The task force’s draft covers traffic, housing, residents’ quality of life, and the visitor experience. Members want the final recommendations to identify priorities, not just compile problems.
10 minutes ago
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by ArtWaves.
BAR HARBOR—The work of the town’s Sustainable Tourism Task Force is officially almost over.
The strategy recommendations for Bar Harbor’s tourism future should be set in November. Those recommendations won’t, however, be terribly focused on lodging or cruise ships.
That’s because the town is already focusing on those elements in other ways, consultants and Sustainable Tourism Task Force members discussed at the task force’s October 14 meeting.
The group has been crafting those recommendations with consultants, JE Austin Associates, and planning staff, for the past 18 months.
The town’s response to the cruise ship ordinance, which was declared partially unconstitutional for certain months earlier this year, and its litigation are still being worked through.
The town’s lodging moratorium is still occurring and housing needs are also being worked on.
Despite the task force not saying it will focus much on those issues, the last big discussion prior to that meeting ended up with the task force members spending a lot of time talking about cruise ships and also how the public will react to the report, which has a draft of approximately 30 pages.
The work put into the strategy report included trying to find and create quantifiable data to understand tourism in the highly seasonal town of approximately 5,000 year-round residents that is heavily linked to Acadia National Park, which receives approximately 4 million annual visits and attracts a lot of visitors who also support multiple types of businesses in the town.
“From where I sit, cruise ships get a disproportionant amount of attention for the impacts they deal,” Task Force member David Woodside said. “Meanwhile, most of the issues that are talked about in here” at the Task Force have nothing to do with cruise ships. He would not be opposed to moderation in cruise ship visitation. Visitation numbers impact smaller businesses, he said, in a significant way.
The draft report currently reads, “Cruise ship disembarkation logistics on West Street is managed well but still leads to many visitors clustered near the bottom of Main Street (the cruise ship issue is unsettled at the time of this strategy). Options to deal with this include increased on-ship promotion of tours and transit going outside the town center, increased presence of town ambassadors and police during cruise ship days, and/or an alternative disembarkation point for cruise ships, such as the ferry terminal.”
Another page mentions, “The Town and partners should assess whether existing visitor information functions, parking personnel, or a limited street guide or ambassador pilot could provide additional personal assistance. The September discussion supported exploring both paid and volunteer approaches, but the scale, supervision, funding, and responsibilities require further assessment. Any pilot should be evaluated before a continuing program is established. Assistance for cruise passengers once on land should align with the cruise management measures.”
The draft plan also mentions lodging in a few places.
The first is in the section about managing vehicle use.
“The draft incentives to use the Gateway Center shuttle (or disincentives to drive) could include further increases on premium parking rates, caps on peak-season parking for visitors, removal of parking spaces, and limits on new lodging construction,” it reads.
In another section, it writes, “the Bar Harbor Town council is in the process of resolving the ongoing Lodging Moratorium, which has placed limits on the development and renovations of hotels and lodging since November 2024. In order to build on the solutions that emerge as part of resolving the moratorium process, the Town should apply a systems-level framework to identify and understand the root tensions driving challenges facing the community. Town Council can then apply this understanding in the formulation of policies and initiatives that address root tensions and create durable solutions.”
THE CHARGES AND THE DECISIONS
The October meeting of the task force charged with making recommendations for Bar Harbor’s tourism future was meant to be a big picture overview of the draft strategies.
The task force members have time to send consultants written comments as the company tweaks the strategy document, which is on the town’s website as part of the task force’s packet of information for the meeting.
At its November 18 meeting, the final strategy document will be set. There will be a public presentation, question and answer session, and a presentation to the Town Council.
“Some people might be unhappy with that, just having it presented” without the opportunity to make more comments, Vice Chair Enoch Albert said.
For task force member Jeremy Dougherty, if everyone’s happy with a decision, it’s probably not the right decision.
Good responsible decisions, Dougherty explained, are often compromises and include moderation.
“Some of those people, you’ll give them a $100 bill and they’ll complain its wrinkled,” Dougherty said. “You have to make a responsible decision.”
However, Dougherty was quick to say that the Task Force should be worried about prioritizing where the town should begin its work on sustainable tourism.
“It just feels like without really pinpointing where we should start, it’s just going to be another document that doesn’t go anywhere. And it’ll be a year of conversations and without any actual output. And there’s so many things in there that need funding. We still don’t have a decision on a funding mechanism. We still haven’t decided really anything that’s going to pay for any of this and that means it’s not happening,” Dougherty said. “So it’s a whole bunch of conversation to accomplish effectively nothing but a document and so at least start with a priority system.”
That priority system, he said, should be in the strategy recommendations that they’ll send to the Town Council.
“It’s great. It’s very comprehensive,” he said of the draft document that had been prepared, but he wanted it to define and create priority suggestions.
THE DRAFT DOCUMENT
Strategies in the almost-finished document include managing vehicles, resident quality of life, visitor experience and engagement; ensuring a sustainable business model; policy issues to enable sustainable tourism; governance and finance to support sustainable tourism.
Chair Vicki Hall said it was a great document, but a couple of things jumped out at her, such as limiting new lodging construction, which felt a bit general and not specific.
She also said that in the vehicle management strategy, it wasn’t mentioned about how lodging is being built in other towns, which could potentially increase vehicles in the town as they travel into the area from other towns where there is new lodging being built.
“Perhaps we should be more specific on what that suggestion really means,” Hall said.
Consultant Joe Lowther said it was a big issue that hasn’t yet been resolved by the town yet. Since it’s still under discussion, they kept it vague.
Task Force member Pat Buccello said she had issues with the word “should” throughout the document. The charts also refer repeatedly to the Chamber of Commerce “should” do something. The town has no authority over the Chamber or the National Park Service or the State, some of the other players mentioned in the document that “should” do things.
“Is this the Chamber of Commerce’s responsibility?” she asked. “I’ve struggled with that throughout the document.”
Woodside said that for the casual observer there will likely be a level of disappointment in the sense of there not being any “magic solutions.”
However, he said, it’s going to identify a lot of issues. Some are in flux. Some do not have simple solutions.
“I think that’s the nature of the beast, if you will,” he said.
Woodside said a lot of people will say the strategies in the document are obvious and didn’t need 18 months of discussion.
Hall said she understood and suggested that in the executive summary that it be mentioned that it’s a collection of issues from the feedback that has been received and it’s a strategy document that has goals and strategies but no nitty-gritty in the steps.
“That would be the next step,” Hall said.
“This wasn’t supposed to solve all of Bar Harbor’s problems, but set us on the path that might get us there,” she said.
Task force member John Kelly spoke to traffic counts and how busy Acadia National Park was in October, which he said has become a second peak in the season.
Housing and lack of housing and all things surrounding the housing issue need to be prominent components of both resident quality of life and the sustainable business model, Task Force member Jim Glavine said.
He worried, he said, that people would have issues with that.
All photos: Bar Harbor Story.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
To read the packet with the draft document
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