Supporters call it a safeguard for residents; opponents say it unfairly targets lodgings

Carrie Jones

Dec 30, 2025

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by First National Wealth Management.

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BAR HARBOR—A split Bar Harbor Town Council extended the lodging moratorium during a special meeting, December 29.

Vice Chair Maya Caines and councilors Earl Brechlin, David Kief, Joseph Minutolo, and Randell Sprague voted in favor. Chair Valerie Peacock and Steven Boucher voted against.

Caines said that since she’s lived on and moved to the island, she’s had friends move away each year because they are unable to live in its towns.

“People can’t live in transient accommodations,” she said.

Caines spoke of the extremes of thought that create a divisive political atmosphere in Bar Harbor and referenced the Pathmaker Hotel on Cottage Street.

“The new hotel that people love to use as unregulated growth actually has some of the things that people are saying they want to see in new developments in this community,” she said.

The Pathmaker has created its own parking, is year-round, and has a year-round restaurant, she said.

“There are also people here who are opposed to changing things like density and height requirements which would better fit the needs of the community,” Caines said.

She called for a holistic re-evaluation of the issues. The moratorium, she said, will allow the council to think more deeply about the issues and she sees it as a short-term compromise.

The newest iteration of the moratorium will continue for 180 days unless the town council extends, repeals, or modifies it. That extension begins again in January. The work is meant to give the town’s planning board and department time to bring multiple land use ordinance amendments to the voters in June.

On February 5, 2025, the town council had voted to enact a 180-day moratorium on most lodgings. It was renewed in July. Prior to that February vote, there had been an emergency moratorium. That emergency moratorium was originally enacted November 19, 2024.

The town’s planning board and staff worked to collect data relevant to the “whereas” clauses in that moratorium. The planning board had recommended in a split vote not to extend the moratorium based on those clauses.

Those potential land use changes delve into what types of lodgings are allowed in the town and how they are defined currently, including replacing the term “guest room” with “guest unit” and establishing a minimum number of guest units and a maximum guest capacity, using state fire marshal’s formula for calculations.

Another change would remove L1 type of lodging from all districts. This type of lodging has been single family dwellings.

The town would also potentially remove any “unused or inappropriate” lodging types from some districts, update parking requirements to reflect guest capacity, and remove the lodging expansion exception in the nonconformity section.

That exception allows lodgings that have already existed in an area where they are not currently allowed to be built to be able to renovate in ways that the town considers expansion.

Opponents of the moratorium’s extension say that it’s unduly punishing one commercial use in town and look to a planning board vote to not extend the moratorium since most of the moratorium’s reasoning (the whereas clauses) were unsubstantiated. They have also said that it takes staff and board time away from focusing on creating or encouraging more housing and other work.

Proponents of an extension say that it gives the town planning staff and planning board more time to enact land use ordinance changes that could limit some lodging in some areas. They also say that changes could limit conversions of homes to lodgings in the time between now and June.

The amendment states that the moratorium’s purpose is to:

1. “Complete the planning board work currently underway concerning lodging definitions, guest room capacity, Lodging I standards, parking requirements, and the identification of appropriate locations for certain lodging uses,
2. “Prepare Land Use Ordinance amendments for voter consideration in June 2026,
3. “Protect residential stability and neighborhood character while this work is completed, and
4. “Avoid development activity that could conflict with, or undermine, the ordinance amendments now in preparation.”

The moratorium’s amendment also speaks to lodgings not being able to be extensively renovated or remodeled.

“Remodels, renovations, and minor revisions to certain transient accommodations in the above categories, such as replacing fixtures, reconfiguring existing rooms, replacing roofs, or making cosmetic improvements, that do not alter the intensity of use or trigger additional parking, traffic, or infrastructure impacts, are exempt from the moratorium. Intentional demolition of existing structures or accommodations, or any portion thereof, including the removal of structural elements, exterior walls, or roofing systems, beyond that required for routine maintenance, is not a remodel, renovation, or minor revision,” it states.

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DISCUSSION

Peacock, Boucher, and Minutolo attended by Zoom while Caines led the meeting.

During public comment, Eben Salvatore of Ocean Properties spoke first, saying that the moratorium has run its course.

“The crisis cover is gone,” he said. “It feels rushed.”

Salvatore said the language for the moratorium’s newest iteration came out on Christmas Eve and it has a massive impact to a lot of property owners in the town. He said there’s nothing in the comprehensive plan that addresses this, he said.

“We paid $300,000 for a comp plan,” he said. “We immediately tossed it aside.”

The draft language of potential changes focuses on three districts, which are not residential, he said.

Jake Jagel of Town Hill shared a letter he and his wife wrote to the council.

“We strongly support the extension,” he said of himself and his wife Dessa Dancy, who was unable to attend the meeting.

This extension, he said, was so that the planning board and planning staff could correct and update sections of the land use ordinance pertaining to transient accommodations (lodging).

He said that there can be irreparable harm to the community and natural resources without changes.

Ruth Eveland, speaking as an individual, not a planning board member, then spoke of that board’s duties. The board, she said, was given a specific charge.

The board made its decision based on the information gathered during that time, she said, and that it would be helpful for the community to have an extension until June when voters could approve or not the potential land use ordinances.

Ed Damm also spoke in favor of extending the moratorium.

Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Director Everal Eaton reaffirmed the Chamber’s position against the moratorium. He said it was a point of diminishing returns. It stifles reinvestment, keeps property owners from restoring or redeveloping its property.

“It also misdiagnoses the housing crisis,” he said.

“As noted during planning board deliberations, the lodging industry is not the sole driver of our housing challenges. Stagnating one sector of our economy will not spontaneously create affordable housing,” Eaton said.

Tanya Ivanow said she supported the moratorium, particularly so that the definition of guest room could be finalized.

“We don’t know what the future experience will be if we let the booming hotels come,” she said. “Our infrastructure has been a disaster.”

She cited the aging infrastructure of the water mains on Main Street and said the town’s transfer station was in a pathetic state. She also recommended getting data from the Sustainable Tourism Task Force.

Later in the meeting, Michael Boland countered some of Ivanow’s points as well as some points made by Bill Shaw. The pipes in Main Street were 110 years old and have been planned to be reconstructed for a while, Boland said.

Boland said there are congestion issues, but that it’s not necessarily directly related to the lodging.

“We can’t get to the post office in August because that’s the way it’s been” for countless summers, he said.

Boland also spoke to the council ignoring the planning board’s split recommendation to not extend the moratorium. This was a point also made by Bo Jennings.

“I think it’s really insulting,” Boland said of the council not listening to the planning board’s recommendation.

Bo Jennings said he wanted to encourage the council to trust the planning board. “If you’re not going to trust them, you shouldn’t have them.”

Boland said that not all of the data is reliable enough to make a major decision that affects a lot of people, which has been a point of Tom St.Germain, who has presented the council with his own data. Boland compared the impact of hotels and bed and breakfasts to that of short-term rentals.

“How about 3,000 rooms all over the island in the last nine years?” he asked.

Short-term rentals are not included in the moratorium. Bar Harbor has capped weekly rentals that are not the primary residence of their owners. Other towns in the region have not. Trenton is set to discuss potential regulations.

Rep. Gary Friedmann said, “I was on the town council when the moratorium was originally enacted.”

Rep. Friedmann said that the initial goal was to define where the town would like lodging built and where it would not like it to be build. There were propositions for some lodging in places where people were concerned. The other concern was the rate of building and if there should be a check on that rate.

Because of how the moratorium was written, Rep. Friedmann said, the planning board and department lost track of the purpose, which is where the accommodations should and shouldn’t be.

The land use ordinance, he said, was created when there wasn’t extreme growth in tourism. This, he said, was also mentioned by Elissa Chesler.

“An alternative vision of Bar Harbor might be smaller scale establishments” interspersed in walkable areas, he said. The lodging industry, he said, takes a heavier toll than other types of development.

Many of the moratorium’s supporters focused on allowing the planning board and department the time to do the work on the potential land use amendments and to safeguard against lodging renovations and constructions before that work was done.

Kevin Knopp said he wanted to add his voice to those who asked to extend it.

“A lot of hard work and effort has been spent getting us here to date,” he said.

Diane Vreeland said she was still confused about what the town was doing and why. Housing can be taken care of easily if you make the hotels stipulate that they don’t buy up housing in the community for their employees, she said. She also suggested impact fees and that “people should be very careful for what they are voting for.”

Ellen Grover said there’s a huge and unfortunate divide in the town.

“We haven’t really worked too hard together to understand, despite all the meetings, apparently, what is at stake,” Grover said.

She said what’s at stake is to preserve what the island currently has.

Goals will not be met if the town ends the moratorium now, she said. Goals include protecting the quality of life, protecting heritage, and the natural environment.

“Do we need more hotels? Do we need more people in Acadia National Park?” Grover asked.

But for Loren Hubbard, who has tried to have a housing project in the town, only to be denied, it felt hypocritical that the town was calling pitting lodging against housing when he felt the town had fought against housing twenty years ago. He said he spent over $200,000 and multiple years trying to build housing.

“One of the things I haven’t heard a lot throughout this whole process is the town, the planning department and the council accepting their responsibility of their role” about the “catastrophic collapse” of housing, Hubbard said.

He said the town has consistently fought against housing density and year-round housing. He spoke to the minimum area per family being expanded and to changes that diminished housing efforts twenty years ago.

In 2006, the town had a series of amendments that doubled the minimum area per family required to build a home in multiple districts, changed minimum lot size for some properties in other districts.

The current moratorium should have an attachment to it, Hubbard said, dealing with area per family and decreasing it.

“The hypocrisy of we blocked housing and now we’re blocking hotels because of housing?” Hubbard said to the councilors. “You created this. You created this situation. And now we’re acting surprised that we’ve created this situation.”

Hubbard also spoke to the town’s parking meters, which collect fees that were initially promoted as ways to fund parking solutions. He said that there are 30 parking spaces in downtown dedicated to only town staff.

He also focused on the roles of the council and planning board. He said that the council is meant to be about governance and the planning board about things such as land use amendments and changes.

“We’ve got a crossover right now between council and planning that is not acceptable,” Hubbard said.

Tom St.Germain had four points. He said even the Bangor area housing market has gone up by approximately 50%, which is not influenced by tourism. St.Germain said that traffic jammed up every afternoon has nothing to do with tourism.

“I’m concerned about the way the council has accepted certain numbers,” he said of the planning department’s work.

He added that he’s presented numbers that were not refuted and that the planning department’s numbers would “fail to withstand scrutiny.” He added that in 2024, voters changed all definitions for all lodging, with an extensive review period between 2022 and 2024. That was recent, he said, not written in a time of different tourism, which was mentioned by many moratorium advocates.

Sharon Knopp supported extending the moratorium though she said she wished it had moved along more quickly.

Mary Galperin urged the council to continue the moratorium until the June vote.

Bill Shaw said he’d like to keep the moratorium going and said he’d like to reduce the number of people coming to the island and the national park, speaking to what he felt was a loss of quality of life and increased congestion.

John Pottle, an attorney representing the Park Entrance Motel property, which is against the moratorium, said, “We think the planning board majority vote more or less got it correct. It shouldn’t be extended.”

“A moratorium is not intended to be a substitute for the planning process,” Pottle said. The refinement of definitions and goals of the comprehensive plan are part of the typical process of town planning.

“A moratorium is really an emergency-basis-type action,” he said.

There are long standing ordinances within the town that govern lodging, he said, and there are no overburdening of public facilities.

“These are just two necessary conditions that don’t exist,” Pottle said of the moratorium.

A moratorium is a land use ordinance, the charter says that there has to be a super majority vote of both the planning board and the council, he said. A majority of the planning board voted to not extend or amend it. “It’s a very important feature of your charter.”

Super majorities are mentioned in one section of the town’s charter (C-14), emergency moratoriums are mentioned in C-16.

Housing is a very worthy cause, Pottle said, but the moratorium is over-broad and not specific toward the housing issue.

Charles Sidman said community sentiment evolves and changes and the council is responsible to listening to the voters. The council has to make this decision, he said.

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COUNCIL DISCUSSION

Town Manager James Smith said that there are very diverse opinions about the question before the council. The question before the councilors, however, is to whether to allow additional development to proceed during the time when policy work is happening. The planning board work has identified specific regulatory issues and concerns and are doing the work for amendments to go before the voters in June.

Brechlin moved to adopt the moratorium. Sprague seconded.

Brechlin said that suggesting the council should never disagree with town boards is not correct and it’s part of the duty of the governing body to make decisions. He said the moratorium has been tweaked because they’ve learned during the process.

“I do think there’s a danger of a gold rush of development of exactly the kind that we wish to curtail,” Brechlin said.

Kief said, “I feel it’s a pivotal moment. It’s not up for us to decide this issue for the community or the lodging people.” Instead, he said, it’s up to the voters in June.

Boucher said he has concerns and that there are issues that need to be addressed such as room definitions and where lodging should be, which is part of the planning work.

“I don’t think it’s best practice to use a moratorium to govern,” he said, however. He doesn’t believe the current data supports an emergency.

“There’s not a shortage of EMS. There’s not a shortage of water. There’s not a shortage of sewer,” Boucher said.

He said the planning board specifically works at creating land use changes and is meant to guide the council through the process.

Minuotolo said he supports the moratorium and there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

Peacock said she’s been uncomfortable with the approach for the moratorium. She wanted to thank the planning department and planning board for its work.

The work that’s been done was important, she stressed.

A lot of the concerns mentioned are “very complicated complex” issues that are interconnected and will take a while to find solutions. There are no instant fixes, she said. The sustainable tourism tax force is also well on its way to doing the work, she added, saying that she’s in full support of the planning work on its way, but thinks the work can be done without a moratorium.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

To see the packet, agenda, and read the moratorium.

To watch on Town Hall Streams

To read the Charter.

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