State Tax Data Does Not Necessarily Indicate Success of Season For Bar Harbor

Shaun Farrar

Nov 07, 2025

BAR HARBOR—Even with record amounts of visitation to Acadia National Park, Sue Stanley’s Sagegrass Gallery is close to $30,000 behind last year in sales. For a small business owner with a limited viable season, that’s a lot.

It’s one of the factors that has caused her decision to shut her doors.

Stanley purchased the business, named Pretty Marsh Gallery at the time, from Linda D’Alessio in 2007. The gallery was located on the northwestern side of the Bayside Landing courtyard.

When Stanley bought the gallery, D’Alessio was selling paintings by her husband, artist and co-owner of the gallery, Russell D’Alessio. Stanley continued to sell the product lines that she inherited with the business purchase and also broadened out, selling other artists’ paintings. She soon broadened further into American-made pottery and glassworks.

Stanley tried to focus on selling products produced by American artists and crafts people and still maintains that focus today, trying to sell about 80% American-made products.

The first time Stanley participated in Midnight Madness as a store owner, she did so in the Bayside Landing courtyard. She did it alongside Linda Carman who was closing her business, Kyle’s Keep, at the time. Stanley said Carmarn sold a lot of product while she herself did not sell much. But from that first experience Stanley’s love of Midnight Madness grew. The camaraderie and visitation over a beverage, and the fact that it was more adult oriented and actually drew in locals to shop locally are things Stanley misses now that the event has been changed to Village Holidays.

Bayside Landing was a challenging location and it was hard to get customers into the courtyard, according to Stanley. She stayed there for four years, changing the name to Sagegrass Gallery after about two years.

When a new space became available, Stanley welcomed the opportunity to escape the confines of the courtyard and moved into 156 Main Street, the current home of Leary’s Landing Irish Pub.

Stanley loved the space at 156 Main Street because it had everything she needed to run her business: a bathroom, running water, and storage space. She stayed there for six years until the owner of Leary’s, Cory Gordon, purchased the entire building.

Unfortunately, after losing the space at 156 Main, Stanley had trouble finding a new location in Bar Harbor. Then came COVID. These circumstances forced her to take a few years off from running her own store until her current space became available.

Her current space at 185 Main Street fronts on Mount Desert Street, overlooking the Village Green and the busy intersection of the two streets. It is a fairly small space with no storage, bathroom, or running water. Stanley has to utilize neighbor’s bathrooms during the summer and keep her shop’s stock at her home.

Recently, Stanley was lamenting with a neighboring shop owner about how they watch tourists walking up Main Street, get to the corner at Mount Desert Street and stop, look around, and quite frequently turn around and head back toward the water.

“I have a huge cruise ship (clientele); I always have,” Stanley said. “I have always had the cruise ships, ever since I have had my store.”

Now Stanley says that the cruise ship business has pretty much been eradicated and the passengers on the small ships, American Cruise Lines, never get much past the pier area.

When you partner that missing income stream with general economic volatility, a not perfectly suited or situated space, and the loss of some events like Midnight Madness that used to draw in local shoppers Stanley questioned the future of the store. Even doing something you love becomes to great of a burden when the reward is is not sustainable or becomes too great of a risk.

Sagegrass Gallery will be open at 6 a.m., for the pajama sale on November 8, offering 30-50% off storewide. While she may not be able to part with them just yet, all of the store-owned fixtures will also be for sale. Stanley does not have room to store them and does not currently know what she will do with any leftover stock.

Stanley also hopes to be open more, possibly through Christmas, but that is contingent on other factors some of which are not in her control.

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2025 BAR HARBOR TAX REMITTANCE AMOUNTS

Stanley’s closure is partially associated with the tourist economy within Bar Harbor.

There has been a copy of a Maine sales tax report circulated in different formats— news sources, social media, and personal emails—that is purported to show that Bar Harbor has had its most lucrative summer to date.

This year’s portion (through August) of that report is shown below and you can find it here.

However, there are multiple issues with using this data as a gauge for the success, or lack thereof, of Bar Harbor’s tourist season in terms of earnings for business owners.

The first issue is that this spreadsheet is not just for Bar Harbor. Looking at the first column, it reads “Bar Harbor ESA.” This means that the data associated with each line is not just for Bar Harbor, but for a collection of 21 economic areas. ESA is an acronym for “economic summary areas.” The list of ESAs for the state can be found on the same website here and is below.

Another issue of using the ESA chart is that it bears no direct reflection on how the year may turn out overall for Bar Harbor’s businesses. It only shows taxes paid to the state.

On the same website, the state also has an annual sales tax by town report. Bar Harbor’s annual sales tax by year from 2007 through 2024 is below.

For the years 2021 – 2025, the tax remittance increases by month (or decreases), as a percentage are shown below for the months of January through August, which is the latest month available so far for this year. The two years previous to 2021-22 are both COVID related decreases and increases and were not used.

Jan Feb March Apr May June July August

2021-22 21.54% 19.34% (-)2.36% 3.35% 17.61% 4.39% 5.02% 8.94%

2022-23 6.52% 1.39% 6.79% (-)5.89% (-)1.12% 1.86% 2.44% 5.82%

2023-24 44.37% 9.86% (-)7.76% (-)9.69% 7.80% 5.68% .77% (-).27%

2024-25 (-)19.50% (-)10.84% 11.45% 18.55% 3.11% 6.54% 8.62% 8.10%

When you compare these months with the full year increases shown below, it shows that there really is no correlation. Of course, the full year amount for this year will not be out until after the new year begins, so this year cannot yet be compared.

The annual tax remittance amount increases, by percentage, for Bar Harbor only, not the ESA are in the middle column followed by the percentage increase for the months of January through August, cumulatively, for the Bar Harbor ESA.

Year BH only, full year BH ESA, Jan-Aug

• 2021-22 9.74% 7.48%
• 2022-23 1.03% 2.45%
• 2023-24 4.43% 2.60%
• 2025 unknown 6.28%

The end result of all of these numbers is that the ESA numbers should not be used to predict what Bar Harbor’s tax remittance will be at at the end of any one year, nor should that necessarily be used as the gauge for a banner, mediocre, or poor season as none of the numbers take into account financial factors such as inflation, tariffs, or new tax requirements that could cause inflated numbers due to new tax burdens.

One new tax burden is a sales/use tax that went into effect on January 1, 2025, and affects a large industry in Bar Harbor (and the Bar Harbor ESA). This new law requires renters of items such as bicycles, kayaks, paddle boards, or even a carpet cleaner from Paradis Ace Hardware store to charge and remit sales tax for each rental rather than paying sales tax one time at the time that the business purchases the equipment to be rented.

That tax rate is 5.5%. If a business purchases a bicycle for $1,000, they would have previously just paid $55 in sales tax. Now they don’t pay that sales tax. Instead, if that same bicycle is rented for $100 per day for 100 days of the year, the business is remitting $550 dollars over the course of the season, which is a substantial increase in taxes to the state.

Perhaps the 2024-25 tax remittance difference that comes out after the new year will show an increase. If that increase falls within the range of the percentages listed directly above, it would be hard to gauge if it is that truly an upward swing or if it is just making up for the factors listed in the previous paragraphs. More tax remittance does not always equate to more sales or more profits.

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MAINE OFFICE OF TOURISM VISITOR TRACKING REPORTS

The Maine Office of Tourism recently released its seasonal tourism reports for the winter of 2025 (December 2024 – April 2025) and the summer of 2025 (May 2025 – August 2025). Links to the full reports are at the end of the article.

According to the winter report, for the entire state, the total amount of visitors and the amount of days visitors spent in Maine were both down by 7.2% and 9.7% respectively. Direct spending, however, was up by 7%. Some of the visitation related decreases are being attributed to the fact that there was a solar eclipse in April 2024 which likely drew extra visitation that year.

According to the summer report, again for the entire state, the three categories all showed decreases with the smallest decrease being the amount of days visitors spent in Maine which was a decrease of less then half a percent. The total amount of visitors was down 6% and direct spending was down 3.5%.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

MAINE OFFICE OF TOURISM WINTER 2025 REPORT

MAINE OFFICE OF TOURISM SUMMER 2025 REPORT

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All photos: Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story