Bar Harbor voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal from the town council to relax cruise ship limits, keeping the 1,000-passenger daily cap they approved two years ago.
According to unofficial results, 1,776 voters opposed the referendum, while 1,713 supported it, according to preliminary results reported by the Bar Harbor Story.
If passed, the proposed rules would have allowed up to 3,200 passengers to visit Bar Harbor on scheduled cruise ship days.
The issue of cruise ships has embroiled Bar Harbor for more than two years, pitting residents opposed to the industry against the local business community, and ensnaring officials who find themselves enforcing and defending in court a voter-initiated limit that they don’t readily agree with.
Despite the 2022 vote, town officials have not yet enforced the 1,000-passenger per day limit, which effectively will prohibit large cruise ships from visiting Bar Harbor. Town officials have said that they likely would be sued by cruise companies if they canceled visits that had been scheduled more than a year ago.
The town already has been facing legal challenges from a group of local businesses that say that the 1,000-passenger daily limit runs counter to federal law. With the rejection of the council proposal, the group is expected to continue contesting the strict caps in federal court.
Supporters of the current 1,000-passenger daily limit argued that adopting the new rules would scrap the will of the voters as expressed two years ago, and would prohibit residents from initiating more ballot measures on the issue without council support.
Along with a 3,200-passenger daily limit, the new rules would have established varying monthly limits and an annual limit of 200,000 passengers — all of which will be a reduction from the monthly and annual totals of recent years.