Why MDI town government efforts will not dent housing crisis; war-like mentality needed

Other news: Sustainability coordinator out in Bar Harbor ; SWH code officer to retire; MRC head: 'we have 3 to 6 months'

BAR HARBOR, Feb. 11, 2023 - This town was the first on MDI to license short-term vacation rentals, and the neighboring towns of Mount Desert and Tremont have hired a land-use consultant to investigate a similar strategy.

But the licensing process here has turned into such a bureaucratic quagmire that the code enforcement officer is seeking new funding - $43,000 - to hire an outside consultant to help monitor compliance.

The effort to license vacation rentals was lauded when it was first proposed in 2019. It was seen as a logical step to stem the growth of Airbnb and VRBO units. Voters approved an ordinance in November 2021 to cap non owner-occupied vacation rentals at 9 percent of the town’s housing stock.

But it had unintended consequences. Investors rushed to beat the deadline and doubled the number of such units in 2021 from the low teens to about 25 percent of the housing stock where it sits today - about 700 licensed units.

Meanwhile, the town has simply added a layer of cost for which the benefit is dubious. Bar Harbor is decades away, if at all, from cutting its “VR2” short-term vacation rentals to below 10 percent.

Meanwhile the housing crisis is only getting worse.

This week, Acadia National Park Superintendent Kevin Schneider repeated his lament to his citizens advisory committee as he did a year ago that he cannot find enough seasonal workers. “I’m sure this is going to be another challenging year for that,” he said. “Last year we wanted to hire 150 to 165 summer seasonal employees. We had about 116, so we were shorthanded.”

Schneider has no solution in sight, as the park enters its third year of falling short by a third of the needed seasonal workers

The Islander’s Dick Broom reported Schneider saying, “We can have great people applying for our seasonal positions, but we need to be able to offer them housing, unless they have a place to live here locally, which is the exception.”

“We have about 90 beds parkwide for the 165 summer seasonal employees we want to hire. We are working to try to add some beds, renovating a few housing units to put a bedroom in a basement or a sunroom, for example. We are also working with Friends of Acadia to see if we can create some additional housing capacity.

“One reason is that our seasonal salaries are now comparable to or even below many of the frontline positions in our communities. So, when we think about competing against other local entities or local businesses for hiring, we are facing some pretty significant headwinds because our pay isn’t necessarily any higher.”

Schneider said an “entry level, frontline position” in the community now pays about $18 an hour. A seasonal custodial position in one of the park’s campgrounds pays between $17 and $19 an hour.

Do Tremont and Mount Desert want to copy Bar Harbor’s playbook and burden themselves with a cost center to license vacation rentals with no immediate impact on solving the problem at hand?

Consultant Noel Musson has said the licensing is the first step to gather important data to inform policy. (That’s what Bar Harbor thought as well.)

That’s fine as long as the problem was a slow burn. But now it’s a full blown crisis. You’re Ukraine, and the Russians are inside your borders. There is no time for incrementalism.

The so-called Land-Use Ordinance Advisory Committee is putting the finishing touches on a set of recommendations to the select board which will take years, if ever, to have an impact.

Meanwhile, towns are not attacking the true problems:

• Extreme shortage of dormitory-style housing for seasonal workers, resulting in the tourism industry balkanizing the year-round housing stock for that singular use.

• The velocity of change to the housing stock wrought by online players such as airbnb and VRBO.

Huge swaths of neighborhoods have turned off their lights during the winter.

“From 2017 – 2021 the total number of available short-term rental listings have notably increased,” wrote RKG Associates in its December housing analysis for the town. “Furthermore, over this same period, the start of the season has begun earlier and earlier with the season beginning in May of 2017 to late March to early April in 2021.

“From 2015 to 2019 short-term rental listings have increased in Bar Harbor peaking in 2019. Listings in 2020 exceeded all other previous years with the exception of 2019. As of the data pulled for this figure in 2021, 2021 short-term rental listings are on track to meet the same level availability that occurred in 2019.”

Musson wants data? Here is the RKG analysis: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UbpT4ODPy8Z22JTqA_aLgAQ_RpcumvIb/view?usp=sharing

His incremental approach would have voters in Mount Desert approve licensing vacation rentals at town meeting May 2. If approved it would take many months to develop a workable licensing process - all at a cost. Then who is going to analyze the data and make recommendations?

A consultant no doubt.

Meanwhile the house is on fire.

RKG said Bar Harbor needs 600 new housing units by 2028, according to the state’s projection of growth. That’s probably a good proxy for the needs of the other MDI towns and the islands.

To be fair, Bar Harbor Bar Harbor is leading the way in relaxing zoning requirements to allow businesses to construct seasonal dormitories instead of gobbling up year-round housing stock around town.

One such building by Witham Hotels will replace an existing, unused building at the corner Kebo and Mount Desert streets with a three-story dormitory called a “shared accommodation” which does not require minimum area per family of 5,000 square feet.

OLD, EXISTING BUILDING

PROPOSED NEW DORMITORY (SHARED ACCOMMODATION)

David C. Witham, owner of Witham Family Limited Partnership, said he initiated the zoning changes with the Bar Harbor Planning Board during a 2016 workshop to address housing issues.

“Our company and others in the business community were coming under scrutiny for the housing we were acquiring and the adverse impact it was having on the character of these neighborhoods,” Witham wrote in an email to the Islander. “I made a conscious decision to try to get out of these neighborhoods and return this housing stock back into year-round housing for folks.”

By loosening the regulations in eight zoning districts to allow for dormitory style housing, it brought down the cost and footprint required for apartment builds.

Town Planner Michelle Gagnon said the shared accommodation (SA) regulations removed the burdensome dimensional requirements that discourage high-density housing from being built. Because occupants are not traditional families, property owners do not have to comply with minimum area per family that often requires at least 5,000 square feet per unit. And since many of the workers do not have cars, according to Gagnon, parking standards are drastically reduced.

“So what it does is it lowers the cost of entry into this type of unit making it somewhat financially feasible,” she said.

She said unlike employee living quarters — an amendment also passed in June 2020 — that need to be built on the same development as the accompanying business, shared accommodations can house employees from multiple businesses on an unrelated property.

Since the SA use was enacted, Gagnon said a single SA level-one structure has been created, which allows three to eight people per building. The Kebo Street project is the first level-three SA in town and allows for 33 or more people per structure.

Witham said his goal with the project is “getting seasonal employees into this type of housing and getting them out of some of the neighborhoods they’re in now and returning those homes back to year-round homes.”

Many of the efforts have been met by stiff, local opposition.

Those with self-interest are the first to protect the status quo. Tremont select member Kevin Buck, who declared he owned two seasonal vacation rentals, cautioned the town to go slowly on tackling the housing challenge.

In Northeast Harbor, a proposal to build six housing units in the village ignited serious opposition by 205 mostly summer residents in a petition to the Planning Board. Since then another petition has been signed by 238 supporters.

MDI365, the private non profit which seeks to build workforce housing in Mount Desert, has hosted three meetings at its offices in Northeast Harbor for the island’s major stakeholders to hold a “housing summit.” The leaders are Musson and Marla O’Byrne, director of Island Housing Trust, another non-profit with the stated mission to “promote viable, year-round island communities by advancing permanent workforce housing on Mount Desert Island, Maine.”

In 34 years, it has developed 37 units, according to its website.

MDI needs a Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Europe after World War II under Secretary of State George G. Marshall. Is there an individual with the gravitas to muscle though the conflicting and tribal interests to rebuild the island so park workers, nurses, cops, EMTs, teachers and even doctors can be part of the community?

Is there a Modern Day George Dorr?

Personal Moves on MDI: Sustainability coordinator out in Bar Harbor, SWH code officer to retire

BAR HARBOR - BAR HARBOR – Laura Berry, the town’s new sustainability coordinator hired by former town manager Kevin Sutherland last September, has followed her previous boss out the door of the town office building, according to a person who answered the phone Friday.

It could not be determined whether her departure was related to the extreme fiscal challenges in putting together the FY24 town budget.

She was one of two “coordinators” Sutherland hired.

Maya Caines filled the role of communications coordinator.

Both the communications and sustainability coordinator were new positions created to better engage the public and manage up-and-coming projects, Sutherland said at the time.

”Last January when I put the budget together, I said it’d be beneficial for us to get a communications coordinator and push for the sustainability coordinator,” said Sutherland. “I really do care about making sure that what we’re doing is well-articulated to the community, so having somebody help us do that is paramount.”

Sutherland resigned Jan. 25 after only 13 months as town manager.

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In Southwest Harbor, the select board is adding a position to the code enforcement office to train a successor to John Larson, who announced he expects to retire at the end of 2024. SWH shares the code officer with Tremont.

MRC President: ‘We have 3 to 6 months’

MOUNT DESERT - The president of the Municipal Review Committee this week gave her most somber report on the status of the agency which manages solid waste disposal for 115 towns in Maine, including all four towns on MDI.

“We're really before you today because we're at a critical juncture,” said Karen Fussell at Tuesday’s “town hall” meeting.

“As many of you are aware, the exclusive arrangement with the private equity firm Revere Capital Advisors ended January 31. And we have no follow-on agreement with them.

“Revere indicates that it's still interested. But given MRC’s increasingly limited financial capacity, we really could not wait any longer to find out whether Revere is capable of crossing the finish line with its financing.

“The reality of our situation is that we need to resolve this within the next three to six months or we will all need to accept the fact that the facility will not process waste.

“The consequences of the facility not reopening are stark, and we'll get back to that point later in the meeting. But at first I'm going to let Mike give a brief update on where we are and the steps that we're taking to solicit new proposals for the plant to avoid that very undesirable outcome.”

MRC Director Michael Carroll then stated that the MRC for the first time was “open to other ideas and changes for recycling and processing at the facility but will require proposals to adhere to permit requirements.

“A lot has changed in waste technology over the last two and half years, and we are open to reviewing all proposals at this time. Unlike the previous solicitation, MRC is not making it a requirement we would only accept proposals if the facility restarts and operates as designed.

“We still believe in the facility and its technology, and that is our preferred method in this solicitation, but we are also willing to reviewing other options and avenues. High diversion rates will all be at the MRC forefront when reviewing alternatives.”

Carroll offered no specific examples such as whether the MRC would abandon its “single-sort” strategy.

Portland leads the nation with the lowest generation of trash per resident annually at 265 pounds with its “pay as you throw” program in which households pay per bag of trash.

Critics have said the single sort technology which promises all trash in one bag would be sorted out at the plant doesn’t work and is antithetical to lowering trash production at the source.

The Southwest Harbor select board, however, is doubling down on the MRC and moving in the opposite direction of its warrant committee and solid waste task force.

At its meeting Jan. 23, member George Jellison proposed to eliminate the town’s recycling program, saying it was too expensive and unnecessary once the MRC plant comes back online even though the Hampden facility has been closed for almost three years.

At its meeting Tuesday, Warrant Committee member Alan Rosenquist, who was on the recycling task force, said, “We referred to that (MRC) on the recycling task force as Lucy and the football. And it's like the checks in the mail. It means nothing. And I remember sitting in on part of that Select Board meeting, where one selectmen whom you could probably figure out, say, ‘well, I can't see spending any money on this when they're going to open the Hampden facility.’ And that's when I decided I didn't want to be on any reconstituted recycling task force. Because it ain't going nowhere.”

“There's a lot of people in this town who are really interested in recycling,” he said. “The request for next year is $14,000 instead of $33,000. It's a reduction. But what are we getting for it?

“I have no idea what happened to our report that went to the Select Board. And I don't know what this budget means? What are we doing? What are we spending? What is recycling status now? If we had the minutes of the Select Board, it would be very useful but we don't have those minutes.

The cost of recycling has tripled to more than $30,000 since the town, like others, was given an exemption to start its own recycling during the closing period. Jellison proposed to stop the recycling and merge the material back into the “single sort” operation managed by EMR Corp., owned by town resident Ben Worcester.

COA hits record in annual fund-raising effort

BAR HARBOR - No one doubts College of the Atlantic President Darron Collins’s ability to raise money.

He announced COA raised a record $233,000 in its annual 24-hour drive on Feb. 6.

“Our community truly stepped up, contributing hundreds of gifts over the course of the day. With your help, we exceeded our goal of $100,000 to unlock an additional $100,000 in matching gifts!”

“In addition to the funds raised, hearing from so many friends, alumnx, and parents made the whole day feel like a true community celebration of COA.”

Missed it, but still want to make a gift? Donate here.

“Thank you to everyone who participated to make this year’s 24-Hour Challenge a huge success! Be sure to save the date for next year’s challenge on February 6, 2024.”

Now let’s hope COA spends some of that money to ensure its adjunct staff can earn a living wage.