For the second time in three years, a majority of voters in Bar Harbor have said they want to bring large cruise ship visits to a permanent halt.
But while voters on Tuesday rejected a referendum that would have relaxed the current cruise ship restrictions they first approved in 2022, it’s not clear that this week’s vote will settle the broader debate about how strictly to regulate a controversial industry that has traditionally brought thousands of visitors to town a year — in part because that vote could be subject to a recount.
The vote was much closer this time around, with 1,776 voters opposing the referendum compared to 1,713 who supported it. That translated to a differential of just 63 votes this week, compared to 507 when those restrictions were first approved in 2022.
So for now, the limit of no more than 1,000 cruise ship passengers to the town per day still stands. With the referendum’s defeat, voters rejected a proposal from local officials that would have set the daily limit at 3,200 passengers.
It’s not clear whether officials may propose other changes to the rules as a way to try to resolve legal challenges to what is basically a ban on large cruise ships.
Officials with the town and the pro-cruise business group Association to Preserve and Protect Local Livelihoods, which is fighting the citizen-approved restrictions in court, did not respond to requests for comment about Tuesday’s vote. Both the town and APPLL encouraged voters to support the town proposal.
Charles Sidman, the local business owner and investor who has been the chief proponent of the 1,000-passenger daily limit, said he was “very glad” with Tuesday’s result. Had the town’s proposal passed, he said, it would have faced even more litigation.
“I am proud that the citizens of our town stayed strong and would not give up their home rule rights of democratic self-government,” Sidman said.
The issue of cruise ship visits has dominated civic life in Bar Harbor for more than three years, ever since a town-sponsored community survey in 2021 showed that most residents think the volume of seasonal cruise ship traffic has made Bar Harbor a less appealing place to live. Cruise ship opponents say the volume of passengers that come ashore causes undue congestion and wear, while industry supporters say the ships help provide needed income for local businesses and employees.
After the 2021 survey, the town was working toward placing tighter limits on cruise ship traffic when, in 2022, voters took the matter into their own hands. They passed a citizen’s referendum that set the daily limit of 1,000 passengers, approving the measure by a 1,780-1,273 vote.
This fall, Bar Harbor officials presented voters with the alternative that would have set a daily cap of 3,200 passengers — which still would have been a reduction from the visitation of recent years — and changed the mechanism for enforcing the limit. As part of this proposal, the town asked voters to repeal the limit they adopted two years ago.
Rules for a recount
But the narrow rejection this time around may give opponents of the current rules another chance to contest the outcome. The 63 votes that made the difference in Tuesday’s tally represent roughly 1 percent of Bar Harbor’s registered voters, below the 1.5 percentage-point threshold set by state law for recounts.
A recount of the referendum can be requested by 100 local voters or 10 percent of the town’s registered voter total — whichever is the lower number — within five business days of the election. It would be funded by taxpayers.
But short of a recount that flips the result — or a successful court appeal by the group of local businesses that are fighting to keep Bar Harbor as a port of call for large ships — it seems even more likely now that the days of large ships dropping anchor in Frenchman Bay are numbered.
There still will be cruise ships that come to town, as ships that carry 200 or fewer passengers are exempt from the 1,000-passenger daily limit. But the majority of large ships that visit Bar Harbor carry more than 1,000 passengers, and so will be effectively banned once the limit starts being enforced.
Grandfathering old reservations
When that limit will be enforced also has been hotly contested. In 2021 — the second year that no ships visited Bar Harbor because of the COVID-19 pandemic — the town stopped accepting reservations from large ships in response to community feedback about the industry’s impact.
But some of the reservations made before then, which the town has said it will honor, extend as far out as 2029, when the 3,800-passenger Voyager of the Seas is expected to visit Bar Harbor a total of six times in September and October.
That would leave 2030, six years from now, as the first year (not including the pandemic) in which large ships would be prohibited from discharging passengers in Bar Harbor.
Sidman said that he does not oppose allowing ship reservations that were made in 2021 to be honored by the town. Doing so is the fair way to give the cruise industry time to adapt to the town’s new restrictions, he said.
“I’m OK with ‘grandfathering’ ever-decreasing numbers of ships through 2029,” Sidman said.
