatore is a member of the town’s warrant committee. He is also the manager of Ocean Properties’s cruise ship business. He is also the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against the town’s passenger visitation limits in its land-use ordinance. The Warrant Committee has voted that Salvatore does not have a conflict of interest and therefore may participate in the town government’s decision-making process on cruise ship management practices.

Eben Salvatore, left, sharing a table with Town Manager James Smith as they watched the live streaming of the Planning Board hearing last week on the proposal to repeal the citizens ordinance to limit cruise ship passengers.