Worst coastal destruction since 1978? Wouldn't know it from council, select board agendas

Other news: Will council bail out Planning Board's ineptitude?

BAR HARBOR, Jan 15, 2024 - The true test of a community is when its members need help.

In an unusual confluence of schedules, every MDI select board and the Town Council here - the highest municipal authorities - have meetings slated for Tuesday.

Yet not a single agenda addresses the most pressing issue facing each town - the worst destruction on the island since 1978 - with total loss to private and public properties likely to exceed that of the 1947 fire.

They range from the loss of wharfs and docks in every harbor to some spectacular damage or loss of private property such as the exclusionary swim club in Northeast Harbor to a house washed into the sea in Tremont.

The new town manager in Bar Harbor has held only three town council meetings since mid November, when he started. The first meeting in January was canceled because the chair could not attend and vice chair Gary Friedmann decided there were no pressing issues which required a meeting, according to two council members who were not consulted.

Meanwhile citizens on social media are sharing much needed information and asking questions like whether the cruise ship fund could be used to help with the restoration of Shore Path, which some estimate will exceed $500,000.

The $155,000 salaried new town manager with his 32 percent raise over the previous town manager negotiated a pass from the requirement to live in town and instead commutes from Brewer, which has none of the extensive waterfront infrastructure and development as in Bar Harbor.

Apart from cursory messages on each of the towns’ websites about the closure of harbor facilities, MDI residents got mostly silence from their elected officials.

Councilor Matt Hochman was on Facebook giving advice and answering questions to posts such as:

“Our Gov. has declared a state of emergency which is the first step, if I follow it all correctly, in getting some Federal money. While the damage in BH is great, there is damage to homes and livelihoods from York County to the border. I have a friend whose husband is a lobsterman and the Wednesday storm took out his wharf. To replace it will run at least $30K. That is just one example of the impact of one storm and we had back to back storms creating a lot of damage.

Perhaps some locally elected persons will speak up during their public commenting session Tuesday. But now, all the agendas reflect a sense that things were normal and no need to depart from the rote exercise of running a small town in Coastal Maine.

Some non-profits are trying to fill the void.

The Island Institute has scheduled a Zoom session with top state officials Tuesday at 10 a.m. to assess the impact of the storm. Registration is required for the session. The Island Institute has also published other helpful information on its website.

Then there is this citizens effort to raise money to help repair Shore Path.

As stated earlier, the storms wreaked equal opportunity destruction as seen in this video of the Northeast Harbor Swim Club forwarded by a member.

The QSJ asked Linda Greenlaw of “The Perfect Storm” fame to assess the destruction of the two recent storms, and she replied:

“The Halloween Gale of 1991 did a lot of damage - but more in southern New England than in Maine.

“The only one that I have experienced on this level would have been the storm of 1978. I was a junior at Mt Ararat (Topsham). School was cancelled for a week - we were bused to Harpswell to assist with cleanup.”

Bar Harbor Planning Board asks council to untangle its own mess

BAR HARBOR - How will the Town Council handle the abandoned child left on its doorstep by an irresolute Planning Board which admittedly could not make the correct decision in time and punted on the matter to its mommy and daddy hoping for the best?

Owing to a technical glitch that prevented its public airing, the Jan. 3 “public hearing” of the Planning Board had no public audience on line. A similar glitch prevented any public streaming of a council meeting a few weeks earlier.

The glitch was repaired and the recording uploaded a few days later on Town Hall Steams, but I could not bring myself to watch it after the Bar Harbor Story reported it lasted three hours.

Then at the urging of a reader, I listened to it while on a long drive.

Vice chair Ruth Eveland filled in for the absent chair, who, like the council chair, did not attend their first meeting of the new year.

The meeting was a total mismatch between out-gunned board members and some of the town’s most informed citizens - an architect, builders, a real estate lawyer, a former Planning Board member and Town Hill residents. They were unhappy that Eveland started the meeting by declaring there would be no changes to the four amendments to the land-use ordinance proposed by the planning department. If the board did not act to approve them, the items would not make the deadline to be on the June town ballot, it was stated.

Then what’s the point of a public hearing, several citizens asked?

At one point, member Joseph Cough said he was “stunned” and “embarrassed” that the board had allowed itself to be locked in a corner “with our hands tied.” He and other members, including Elissa Chesler, hoped the council would make some of the changes recommended by many citizen speakers, as it has such power and not the Planning Board at this stage.

Planning Director Michele Gagnon was caught unawares on several matters. Her office mistakenly wrote that the proposal to expand employee living quarters was 14 per structure when the board approved 14 per lot.

Her office has come under criticism for continuing to expand opportunities for businesses and developers at the expense of year-round residents.

The proposed amendment to expand employee housing for businesses in the rural part of town came about after Glenon Friedmann of Bar Harbor Farms asked to build employee housing which was not permitted under existing code. Yet Gagnon’s office came up with a sweeping change which would permit housing for up to 14 employees for virtually any use in a large swath of Town Hill.

Gagnon said the need was for farms and campgrounds.

Then why not limit it to just farms and campgrounds, said former PB member Stewart Brecher.

One speaker called the amendment a “developer’s dream.”

The planning office also wants to expand the failed effort of allowing dormitory-style housing to be built in three new areas of town: Salisbury Cove Shoreland Development, Iverson Hill, Town Hill Development and Shoreland General Development.

Since the ordinance was amended, only one hotelier, David Witham, has chosen to build such a dormitory.

The one section in the code which desperately needed attention is correcting the definition of “bed and breakfast” so that developers can’t end run the town by building hotels under that definition.

Although the planning office proposed to limit each B&B to 12 rooms - and not the 44 being built on Cottage Street - it also opened up more districts in town for such use. Brecher argued at a previous hearing that the proposed change would result in the net effect of having more lodging in town, and will “hollow out” neighborhoods.

The planning office has since moderated its proposal to allow only three rooms in a few downtown neighborhoods, but it did not include it in the package being considered by the council for the June town meeting.

I wrote this article in July 2021 about a hotel being built on Cottage Street without a Planning Board review. Nothing has been done to prevent more such building.

The 2007 town Comprehensive Plan urged the town “in the short term” to “Protect existing neighborhoods from infill developments that is out of scale with the area by requiring a standard to control the bulk of buildings, known as a floor area ratio performance standard.”

In addition, it called for ongoing analysis of “the current and potential land uses for Kennebec Street, School Street, and Holland Avenue and modify the districts accordingly.”

School Street resident Cara Ryan, a member of the Appeals Board, said she is “very frustrated with how we don’t fix known loopholes that have such a corrosive effect on community morale.

“The eastern side of School Street and the entire zone it's part of (Downtown Village Transitional) are currently 100% residential and yet vulnerable (with more than one empty lot, btw) to the construction of a hotel so long as it's initially called a B&B. The incongruity in this district is only the most extreme of the 7 districts where these ‘B&Bs’ are a permitted use. 

“I know Planning is already working on changing this to at least bring B&Bs to a manageable definition (12 room max, PB oversight, reasonable parking requirements) but they're taking time I don't think Bar Harbor has. We're not only desperate for housing, we're fraying as a town. Witness last week's PB meeting--those exasperated voices could derail a lot of valuable housing work. 

“When a moratorium on Lodging was proposed, it failed for lack of clear goals. If we can't expedite this B&B definition work, why not put a moratorium on new B&Bs until it is done? We have the rationale, the obligation, right in our existing Comp Plan. Or maybe I don't understand what Comp Plans are for--if they don't steer Council action, why do we spend so much time and money on them?”