Carrie Jones

Dec 18, 2025

BAR HARBOR—Moving from a chair in the back of the council chambers, Stewart Brecher took a seat at the workshop table, December 10, telling the members of the town’s sustainable tourism task force that he’d been a resident of Bar Harbor for approximately half his life.

Politely, he explained to the members that he didn’t think that the town was focusing on quite the right thing when looking at sustainable tourism.

“The community itself is not sustainable unless we move off of this seasonal, commercial operation, we are not going to have anybody left in this town except old people like me and people who have enough money for it to not make any difference,” he said. “How do you have a sustainable community in the light of tourism rather than how do you have sustainable tourism?”

Brecher’s comments came at a December 10 meeting that mostly focused on consultants (J.E. Austin Associates’ Michele McKenzie and Ben Nussbaumer) leading the group through detailing feedback from a community survey and sessions with some nonprofits and the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce.

The goal of the 13-member group is to have a clear vision for Bar Harbor’s tourism future, Bar Harbor Planning Director Michele Gagnon has said. She expects that will take 12-18 months.

Bar Harbor is positioned next to Acadia National Park, which recently has been hosting 4 million visits a year and and the Maine DOT controls the one road onto the island.

“Tourism will come because of forces we have little control over,” Brecher said.

Instead, he said, the key would be to stimulate more of a year round economy on an island with a very small flexible footprint and four towns.

“It’s more of a problem than managing tourism,” Brecher said.

However, the task force was created by the town council to focus on tourism and to that end, consultants presented survey responses about just that.

The survey was open for roughly a month. There were 374 responses and 75% of the respondents were Bar Harbor year-round residents. There are over 5,000 residents of Bar Harbor.

Approximately two-thirds of the respondents were over 55, which was an older skew. The consultant said that 61% of respondents found the definition of sustainable tourism as clear and complete, which means that 39% did not. Feelings about the draft vision were also 60% favorable with 40% unfavorable.

“We do feel comfortable that we got a number of people coming out,” Nussbaumer said.

Just under a third of respondents have connection with the tourism sector, meaning that more than two-thirds of the respondents did not.

Themes that came out were overall visitor levels, traffic congestion and parking, housing costs and short-term rentals (concerns over further limits and regulations as well), year-round economic vitality, the property owners’ tax burdens, and community polarization.

“The biggest concerns were raised around capacity and crowding overall,” Nussbaumer said.

During public comment, Peter Miano said, “How do we evaluate or interpret the responses that we are getting in all the community engagement?”

He wondered how representative comments are of the community.

“That 15% (number of respondents versus Bar Harbor’s year-round population) was disproportionately represented by higher age brackets. What about the other 85% and who are the 15% who are responding,” he asked. “Is it the squeaky wheel that we’re responding to?”

The consultants said this is a common problem, but that they have a strong data-driven approach. They did not give specific steps of how it is dealt with, but that squeaky wheel elements are common in their work.

The consultants also met with a group of nonprofit representatives and also the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce. Some task force members wondered how representative the groups were during the discussions. It was not characterized whether those attending were representing the groups as a whole or themselves as members of the groups or organizations.

The consultants characterized their meeting with the Bar Harbor Chamber as a good one, but that the chamber worried about the definition of sustainable tourism being framed only as a negative rather than a benefit. The Chamber also, they said, worried that economy and business were missing from the definition.

“I just get concerned in trying to keeping our focus in what we can achieve,” task force member Michael Boland said.

He agreed that there needed to be goals and that the task force not get bogged down.

The upcoming carrying capacity analysis will not be in January. That meeting will be skipped and the analysis will be presented in February, McKenzie said.

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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Peekytoe Provisions.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

To watch the meeting.

To read the packet.

December 10 presentation.

Sustainable Tourism Management Task Force bylaws

The task force’s page on the town’s website.