A Bar Harbor resident who has spearheaded a local citizen effort to greatly reduce local cruise ship visits has gone to court to try to force the town to slash the number that will visit this summer.
Charles Sidman, who in 2022 initiated a successful citizens’ petition to limit cruise ship passengers to 1,000 per day, filed a complaint Tuesday in Hancock County Superior Court. Sidman is seeking to overturn a town council decision not to fully enforce the 1,000-passenger daily limit until 2025.
Sidman’s court appeal is the latest wrinkle in a years-long skirmish involving residents, local businesses and town officials over the impact cruise ship visits have on Bar Harbor. Local business owners say the visits — which grew from fewer than 20 each year in the late 1980s to more than 150 in 2019 — are an important source of income for the town and for locals, but many residents say the ships cause congestion downtown in the summertime and have an overall harmful impact on the town.
In addition to Sidman’s court appeal, the town is facing an appeal in federal court from a local coalition of businesses that thinks the daily 1,000 passenger limit is too low. The group, called Association to Preserve and Protect Local Livelihoods, said last week that it planned to appeal a federal court decision that upheld the passenger limit.
Sidman and town officials released accusatory statements on Thursday, while the business group released one of its own last week.
The business group said the cruise ship reduction, and the resulting drop of $1.6 million in cruise ship fee revenue for the town, is “a major reason why” some residents are seeing 20 percent increases in their property tax bills.
Town officials said Thursday that over the past two years, since Sidman began his campaign to force the town to drastically reduce local cruise ship visits, the town has incurred more than $300,000 in legal bills.
“It’s unfortunate that, especially in an extremely tight budget year, any individual or group would pursue frivolous litigation over healthy political dialogue,” said Val Peacock, the council chair. “This only serves to divert attention and resources from other important issues while unfairly adding to the tax burden of their friends and neighbors.”
Sidman, who is running this year for a council seat, said the council has “overreached” in its efforts to delay full implementation of the daily passenger limit.
“I believe that our town council has gone rogue and dysfunctional,” Sidman said. “I continue to believe that the majority of our citizens are smarter than the misinformers [on the council] claim, and can understand and will uphold what is at stake.”
The debate over local cruise ship traffic came to a head after more than half of respondents to a town survey said in the summer of 2021 that the volume of cruise ship visits was hurting the town. Town officials then came up with a plan, supported by local businesses, that would have set daily limits of 3,500 or 3,800 passengers, along with higher monthly limits, that varied with the time of year.
The November 2022 citizens’ referendum spearheaded by Sidman circumvented that plan.
The business group, which in January 2023 filed a federal suit against the town over the daily 1,000-passenger limit, argued that it violated federal maritime law and parts of the U.S. Constitution, and that it would hurt their businesses.
But in February, Judge Lance Walker ruled that the voter-approved limit is legal because it does not discriminate against out-of-state interests in favor of local businesses, which federal law seeks to prevent.
Last month, after the federal court ruling, the town council said it would not ban all ships with more than 1,000 passengers this summer because some of those ships made their reservations before the November 2022 referendum. Ships with large passenger capacities that made reservations after the referendum, despite being informed of the vote results, will have their reservations canceled.
“It is the position of this council that this is the fairest and most legally responsible approach, based upon careful consideration of costs and risks associated with enforcement,” the council said. “Canceling the bulk of the 2024 season now would be fundamentally unfair, would potentially expose the town to additional legal liabilities, and would have a drastic fiscal impact on an already strained and nearly complete municipal budget.”
