Will citizens petition stir demand for smaller cruise ships and reshape Bar Harbor?
Other news: New BH town manager in a hurry to rid past sins of neglect, but at what cost? Cooke CEO says land-based fish farms not viable; SWH select member resigns
This update replaces a previous version after readers called out some missteps.
BAR HARBOR, March 19, 2022 - The shock waves from the citizens petition to cap cruise ship visits to 1,000 passengers a day are already being felt.
Even the most ardent critic of sea-born tourism on the town council stated he wished there to be a softer landing in the fight to curb sea-born tourists.
“The petition effectively eliminates cruise ships, since very few are 1,000 passengers or less,” said Gary Friedmann. “I do not agree that this precipitous severance is best for town taxpayers or businesses. A more gradual, nuanced approach serves all parties better. And this petition could lead to the impression that all we need to do is kill cruise ship visitation and our problems will be solved.”
Is that true? Or are council members so calcified in their thinking, and so intimidated by the cruise ship industry’s legal threats that they have sought safety in a corner of their own making?
“Gary is entitled to his opinion but is factually just wrong,” petition sponsor Charles Sidman responded: “Of note, in the attached (internet-derived) list of ships currently planning to visit Bar Harbor over the next several years, the following would still be allowed with the cap at 1,000/day:
Star Pride, 312 pax
Silver Shadow, 466 pax
Silver Whiper, 466 pax
Seabourn Quest, 540 pax
Seven Seas Navigator, 557 pax
Seven Seas Mariner, 779 pax
Oceana Insignia, 803 pax
Viking Star, 930 pax
“So, we’re only getting rid of the biggies (and 930 pax is still a honking large boat!), to welcome the smaller, generally wealthier-passengered ‘boutique’ ships that might contribute to, rather than destroying life for BH taxpayers, many businesses and most visitors.”
Under Sidman’s vision, the town becomes a prized destination for smaller cruise ships filled with consumers eager to spend money and to dine, instead of the cattle call of trinket hoarders who prefer the buffet back at the ship and whose total spend while onshore is about $50 (maybe $60 if they eat a lobster roll at Geddy’s).
Such destinations exist - Barcelona, Corfu, Cuba, Croatia. More of those and fewer of the Miami and Key West flesh markets are called for here.
The citizens petition filed Wednesday is less of a punitive action against the cruise ship industry and more of an opportunity for the town to re-size, said Sidman. His petition may actually create a new market to attract ships commensurate with the scale and culture of Bar Harbor’s village, and its history as a summer destination for wealthy rusticators.
Plus, there will be plenty of land-based tourists to sate the bottomless avarice of the trinket shops owners, as proven last year when there was little cruise ship activity but a record visitation.
The cruise ship season here is about six months. What if in those 180 days the cap is achieved, with not an insubstantial number of 180,000 passengers? What if that cohort spends more money, a lot more money?
Could it be possible that a controlled supply actually induces demand from a different customer segment? Charlie Sidman invests in startups and has a keen sense for business economics. This is not his first rodeo.
Sidman’s view is shared by nearly 1,000 residents who a year ago responded to a townwide survey which concluded that large cruise ships give the town a black eye, not to mention a sundry of other particulars which lowered their quality of life.
The town council’s response under a new town manager? Head for the bomb shelters! Let’s not get sued by the cruise ship industry! The council hired a maritime lawyer as the new, inexperienced town manager hurried to make this not his problem. It then went into a secret meeting without public input and emerged with its capitulation to the industry: feel free to pillage and ransack our town in 2022 and we’ll see about 2023.
Sidman, however, hired a land-use expert, Mark Bower in Portland, who drafted the brilliant petition taking it out of the reach of maritime law. Other lawyers, including former town attorney Ed Bearor, also supported amending local ordinances to achieve a cap on passengers.
The idea is simple: Any property owner seeking to allow passengers to disembark must obtain a permit. The harbor master is tasked with allowing no more than 1,000 passengers a day.
Unless the cruise ship industry comes back with a negotiated position acceptable to the petitioners, voters are likely to pass it overwhelmingly in November.
That will likely trigger legal action, to which Sidman and other signatories of the petition have said, “Bring it on!”
Except the Town of Bar Harbor will be the defendant. How then will the timorous town council respond? Who will it hire to represent the town? Another maritime lawyer? And what, if any, is the role of the petitioners?
Finally, what’s the point of that council subcommittee named to negotiate with the industry?
“With a single exception, all respondents who have written to me already regret not banning cruise ships entirely, and only one expressed the view that the 1,000 disembarkation cap is too low,” Sidman stated. “We’ll see how the citizens vote, no matter what Gary and the apologists/gradualists on the Council say.”
The atrophy on the town council is a huge sea anchor. It’s time for change. Charlie Sidman is seeing to that, whether intentionally or not.
Sidman’s petition is casting a bright light on two long-time council members whose sell-by date have long expired - cruise ship supporters Jeff Dobbs and Matt Hochman\. They face re-election in June. Will voters take away their toy gavel, assuming anyone challenges them?
The Planning Board is an example of how fresh blood can remake an important town board. Since the addition of Elissa Chesler, Ruth Eveland and Earl Brechlin, the Planning Board has become the most progressive body on MDI. Even libertarians Tom St. Germain and Joe Cough have become productive members of a discourse with the single purpose of improving the quality of life for Bar Harbor citizens.
Its workshop on Wednesday to discuss ways to tackle affordable housing was spirited, respectful, productive and full of energy. It was the best board meeting I have witnessed since I began writing this blog two years ago. No other town on MDI is taking on this challenge with the commitment of Bar Harbor and its tenacious and outspoken planning director Michele Gagnon.
Most MDI boards are reactionary and transactional. Rarely do they use their time to solve intractable problems like affordable housing.
FOOTNOTE: The petition filed by citizens on Wednesday to restrict cruise ship visitors was amended to strike the word “passenger” and changed to “persons” to take into account crew members who can sometimes double the number of people coming off ships.
It now reads:
“As determined by the Harbor Master, no more than 1,000 persons, in the aggregate, may disembark on a single calendar day from any cruise ship(s) and come to shore on, over, or across any property located within the Town of Bar Harbor …”
Week of reckoning: unpaid bills from neglect of sewers, school, waste disposal
BAR HARBOR - It was a thunderous week of IOUs for the town, a reckoning for its municipal “leaders.” The invoice for decades of deferred responsibilities and negligence came due.
The town council voted Tuesday to place a bond request on the November town meeting ballot for sewer upgrades. Price tag? $44 million. Cause? decades of ignoring sewer overflows that poured into Frenchman Bay by previous town councils and administrators. See my earlier article here https://theqsjournal.substack.com/p/bh-taxpayers-facing-80-million-in?s=w.
The town council jousted with the school board chair on repair cost for the Conners Emerson School, which is falling apart. Issue? $150,000 to ensure a ceiling doesn’t fall on students. Price tag for a new school? $40 million.
The town council listened ad nauseum as Public Works director Bethany Leavitt recounted the painful details of how the regional waste disposal plant in Hampden failed (She readily admitted that she had never set foot in the plant.) Price tag? Two years of damage to Mother Earth. (In high season, Bar Harbor generates as much trash as Bangor).
Now the Municipal Review Committee, the politburo which owns the land on which the plant sits, wants its members to support the MRC’s taking over the failed plant from creditors. “We’re between a rock and a hard place,” Gary Friedmann said.
Again, reactionary and transactional. One way to combat the problem is to reduce less trash. See this video about how a Japanese town achieved zero waste.
The MRC contract actually forbids member municipalities from creating alternative solutions such as composting. The way around that is to create a third-party company or nonprofit. Wouldn’t that be a worthwhile MDI collaboration?
Making those responsible pay for the cost
Take a page from the state of Maine which became the first to make producers of packages we throw away pay for recycling.
Make the lodging industry pay for creating the volume of trash in the summer, and to help pay to fix the failed sewer system.
Only Friedmann asked hard questions of the sticker shock of the $44 million price tag for the sewer project.
Member Matt Hochman said previous Town Manager Cornell Knight had warned of a total $100 million deferred capital call for the town. So why didn’t he do anything about it?
Some towns have a tiered system for sewer and water fees which generally give a discount to high volume users.
Bar Harbor should consider the opposite. Create a tiered system to charge high-volume users such as the lodging industry a premium. After all, they were the ones who contributed the most to the problem of untreated overflows into Frenchman Bay.
All users will no doubt see some rate increase as a result of the massive project to bring Bar Harbor into compliance with the Clean Water Act.
Finance Director Sarah Gilbert is hoping for some federal grants to off set the “shocking” price tag of repairing the town’s combined sewer and water system and to make some other upgrades.
But she is still assuming the lion’s share will be paid from borrowed money. A 20-year bond for $20 million will cost about $2 million, she said. She is trying to meet a March 31 deadline to apply for funding as earmark spending though Sen. Angus King’s office. Town Manager Kevin Sutherland was in Washington last week with his tin cup in the hallways of the Capitol. Last year, $136 million went to the state and municipalities in Maine through the program.
Thirty four towns in Maine are in a program enforced by the Department of Environmental Protection to come in to compliance.
Bangor is looking to spend $68 million to reduce the sewage flowing in to the Penobscot River during heavy rains. The first project, a water storage tank to hold the excess water temporarily, is slated to complete in June, said city engineer John Theriault.
Bangor received $2 million in federal grants and $1 million in loan forgiveness. The first part of the project to construct three storage tanks and connect them to the sewer plant is budget at $37 million, he said.
The state uses a formula which says sewer rates should be about 2 percent of a municipality’s median household income. Bar Harbor is at 1.18 percent.
Bethany Leavitt did not return my call for more details, nor did Town Manager Kevin Sutherland.
Dan Norwood resigns as Southwest Harbor select member
SOUTHWEST HARBOR - Dan Norwood submitted his resignation from the select board this week for “personal reasons,” said Town manager Marilyn Lowell.
That will require a special nomination and town meeting vote to replace him, or wait until the November election, Lowell said.
Five residents have submitted papers for the townwide election in May for the select board - Mike Sawyer, Snap Willey (incumbent), Jim Vallette (warrant committee vice chair), Natasha Johnson and Michael Magnani.
Cooke CEO: Land-based fish farms long way off from making money
SOMESVILLE - The CEO of the only in-water fin fish farm permitted in Maine told an industry conference last week that land-based fish farms will take a long time to be profitable and will never replace sea-born farms.
"Even if land-based became a reality we’re still going to need farming at sea," said Glenn Cooke, CEO of Cooke Aquaculture and the Cooke Inc. family of companies, at the IntraFish Seafood Leadership Breakfast in Boston Monday.
"If you look at profitability, no one is making money," he said of current land-based projects. According to Intrafish newsletter, Cooke added that in addition to the lack of profitability, land-based projects "put a lot of money into the ground," and cost millions of dollars in infrastructure.
The idea that the industry is ready to move completely from netpen to land-based farming touted by some governments and environmental NGOs is "insane,"according to Cooke, Intrafish reported.
None of four permitted land-based farms Maine have broken ground - Kingfish in Jonesport, Nordic Aquafarm in Belfast, Whole Oceans in Bucksport and a small operation in Millinocket.
Intrafish reported that Cooke scolded the industry for pitting "nasty farmers at sea" against land-based operators. "Shame on you to do that."
The CEO said in the next three years the seafood industry could see increasing challenges as it "loses the narrative with environmental groups."
In recent years, Cooke as a company has been the focus of environmental and animal rights advocacy groups that have included the Patagonia clothing brand backed-Wild Fish Conservancy and Animal Outlook.
"We have to be careful as a global seafood industry," he said. "If we don’t grab that narrative and control the agenda, it’s really going to harm our growth as an industry."
American Aquafarms is applying for permits to operate net pens for salmon fishing on 120 acres in Frenchman Bay.
Not from Bar Harbor, or Maine, but I've visited MDI since the late 60s, for around 30 to 35 years overall during that period. One to three weeks each year. From camping at Blackwoods and Seawall to an island idyll to rented cabins & cottages to motels & the Bar Harbor Inn. I've had lunch at the old Jordan Pond House.
Our last visit (2017) to BH Inn (and Bar Harbor) included a week long suite rental during which we watched orange cruise ship tenders crawl back & forth like "people movers" through a Disney parking lot ... from our charming, pricey deck overlook. And struggled to get in and out of the parking lot against massed busloads of cruise ship passengers. And wanted desperately out of town for the bulk of humanity cramming the sidewalks. And kept looking for the Herreshoff 12 1/2 we'd seen sailing around the Porcupines on previous years. It felt what we loved, what we came for, what we were passionate about year after year, had no particular value to the city officers.
I cringed a bit at the "odious trinket hoarders" phrasing, too. But I've done European cruises ... and there's definitely an element of "been there, done that" to that style of travel. Running through Venice in 6 hours gave me the street cred to say I've been there, but little else. I am totally delighted that they're banning big cruise ships from that city. It's the right thing to do, & if I'm passionate about visiting again I'll find a way to stay for a while & support the locals.
Big cruise ships want passengers onboard. They want access to your wallet after the fact of your initial payment. Port stops are an unhappy requirement for their business. They certainly have no feeling for the ports they stop at, other than in consideration of name recognition & potential passenger draw.
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Is there an easy way out of this? I doubt it. We are, indeed, loving ANP/MDI & Bar Harbor to death, by car and then, in multiples of thousands, by cruise ship. But I think that banning mega cruise ships is a start. Anything that gnaws away at the edges of the pristine and elemental beauty of MDI, at this point, will only diminish it, particularly if it's all take and no give. Disembarking 3000 or more passengers daily definitely gnaws, and gives very little in return. I could be content with a car/visitor limitation if it meant that BH would just be crowded instead of inundated.
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My car & family took, also. But we ate each day, supporting grocery stores initially, & then Havana, Galyns, Two Cats, the Thirsty Whale, Asticou Inn, the Seafood Ketch and island restaurants & stores that no longer exist. We've purchased pottery, visual artwork, & craft work from various local artists. Sherman's is a family favorite bookstore. We've also bought ice cream, the odd tee-shirt, wine, band aids and camping equipment. Hannaford's is our favorite grocery store. Just ahead of the Pine Tree Market.
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Perhaps there is no official edict limiting entry to the island to 1000 cars a day. It doesn't much matter in the current situation. The last time we visited Maine (2021) we stayed well north of MDI, which is pretty much where we see what future we have in Maine.
“[W]ealthier-passengered ‘boutique’ ships” versus “odious trinket hoarders”? Sounds pretty elitist. Why is it so terrible that Main Street in Bar Harbor is crowded for a few hours during the season? It’s not like the cruse ship passengers are driving around, creating congestion all over the island or taking up parking. Why not limit entry to the island to 1000 cars a day?