Bar Harbor cruise ordinance causes controversy

BAR HARBOR, Maine (WABI) - Bar Harbor is one of Maine’s quintessential summer tourism towns, but a proposed ordinance is looking to decrease population size, specifically for those visiting on cruise ships.

On the ballot this November, Bar Harbor voters will be asked about repealing the current land use ordinance. If repealed, it will make way for the new ordinance called ‘Chapter 50.’

Bar Harbor Town Council Chair Valerie Peacock describes the council-created ordinance: “It requires cruise ships to have a license to visit the town of Bar Harbor and to disembark. That license is memorialized into a contract, and inside of that license includes all the caps and the reservation system for cruise ships.”

Under the current land use ordinance, permitted dock owners can have cruise ships dock and release up to 1,000 passengers.

Chapter 50 would make it so these cruise lines have to coordinate with the town instead of the individuals.

While Peacock says cruise lines and pier owners are already on board, the regulations regarding visitor caps has been stirring local controversy.

Chapter 50 is looking to place daily, monthly, and annual caps on cruise ship visitors. The daily cap depends on the ship size itself, with smaller cruise lines being allowed 1,000 and larger vessels up to 3,500 people released daily.

Monthly caps include 20 thousand during the summer and 55 thousand during the September - October season.

The town’s initiative to reduce summer population size has had mixed reactions from businesses, Mainers, and tourists alike.

John Politi and Pat Noone are visiting from Pennsylvania. They arrived in town on Norwegian Cruise Line.

“Our boat is only here one day,” comments Noone. “There’s 5,000 people on it, so if you only let off 1,000, they’re not getting what they paid for.”

For Northern Californian Lisa McIntyre, she sees both sides of the argument: “If it weren’t for the cruise ship, I wouldn’t be able to experience this. . . I also have mixed feelings, I feel that it gets over commercialized.”

Darrin Stavnesli is the co-owner of The Maine Store, located next to the Village Green. He says he does not agree with the cruise ship ordinance.

“It’s a tourism town. You have to expect people to be here and they want to experience the town,” Stavnesli comments, even expressing worry for the future of the community. “Bar Harbor’s, sadly, starting to develop a reputation of being unfriendly, unwelcoming. When you say, ‘Well, we don’t like people from cruise ships,’ that spreads across the board and all of a sudden, folks from other states or they’re traveling in RVs, they start to wonder, ‘Are we welcome in Bar Harbor?’”

From Freedom, New Hampshire, Sanford resident Rebecca Barker says she recently relocated due to the issue of overpopulation in the summer.

“We lived there for 25 years, were compelled to sell because it was just too much in the summertime, when we should be enjoying it as retirees,” Barker recalls.

In her time visiting Bar Harbor, she says she turned around when she first attempted to visit in the spring due to heavy traffic.

While the cruise ship ordinance has already passed, the town council will need to wait until the current land use ordinance is repealed to truly enact it.

Voters will decide that this November.