Four residents are competing for two open seats on the Ellsworth City Council, months after a controversial recall petition led by one candidate threatened to oust five sitting councilors, including one who is running for re-election.
Incumbent Nancy Smith, former city councilor Casey Hanson and newcomers Robert Grant Sr. and Tiffany Dilda Gaspar are vying to fill two vacancies on the council that has been embroiled by in-fighting and public criticism for months. Council chair Patrick Lyons is not running for re-election.
The November election follows a contentious springtime recall petition spearheaded by Gaspar and intended to remove five councilors, including Smith, who voted to censure councilor Steven O’Halloran.
Gaspar, a business consultant and the Maine Republican Party’s elected treasurer, and her followers said the petition, which failed to collect the number of signatures needed to trigger a citywide recall vote, was born out of what was described as the council’s frivolous spending habits.
The city spent $19,000 on the investigation, and related legal fees, into O’Halloran’s conduct. O’Halloran’s term expires in 2027.
The recall petition has been close to the center of the race for City Council. Gaspar is challenging Smith, who was heavily criticized throughout the recall campaign and villainized as “the most dangerous woman in Ellsworth,” as one resident described her.
Smith, a former state legislator and now retired nonprofit CEO, printed the quote on a T-shirt and wore it to a recent City Council meeting and candidates forum.
“I believe the recall was intended to be a distraction and to sow distrust toward Ellsworth’s councilors and staff,” Smith told the Bangor Daily News in mid-October. “I believe signatures were collected by using disinformation in both the affidavit to initiate the recall and in their social media posts and in-person actions. What I saw on social media, including three calls to “hang the traitors” on a page Tiffany Dilda Gaspar was hosting, was disgraceful; a black eye on Ellsworth.”
During a recent candidate forum, Gaspar said she did not have control over what other people commented about her fellow candidate, adding that she personally did not make any death threats. She did not condemn the violent rhetoric Smith pointed out.
“When you are an elected official in any capacity, you are held to standards by those that elect you,” Gaspar told the BDN. “When years have gone by and residents did not feel that they were being heard, these systems are in place to keep checks and balances. […] When you are elected into a City Council position, you are working for the people of Ellsworth and their behalf — not yourself or another entity’s needs.”
Grant, a semi-retired earthwork construction business owner, said he did not sign the recall petition but has been consistently critical of the council’s spending habits and its decision to reprimand O’Halloran.
“I refused to sign the petitions on multiple occasions because I do not agree that is how you should win,” Grant told the BDN. “If you have a disagreement over how things are going, run for the office. Recalling five Councilors would have thrown the City into chaos and I also do not feel that is the right thing to do.”
Hanson, a family physician and chair of the city’s arbor commission, said the recall was a “huge waste of City staff time and taxpayer money.”
“We seem to be in a cultural time where theatrical displays of high adrenaline are becoming more popular,” Hanson stated. “I hope that Ellsworth will choose leaders who behave professionally. We need to speak respectfully, act professionally, and bring civil discourse back to Ellsworth.”
The failed recall petition is just one of several matters on which the candidates clash. Many of the disagreements center around financial decisions, like how to address the city’s affordable housing shortage.
City staff and councilors have spent months designing a fee and inspection structure for short-term rentals in Ellsworth. The number of short term rentals in the city has more than tripled in the last decade, according to the city.
Neither Gaspar nor Grant think the city should be regulating short-term rentals.
“I believe at this point the City has more pressing matters to be worrying about: such as finances and making plans to replace the 50-year-old water and sewer lines in the City and how to keep up and maintain what the City already has liabilities for,” Gaspar said. “If anyone has ever attended any of the meetings about this topic, you will learn that most of the people who do short term rentals are doing this option to pay their taxes and stay living in this area, especially after the last 2 years of high increases. This is also an area that would increase the bottom line for the City of Ellsworth in terms of costs and right now we need to focus on keeping the budget down.”
Grant echoed Gaspar’s concerns, though he noted the rentals should be closely monitored, adding “if short rentals are severely impacting housing in Ellsworth, then maybe we should try to do something.”
Hanson said regulating short-term rentals is essential to providing more housing options in the city.
“If we continue to allow non-residents to buy up multiple houses for AirBNB, our housing prices will continue to rise, and both taxes and the housing situation will get worse,” Hanson said. “Citizens who rent out cottages or apartments on the properties where they live can get nervous about the idea of regulation, so we need to make clear the difference between out-of-state investors and people who live here who use their rental to supplement their income and help pay their taxes.”
Smith supports the city’s current plan of registering and inspecting short-term rental properties, noting it will inform the city of how the supply is impacting housing availability and ensure the units are safe to rent.
“[Short term rentals] are not bad; they add to the city’s hospitality capacity, bringing people to our restaurants and shops,” Smith said. “They also provide income for residents who choose to rent out their homes at some level. But they bring challenges as well, such as calls to emergency services from guests who don’t know who they are, no timely way to contact property owners if there is an issue and disrupting quiet neighborhoods. As with many business opportunities, location and scale determine their overall impact.”