City Council - Special Meeting

0831 00 public hearing potential action on a moratorium on RV parks in the city of Ellsworth I think to start things out like to turn it over to the city manager

Thank you, Chair Lyons. I think I'll just start off with a little process for tonight. I'm going to just speak a little bit, do a bit of a recap of the last council meeting, as well as some extensive memo I provided on the background of this project. I know a lot of folks in this room and in the council are already aware of that information, but for those folks who are new to it that are watching now, just to provide a little background on how we got here tonight. And then I'll iterate a couple of new pieces of information provided in my memo, both from the memo from the planner on their recommendation regarding this proposed moratorium. And then we'll hand it over to the group that has organized around opposing the RV campground. for 10 to 15 minutes of discussion just to let them make their points without having to have it all chunked out into three-minute pieces, then three minutes for any comments they didn't think were included that would be for members of the public, and then we'll close the public hearing portion of the dialogue and switch it over to council discussion and representation both for staff. Our planner and code enforcement's also here. our clerks obviously in legal counsel and economic development as well for any questions you all would have or need to be proceed whether to move forward with the moratorium or not or some other option in between. Any questions before I?

I object to that. You're allowing one side to speak and not the other.

Oh, well, the developer as well, if he's here.

I know I asked Brittany to reach out to let them know this meeting's happening. Did they respond back that they'd be here or not?

They are here.

They are here. Okay, then absolutely to allow the developer to speak as well. Let's hear from both sides. Yep, 100%. Sorry, I didn't... know they were there, but absolutely, I definitely think the developer needs to speak at this meeting. I think in a previous memo guidance that I provided the council, I think my original proposed recommendation for this process is that we let the planning board rule on our current ordinances, either in favor or in opposition to allowing the campground to move forward so that the council could review as a final packet and not get involved in the planning board process prior to an approval or disapproval. But there seemed a majority of the council at that meeting that wanted to move forward and consider a moratorium prior to the planning board decision. So I'm glad that the developer is here and we'll definitely just make that small edit that will have the opposition group and the developer and then open it up to more general public comment. So earlier in the year, just a little background, a 29 site, I believe, campground was proposed on the Bayside Road. It started moving its way through the planning board process. The planning board has had some meetings on this. They've had a site visit. We've had a previous city council meeting presentation from the groups opposing the RV park. We've also had a moratorium discussion about a week and a half ago relative to the project. And where we find ourselves today is we reviewed a moratorium suggestion from the RV campground folks. Our legal counsel has given their edits and recommend changes should the council wish to move forward with the moratorium. Although I would note that it's not a suggestion from city staff or council that we do move forward with said moratorium. I think it's legally defensible, and especially on research on municipalities have pretty broad authority to enter into a process that they believe is out of alignment with their comp plan, curtain ordinances to protect public harm from happening of a type of development. And I'm confident, although our legal counsel, if the counsel would like to have them weigh in more, can talk more about that. I think the bigger question, especially on the table now, is should we or should the council? And should it do so before the planning board has had their chance to rule and answer all questions and are the experts in this process? There's two additional pieces of materials that I added to this packet. One was we were trying to keep really the planner And code and folks separate to really be focused on the planning board process and ushering that through in an independent way. But prior to a moratorium being enacted, really felt that the planner and our code enforcement officers should have a chance to weigh in on the specifics here. And they prepared a separate memo recommending against adoption of a moratorium while the pending planning board review remains underway. And making some very specific notes about the reasons why, and our planner will talk a little bit more about that as well, although we're still trying to stay somewhat general because we can't speak to that this will be approved or won't be approved as 100%. Ultimately, that is the decision of the planning board. not the planner themselves, but really felt that it was important to have the planner and our Code and Economic Development Director, should they be called upon to weigh in a little more if we're going to weigh a moratorium vote before the planning process continues. Also, on the revised moratorium that the City Legal Council reviews, they really wanted to make sure that This is kind of a note the large scale campground, which our ordinance doesn't currently define, although there are reasons why our ordinance is already more restrictive, even for smaller scale or larger scale, than a lot of the state standards here. So the planner can talk a little bit more about that in general. But while this is a broad moratorium on RV parks in general, it really notes a large scale RV park, which I believe is more than five, would be what the, so there'd still be the allowance of smaller scale RV parks. in this moratorium and the second piece on that is I believe the council may need to narrow the scope or choose not to narrow the scope that this would only apply to the rural zone and not to all zones in general so those are kind of two edits I know our legal council and myself should the council want to move forward in a moratorium on RV parks that it would be clarified on whether we will stick with the general language in there, and it's just a general moratorium, or whether it would be narrowed to the rural zone. The second piece is, you know, I stick by my previous recommendation that we let the planning board process play out. I know I provided the council pretty recently the latest amount of packets, but there's a lot of information in here that really needs to be sorted through based on our comp plan, based on the final packets, the final approval or disapproval of this campground and a review of that. recommendation, and that's, I believe, why they have that 45-day clause in allowance of a moratorium, so that the council would still preserve its rights to note that a process that has gone through the planning board, they don't really feel like it meets its comp plan or environmental standards, and that they should be revised or strengthened because an irreparable harm could move forward that the best time to do that and why the 45-day grace period is there is so that we can kind of have all the facts on both sides of that and allow much more time for staff and time for the developer who's put a substantial amount of time in this to discuss the impact and to really think about the broadness of this. I think that's, at least in me reading the moratoriums and where we're at here, this is an extremely tough issue. You know, it really is a... looking at the comp plan, I do see it from both sides, that preserving the residential character of neighborhoods, you know, traffic and some of these other pieces that have been mentioned, and we're seeing a lot more development in Ellsworth. And then the flip side of that, I also have, you know, that As written, a lot of the language relative to traffic and environmental, even a small scale project of a huge variety of uses would satisfy those criteria as well. I worry about a chilling effect in growth in Ellsworth and business and landowners in that area that effectively, it wouldn't just be a moratorium on campgrounds, but it would send a signal that really all of our ordinances in the largest zone in the city or in the entire city itself are subject to a council intervening in the process and essentially saying we're changing it midstream. That could have pretty significant unintended consequences for economic development and broadening our tax base so that we can continue to grow the tax base in Ellsworth. that I think are going to require a lot more analysis based on a final planning board approval or disapproval and a complete packet analysis of the comp plans. And if that's the process we want to go down, then it takes a little more time. So with that, I'll send it over to Brittany, our planner.

Good evening. Brittany Merrill, City Planner. How is everyone tonight? Is that better?

That's better, thank you.

Little voice. All right. So you've all received my memo, I'm sure, and have read it thoroughly. It pretty much states everything I have to say. I do want to touch on process and highlight a couple additional points. But basically, any time a development project comes through planning board, the board has a set of criteria to look at. And it includes everything from stormwater to traffic to lighting to landscaping. We do have a campground ordinance in place that speaks on these. The campground ordinance that we currently have is stricter than the state requirements. The state requirements are basically the standard. We're more strict. If you want to go stricter, I feel it's a separate conversation. I also want to point out. This project specifically that generated all this interest is currently under planning board review. It has gone through the preliminary review and been found complete, which means the applicant has submitted sufficient evidence or information to in order for the board to do its final review of the project. That final review, pending tonight, will take place on Wednesday at the next regularly scheduled planning board meeting. At this meeting, that is when they go into the nitty gritty. They look at everything that's been submitted as evidence, and they will make the determination on whether this project meets the criteria of our existing ordinances. The board has the authority and ability to place conditions of approval on the project if they think an area is not quite adequate within reason legally. Tim can correct me if I'm wrong. And they also have the option to table it if they feel like they do not have sufficient information to make a decision that night. They can also request additional information before they make that final determination. So there is a process in place for projects such as campgrounds, no matter the size. I believe our ordinance specifies campgrounds as anything over two campsites. We treat all campgrounds of any size the same, whether it's three sites or 150. The standards set in place allow for that broad range Adding a new ordinance to regulate just a large-scale RV campground seems a little counterintuitive to the work we have been doing on the ordinance review right now as we are trying to reduce redundancies and streamline processes. This cuts down on administrative costs and it also makes our city a little bit more developer friendly. And then just to speak on the planning board themselves, we have a reputation for being a tough but fair board. We have a lot of strong planning board members. They care about the city, its residents. They care about their roles and they take them seriously. Each board member volunteers their time and expertise to review these projects thoughtfully, and they do everything in their power to ensure a fair and equal process. Enacting this moratorium before they've had a chance to complete their review and make their decision tells them that you don't trust them or the processes in place. So my final recommendation is to trust the process. Thank you. And if you have any questions, I'm here.

Any questions for the city planner on this matter?

You said that the planning board could change things within reason when they're looking, maybe there's an inadequacy. Would that include that buffer zone that's along the, not the front, but the side buffer zones?

Potentially. They could. I'd have to do a little more research on the exact parameters because there's some legality in what we can ask and what we can't. They can also... Ask but not require to a certain degree, but there is some flexibility there.

Any other questions for the city planner?

I was just listening to your answer on there's some flexibility there. What would you have to look up?

Just the requirement of the state law on how much the planning board can, what areas they're allowed to ask for stricter stipulations on in certain aspects.

Okay. And I can accept that as a perfectly fine answer. I can also kind of imagine how I would feel if I received, if I was one of these folks and received that answer. which I think is kind of the root of the problem here. There's some flexibility. I'd have to look it up. Yes?

Councillor Martineau, please don't address the audience. Please address your comments to our speakers here.

And I should note, this is like the delicate position that staff is in as well, is that while it's in a planning board process, we can't necessitate what we will require the planning board to do, what they won't, on the specifics of it. We could take this to any single project that goes before the planning board, bring it before council, have a pretty detailed review of how the planning board's going to react, what they're going to say, if they're going to approve it, if they're not going to, which is One of the harder things about having this conversation before an approval or disapproval or restrictions or not is we don't have that information. The planning board themselves are going to be providing information as this part of the process of their approval areas in addition to the city council having the 45-day period of time to issue a moratorium if they felt that the planning board either didn't have the tools based on current ordinances to impose the appropriate restrictions to meet what the council or the majority of the council felt was appropriate for traffic, buffers, all these other pieces, that option is preserved. There's also a zoning board of appeals process that's still preserved in that piece. I know, Brittany, we've Had a few conversations about this, Robert, as well, of to intervene in the middle of the process. It somewhat restricts a final.

It sets a bad precedent, basically. It's like decisions and information haven't been conveyed because it has to wait until that final review project or final review meeting, basically. So I feel like just a little patience. And the board will review, discuss, ask the questions, hopefully answer some questions, and address those concerns at that meeting. But they cannot talk about the project outside of that meeting. So it's hard. I acknowledge that. It's hard to wait.

Any other questions for the city planner and council? Seeing none, thank you, Brittany. Thank you. So at this point, we'll move to the public hearing portion of tonight's meeting as the city manager laid out. Considering that the nature of the special meeting, we thought it made sense to allow the folks that are in opposition to the RV park If you have a representative that could speak broadly for the group, provide 15 minutes for that opportunity. Following that, we will provide the developer up to 15 minutes for the opportunity to speak. Following that, if there's any members of the public that would like to address issues that may not have been raised by the two speakers, we'd ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. So I will open the public hearing. Councillor O'Halloran.

I would like to make a comment before the public hearing is opened. Certainly this is a very tense situation. However, I'd like to compliment the opposition. I think that everybody has been completely professional. Everybody has, sure, there's an agenda, they don't want the park, okay? Most of you don't want the park in your neighborhood. But there has been complete No screaming, no yelling that I have seen. I went to the planning board site visit. Everybody was calm. Everybody is presenting their side. And it has been nothing but professional. No matter what side you're on, I think it has been a good process. that it's a tough topic, but everybody has been good. And I commend you for that, because this could have gone sideways quick. And it hasn't. And it's because everybody has been extremely professional. And thank you.

I have a quick procedural question. With the 15-minute opener, I do also have some personal comments for myself. Is that included in my 15 minutes, or that can be a separate three-minute thing later on? Because I'm speaking on behalf of like all the neighbors.

Sure. I will give you 18 minutes.

Okay.

Okay. That sounds great. If you could just say your name for the record.

Sure. My name is Kelly Brackett. I live on Altnav. And I'm here to speak on behalf of all the neighbors of Altnav and those on Bayside who have sort of joined our effort as well. I have a lot to say, so I might move fast. Good evening, counselors, and thank you for letting us have the opportunity to speak tonight. We're here because a single application for a campground produced 58 abutters notices, unified to neighbors together in opposition and brought to light gaps in the city's ordinances. Gap number one, there is a lack of protection for surrounding residents in the campground ordinance. Gap number two, there is a single rural zone that encompasses most of Ellsworth's lands and lumps too many uses in one district, creating uncertainty for both residents and developers alike. We then discovered that the comprehensive plan calls for those protections and ordinance alignment and was already taking place, which is why we asked for the moratorium. We are here tonight to decide on enactment because the majority of the council wished to see final moratorium language based off of the draft that we and our legal counsel provided. We have reviewed the language that has been drafted and we support the proposed moratorium in front of you tonight. Our request tonight is not to stop development, prevent tourism, or dictate the ultimate outcome of the anchor and campground application. We are simply asking for time to allow the city to complete the planning work it has already begun before it's too late for the neighbors of Bayside Road and Outen Ave. The comprehensive plan represents years of work and substantial public participation. It establishes a vision for how this community should grow and how development should be directed. And importantly, our current unified development ordinance directs the council to quote, implement the comprehensive plan quote, promote the health safety and general welfare of residents and quote, encourage the most appropriate use of land. We don't disagree with the city planners memo that the comprehensive plan ultimately supports development like campgrounds and Ellsworth. However, her argument ignores the other critical parts of the comprehensive plan. It calls for intentional, appropriately located, and sustainable growth with better tools to define scale, intensity, and location of development. It specifically prioritizes preserving rural character and natural areas, protecting water quality, aquifers, and wetlands, balancing tourism with residents' quality of life, and reducing traffic impacts. Hearing from those who created the comprehensive plan would be critical in this analysis and decision-making process. which takes time. The comprehensive plan also recognizes that transportation, water quality, sustainability, and resiliency are regional concerns requiring coordination with surrounding municipalities, that these decisions should not be Ellsworth's alone, but perhaps involve the League of Towns, which takes time. The proposed moratorium itself acknowledges gaps involving traffic, infrastructure, wastewater, environmental protection, density, setbacks, and compatibility with surrounding land uses. If these were not legitimate areas for the city to address through a moratorium, your legal counsel would not have included them in the proposed language. I think it's safe to assume that their inclusion means that they are legally defensible areas for the city to address, not merely matters of opinion. The current ordinances may address some of these issues in a limited way, but they are inadequate for evaluating a large-scale commercial campground next to a rural residential neighborhood. A moratorium gives the city a chance to reconcile those gaps. Please consider what is being proposed. A 28 site high density open field commercial RV campground adjacent to an established rural residential neighborhood. It means bringing commercial transient use to a place where people have had established homes for 20, even 40 years. Invested their savings and have reasonable expectations for the character of their neighborhood. The potential impacts include increased traffic and large recreational vehicles on roads that were not designed for this intensity of use, road safety and emergency access and egress from our own neighborhood, noise and nighttime activity, light pollution, water consumption on aquifers with unknown limits rather than public water sources, wastewater and septic loading next to the Union Bay. Stormwater and drainage flowing into our wetlands of significance that line our property boundaries. Unclear solid waste handling to prevent nuisance animals, which we've all been dealing with a bear this week. inappropriate setbacks and bufferings from our backyards, and the potential cumulative impact of a commercial operation with explicit plans to expand beside our existing homes. A moratorium is not an admission that all of these impacts will necessarily occur. It's an acknowledgment that the city needs adequate standards to determine whether and how a large-scale campground should occur in this type of geographical context before allowing additional development under the existed antiquated framework. We have heard that the existing ordinance permits campgrounds, and we understand that. But that only answers the question, can this be considered under the current ordinance? And that is a question for the planning board. But it does not answer the larger question at hand. Should this type of use be allowed before the city completes its ordinance alignment? That is a policy question for this council. We respectfully disagree with staff's recommendation to wait for the planning board's decision. We understand the argument. Let the board finish its work and that will give the council more information. But whether the planning board approves or denies this particular application, the underlying policy question still remains. A single application or decision should not determine the city's policy. And the city's own proposed moratorium ordinance states that the moratorium is immediately necessary for preservation of public health, safety, and welfare, and there's a need for immediate effectiveness. Even the city planner's memo recognizes that, quote, priority to the campground ordinances should be addressed in phase two of the comprehensive ordinance review project. This lets the council address substantive concerns throughout the ordinance itself. She acknowledges the need for ordinance revision. What a better way to allow for prioritization and addressing of those substantive concerns than a temporary moratorium. Serious public harm in the moratorium statute does not mean that the city has to wait until something catastrophic has already happened. The statute itself states that it can be used if a burden is, quote, reasonably foreseeable as a result of any proposed or anticipated development. This is why and how you recently enacted the data center moratorium. The council does not have to wait until an application reaches a particular stage or even wait for an application to be submitted at all to determine that a moratorium is warranted. There is a 45-day retroactive clause, but retroactivity is a safety net. It is not a substitute for acting proactively, which you are empowered to do. If the city believes a moratorium may ultimately be necessary, the better course is to enact it before the critical decision is made, not after. We keep hearing that the planning board needs to be allowed to do its job. We do trust them to do their jobs, but the council needs to be allowed to do its job as well. As our attorney of Murray Plum and Murray explained, the city planner stated that answering this question now would, quote, undermine the planning review's process, but the two bodies have separate tasks. The planning board applies the rules, the council makes the rules. A moratorium is well within the prerogative of the city council. We are not asking the council to tell the planning board how to decide on the anchor and application or details of revisions. We are asking the council to determine whether the rules the planning board is applying to the application review are adequate and appropriate while the city is already undertaking ordinance alignment process. The city can always change ordinances for any reason. It doesn't just have to be during comprehensive plan alignment. Some level of uncertainty always exists when developers undertake a project. Our council has also addressed the argument that the city and applicant have already invested substantial time in preparing for the upcoming planning board review. To delay acting on the moratorium until the planning board acts would only serve to further waste time and resources on behalf of the town and applicant. If the planning board approves the application and the council subsequently passes the moratorium, the applicant may have to again update his application to meet the new standards, potentially requiring them to begin the approval process anew under the updated ordinance. At this point, this application has only received preliminary approval. The applicant's review process could go on for months if the planning board is not satisfied and continues to table. This is the early phase of their process, not the late phase. We do also have some serious concerns about how this application has proceeded in planning board review. We don't believe it should have even received preliminary approval, but those issues will be addressed at the planning board meeting if necessary. A moratorium now would allow these changes to happen in an expedited manner rather than the two to three years you are anticipating for comprehensive plan alignment. A moratorium will provide needed clarity and is ultimately better for the applicant as well so that they can move forward with decisions on how to develop their property sooner rather than later. We also want to address whether the moratorium should apply only to the rural zone or citywide. We in our legal council believe citywide is the better approach. The issue before you is not simply the physical location of one campground. It's the city's regulatory treatment of all large-scale commercial campgrounds. The current ordinance allows campgrounds in both rural and urban districts. Much of our urban zoning follows the Route 3 and Route 1A corridors to the west and north, which makes sense because those roads can handle larger vehicle traffic. However, campgrounds are not allowed in commercial districts, which represents almost the entirety of the Route 1 and Route 3 corridors on the southern and eastern end of Ellsworth. It does not make sense to preclude nearly half of the highway access in Ellsworth from campground development. So this illustrates the broader question that council needs to answer on a citywide scale. Where should large scale campground development actually go? If the city creates a moratorium only in the rural district, that regulatory question remains unresolved elsewhere in Ellsworth. A moratorium makes clear that we are asking for a citywide planning solution to a citywide regulatory question, not a rule aimed at one property or one applicant. However, If the council believes the moratorium should be limited to the rural district, we will also support that. Our primary concern is that the council enact a moratorium tonight so that the ordinance work can begin and occur before another large scale campground is submitted and reviewed under the current framework. If the council chooses that narrow approach, I ask that the geographic limitation be made explicit in your motion to not delay enactment. For your consideration, I've highlighted on here a possible motion. Basically, it's the motion that you have in your packets. And then it says, with the geographic scope of the moratorium amended so that it applies only to large-scale campground development within the rural district and that all references in the ordinance to development within the boundaries of the city of Ellsworth be amended accordingly. So I've provided that language if you need it. The proposed moratorium itself acknowledges that the comprehensive plan recommends more differentiated rural zoning. Perhaps the answer is separate rural residential and rural commercial areas. Perhaps it's something more nuanced. But those are the decisions that should be made deliberately and not through the precedent set by allowing a campground to be built adjacent to a neighborhood. So that's my technical stuff. Okay, so that was sort of me speaking on behalf of our neighbors and all the things that we have found in our legal counsel, and I now would like to speak more on a personal level. If at any point during this process you have said to yourself, what zone is my house in? Oh, thank God it's not rural. Or those poor people. Or could you imagine RVs on Bayside Road? Or I wouldn't want that in my backyard. Or that's a silly location. Or even should we think about buying that other piece of land so that this doesn't happen to us? then this is your opportunity to prevent the serious harm that could come to the neighbors of Allenton Avenue and Bayside Road and to all the other residents living in our rural zones. So I have to ask you, what side of Ellsworth's history will you be on? Will you be on the side of allowing the business interests of the wealthy few to supersede the rights of regular everyday Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth? Or will you be the council that finally ensures that our comprehensive plan is not just a fancy coffee table book, but something meaningful and legitimate to the future of our city? The councils before you obviously didn't take the comprehensive plan seriously. You've even acknowledged that our current ordinances don't even align with the previous comprehensive plan. So will you draw the line tonight? Will you define your service to Ellsworth by ending the cycle of apathy and inaction? I personally would love to see Bayside Road become a rural residential zone with single family homes or heck, even mobile homes because that ordinance is an example of the protections we would like to be afforded in this case. But no matter what I want, when the moratorium ends after public input, after the alignment, and after new ordinances are put in place, whatever the decision may be for Bayside Road, we will have to accept the new zones and new ordinances because you will have fulfilled your duty set out in the moratorium. You will have heard from all sides, analyzed and aligned with the comprehensive plan, and made informed decisions about how Ellsworth should move forward. We will no longer be able to make this argument for ordinance change. We are simply asking you to give us the time for that public discourse and citywide decision making to take place through a moratorium enacted tonight. Because otherwise, in just two days, a campground with 58 abutters notices, a project that could negatively affect hundreds of Ellsworth residents could be approved. You will have allowed the planning board to make that decision based on rules that the city already knows are inadequate and are already in the process of changing. Please be on the side of Ellsworth's history that protects your residents, your voters, your taxpayers, and families just like yours. This is where I'm going to start to cry.

Because for us, this isn't a question of principle or legality. This is a question of what comes next in our lives and livelihoods. This campground and its potential impacts have been the topic of conversation in our homes every single day since the first of us received those notices in May. They've been the part of every single neighborly interaction It's the pit in our stomach that won't go away. It's the high blood pressure at our latest doctor's appointment. It's the sleepless nights from the mines that won't shut off. It's the time taken away from work and our families to prepare for and attend these meetings. It's the difficult decisions about how to spend our money on signs and lawyers or on our families and futures. For those of us here tonight, for the dozens of neighbors watching virtually, which I don't know if there are, or unable to be here. And for the hundreds of other Ellsworth's rural residents who don't even know the city's rules do not protect them. And they may someday face commercial development in their own backyard. Your decision tonight is everything to us. Our fate is literally in your hands. Please do not forsake us.

Now, I'd like to give the developer an opportunity to speak. Likewise, 15 minutes, and then following the developer, if they'd like to speak, we'll open it up to public comment. Are you the developer, sir? It's your opportunity to speak, sir. You have 15 minutes if you'd like to address the council.

I'm not going to make 15 minutes. I'm going to end it, so this is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do. You folks may recognize that sign as you come into town. Yes, I am the developer. I don't like that term. Sure.

Could you provide us your name for the record?

Oh, I'm sorry. This is difficult for me. I'm sorry. My name is Richard Newman. I was born in Eastport, Maine. I went in the Marine Corps when I was 17 during the height of the Vietnam War. When I get out, I come back to Maine and eventually settled here in Ellsworth in 1984. This property we're talking about is family property. It's been in the family for over 50 years, a lot longer than Alton Avenue has even been there. You're gonna say, well, wait a minute, you just bought the property. What really happened is it got transferred from my daughter-in-law's father to me. And we are trying to save the homestead. And to do that, we've decided to have an RV park, a boutique RV park. It's a small one. It's only 28 sites. The biggest problem I see, they talk about the development and how it might hurt the environment. If a developer came in and put another Alton Avenue on that property, it would be all the same issues of...

It would be. You've asked... Excuse me, folks. I'm going to ask folks not to comment or to speak when we have presenters speaking, and ask that they provide you the same courtesy. Thank you.

If there was another 28 wells versus the two wells that we need, the one septic system that we need versus another 28 or 50 septic systems, the RV park has a much lower impact on the environment. The annual income of a RV owner is about $80,000. There's over a hundred... I'm sorry, my mind is going this way and that way and it's not going to be coherent for you. But you have over a hundred... You lost your way, I'm sorry. You have over a hundred... Short-term rentals. Short-term rentals. on the Bayside Road. These short-term rental folks also is about $80,000 a year income. But the short-term rentals add a lot more traffic to the road than a RV park. It adds even more traffic than a homeowner. An RV park, for 30 sites, it's only 90 trips for the 30 sites per day. For a home, a residence, it's over 200, and a short-term rental is 220. These are statistics put out by the...

I'll find it. It's here. Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Institute of Transportation. Something else I need to speak on is they said that we had clear-cut wetlands. The DEP came and asked if they could look at our property, and we went around. They took over a dozen samples of where we... reclaimed the original fields of that farm, and they could not find where we disturbed any wetlands.

They'll be sending us a letter.

Yeah, they'll be sending a letter, and it'll get to the city council as well. I'm sorry I'm not a elegant speaker, but I am passionate about this, I'm doing it to save the homestead and to create jobs for our grandkids to help teach them our strong work ethic. And possibly even in the neighborhood could be working there as well. It's really, their biggest complaint is the traffic. That road is a state controlled road. It's the state's responsibility to upgrade it, for the traffic. A lot of the traffic is local people going back and forth to work. It's not the tourists. It's not the GPS sending them down there. I've never had my GPS send me down the Bayside Road to get down to the island. The 28 RV sites that we're asking for is not going to be a burden on that road. And the only way that that road is gonna get upgraded is if they are more traffic. If we can't put the RV park in there in two years, in five years, there are gonna be more and more traffic on that road regardless of what you do tonight. That's not gonna stop the growth of Ellsworth and people trying to get around traffic. It's the local people using that road is why there's so much traffic on it. I think I'm done. But I do want to remind you that this is what you advertise coming into town. Can we see that? This is coming into town. I have talked, before I started this project, I talked to Ellsworth. They encouraged me to move forward with this project, to invest in Ellsworth. I'm just a small business person. We've put a lot of effort trying to bring this forward. Now you're shutting the door on us at the very last minute. This is not business friendly.

Sir, before you finish, I think we have a clarifying question regarding the numbers you provided us. Nancy?

I asked if you could repeat the traffic numbers that you gave for RVs, short-term rentals, and residential. I could not understand what you were providing or the source.

A 30 RV site has 90 trips a day. A residential home has 200 trips a day.

One single home?

No, for 30 homes. For 30 homes. That's mother taking the kids to school, coming back home. Going to soccer practice, coming back home. Father going to work, coming back home. That's where these numbers come from. It's not just one trip and that's it. It's the short-term rentals. There's over 100 short-term rentals, and there are going to be more. The RV park and short-term rentals is competition with each other. Airbnbs.

So what was the transportation figure for 30 short-term rentals? And could you say again the source?

210.

OK. And the source is international transportation something?

Yes. I'm going to give you this packet that we put in. It's much more clear than my speaking.

You're doing fine, I understand. But 210 per week per... No, no, 210 for 30 homes. For how often?

Per day? Over the 30, yes. Well, you know, that takes into consideration that, you know, the short-term rentals, they come in, then you have to have people come in and clean, then you have to have somebody come in and do the yard maintenance. These all add to those road trips.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Anything else, sir? They probably are, but I'm ready to sit down. I'm sorry.

Fair enough, sir. Thank you. Okay, so we've heard from the opposition group writ large and also from Mr. Newman, also the proponent of the project, and we'll call you the developer. so beyond that it's still a public hearing so anyone that would like to provide public comment that was not addressed through the comments of the opposition group's speaker or Mr. Newman now is your opportunity I ask that each person provide their comments in three minutes or less provide their name at the beginning and and address your comments to the council. Thank you.

MR. Good evening. My name is Al, and I live in the neighborhood directly affected by the proposed RV park. I'm here tonight to ask the council to support the proposed moratorium, and I want to be clear about something. I am not opposed to campgrounds, RV parks, tourism, or responsible development. I'm opposed to putting a use of this intensity in a location where it could fundamentally change the character, safety, and quality of life of an established residential neighborhood. Those of us who live here chose this neighborhood for a reason. It's quiet. It's safe. It has a residential character and a sense of community that is increasingly difficult to find. People know their neighbors, children and families use these roads, and there is a reasonable expectation that the essential character of the neighborhood will be protected as the city grows. An RV park completely changes that equation. Instead of neighbors and normal residential activity, we would have continually changing population of short-term visitors, additional vehicles and large RVs traveling local roads, more noise and lighting, outdoor fires and grills, generators, propane, and increased demands on infrastructure and emergency services. There are also legitimate environmental and public safety concerns that deserve serious consideration. we are already seeing periods of drought and elevated wildfire risk in Maine. Concentrating RVs, vehicles, campfires, propane, and other ignition sources next to homes and wooded areas introduces risks that should not simply be assumed away. Once a development is approved and built, those risks become something the surrounding neighborhoods have to live with permanently. And that's really why the moratorium matters. The moratorium is not a rejection of development. It is an opportunity for the city to make sure that its ordinances are now aligned with the comprehensive plan, which is an actual thing that does exist. Before allowing an RV park next to an established residential neighborhood, the city should have clear standards addressing appropriate location, density, setbacks and buffering, traffic, noise, lighting, fire protection, emergency access, environmental impact, and the effects on residential properties should be well known. We can always decide later that a particular development is appropriate. What we cannot easily do is restore the character and safety of a neighborhood if we discover maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I respectfully ask that the council support the moratorium. Take the time that's necessary to establish appropriate protections and preserve what makes our neighborhood a quiet, safe, and desirable place to live. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Pamela Faber and I own a home on Alton Avenue. My husband and I are relative newcomers to this area as we purchased our home in January 2023. Over the last few months, you've heard from members of the Alton Avenue community who came together for a common cause. They put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort to specifically articulate the reasons for our opposition to the proposed Anchor RV campground. Our passion and concerns about this matter is evident, and I'm very happy to have a home here and so proud to be part of this neighborhood. I would like to briefly speak about my personal concerns regarding the potential impact on the character of our neighborhood. Alton Avenue is a community where neighbors greet each other when walking on the avenue. We wave to each other when passing in our cars. Our children and grandchildren ride their bicycles in the street and play basketball and soccer in the front yard. It's where neighbors take pride in their homes. The only traffic on the avenue is from those of us who live there, family and friends who come to visit, mail delivery, and the occasional delivery of packages. It's a beautiful, quiet, and peaceful neighborhood. I grew up in the 1950s, watching TV shows like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave it to Beaver. This may not mean anything to the younger generation, but my point is this. They all had neighborhoods that remind me of the bucolic life we enjoy on Alton Avenue as it is today. This neighborhood is a hidden gem whose character we do not want to be altered by this type of commercial development in our own backyards. For this reason and all of the others that have been put before you, I respectfully request that you approve our request for a moratorium. This 180 day pause will give the council the time necessary to thoroughly consider this matter and potentially align the city ordinances with the comprehensive plan. Designations of rural residential and rural commercial sounds like a great place to start. In closing, If these issues are not properly addressed now, you may well be sitting in our chairs one day opposing a similar type of commercial development in your backyards. I sincerely thank you for your time and consideration.

Tiffany Gasper, Ellsworth. I'd like to direct you to page 12 of the packet or page 3 of the moratorium ordinance that was drafted. Section 3 on the moratorium of large-scale campground developments, it reads that the city hereby declares and imposes a moratorium prohibiting the development of any large-scale campground developments within the boundaries of the City of Ellsworth. No personal organization shall develop and operate a large-scale campground development within the City of Ellsworth. Now, I'm not opposed to having the moratorium, but I don't feel that that's fair for the four other campgrounds that exist within Ellsworth. You have some that range from 7.5 acres all the way to 114 plus acres. during the off time of year, which is coming up pretty rapidly, that's when they do all their expansions or development on their land that they own. So that really, you know, Bayside Road is different. It's not already established. These are already four pre-existing campgrounds that operate in Ellsworth for years now at this point. So with that being said, really, the moratorium language really should be changed to where it's any pre-existing or exempt because they have been in operation. I understand the new one that's different. It is in a residential unit or area. It should be looked at a little differently. These are already... campgrounds that have existed for years, if not decades, and doing that would inhibit any plans that they might have in the future of expanding their campground during this time period. Even though it's only 180 days, they might have already plans to add more tent sites or whatnot. So maybe just my suggestion would be to make that so it's fair to the people that aren't opening up a new one and just expanding what they already have.

Hi, I'm Kristen Braun. I live on Elton Avenue. I want to thank you all for giving us the opportunity to speak. I also want to thank Mr. Newman for his service to our country. In response to some of the things he said, the RVs versus house lots would be markedly different. And I'm sure you counselors would verify that statement with data. and I think that would be important. A lot of talk about traffic. Yes, traffic is a concern, but the size and weight of these RVs is a big part of that. The short-term rentals aren't going to bring RV-size traffic. Nor would house lots. Maybe more trips, but not those hulking vehicles. And my biggest worry is not the traffic, it's the environmental impact. So I just wanted to say those few things in response. And my original remarks tonight have a lot to do with the memo that was sent. It was part of the packet written by city planner Brittany Merrill. It's short-sighted and it demonstrates the kind of bias toward business owners that I've learned these past few months is very strong in our city government. As we've seen in just the past couple of months, a developer can get the go-ahead at the stage one planning board meeting even though the application is far from complete. The city is happy to give the developer a couple more months to get those things together that should have already been gotten together. The city can approve the proposal at that second meeting and without the opportunity to reflect on or research the new information presented at that second meeting, residents can't possibly have any impact with their three minute public comment. It would just be an issue of case closed and this practice is weighted heavily in favor of the business owner, the developer, and holds in little regard the resident. Also in her memo, Brittany Merrill sympathizes with the developer that so much time has been put into the application. And rest assured, we residents have sacrificed considerable time to protect our way of life as well. But Brittany didn't mention us in her memo, at least not in that sense. So in light of Councilor O'Halloran's comment last meeting, about the comprehensive plan is just that, a plan, I got thinking, well, what's the big deal? So I dug into that a little bit.

The state of Maine requires... You're past your three minutes. If you could conclude your comments, please. Okay.

So the state of Maine requires it. Land use rules, zoning, historical intent, plan for growth while protecting critical natural resources. That's exactly why we need to pause. The state of Maine knows it's important. You all know it's important. Timing rarely times up perfectly in life. That's why we have something like a moratorium. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Casey Stofflet. I live on Seavies Road. And today I want to talk about family. In some of the opening remarks, I heard a lot about developer friendly city. What about family and residential friendly? So I am a mom of a young boy. He's one years old. And I'm a military wife. In fact, being in the military is what brought my family here, which often means that I am all alone in my house with just my little boy. That's scary to know that we're going to have transient neighbors next to us that are going to be walking around our neighborhood because it's a safe place to walk with paved roads that is relatively handicap accessible. I think it's important to note that when I did move here, there were three houses for sale that were in our price range. We couldn't, didn't have the opportunity to rent and base housing was a four month long wait list. So Mr. Newman, when you say that the housing development, if we got another Elton, that it wouldn't be, that would be going through the same struggles, we're not, we need houses in Ellsworth. Housing is short here. We have military spouses from the Coast Guard that are coming here that are looking for houses for months. We have them basically having four kids in the barracks, which isn't safe for them either or necessary. We should have the housing available if we want to develop on that land. Why a campground when it could be houses for the residents? Anyways, that's my remarks. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Jones. Don't like public speaking, but I'm going to do it. I live on the Bayside road, about a half a mile from Elton. Um, being in real estate for 48 years, I don't know how this property was purchased. If there was an appraisal done, if it had been done, it would have shown the highest and best use of this land is residential, not commercial. And I have studied highest and best use of analysis in these 48 years. Everybody's spoken tonight the effect it's going to have on everybody, not just Elton Ab. My ancestors have been on the Bayside Road since the 1800s. I have hundreds of acres. Mine is staying in the wild for the animals. And we do need housing. in Ellsworth, desperately. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Amy Faber, and I stand here tonight opposed to the campground. I'm urgently asking this council to vote for the proposed moratorium. The moratorium is not anti-development. It's a vital measure for responsible governance during a major transition. Ellsworth is currently rolling out its new comprehensive plan. Page 131 explicitly warns that the City of Ellsworth must carefully decide how its land will be developed as there are far-reaching implications for both the community and visitors. The plan highlights our need to encourage sustainable growth and protect rural areas, allowing a high-density, full-hookup RV campsite squeezing directly against the neighborhoods on Alton Avenue completely bypasses that division. The current zoning ordinances are outdated. We want to welcome tourism, but not at the expense of year-round taxpayers. Our infrastructure is entirely unprepared. The intersection of Main Street and Water Street, it's already a congested nightmare. The safety issues multiply near the campsite. The stretch of Bayside, it's a long straightaway plagued by rolling blind hills, high speeds, and heavy commuter traffic taking the back way home off of the island. The road is falling apart and absolutely has no shoulder, forcing massive RVs and fifth wheels onto a crumbling, shoulderless road where vehicles are speeding over blind crests is a total safety hazard, directly contradicting the comprehensive plan's mandate to reduce corridor congestion. The plan also calls for increased walkability to expand locations in Ellsworth. There is nothing to walk to from that side of Bayside Road from a campground. They will have to drive. Persistent drought conditions are also a major concern. For the second year drought, it's a huge issue. Your own city website and Facebook post recommend that we modify our water consumption. This just happened a couple days ago. The city's own website reminding us that we're drawing from the same aquifer. Do we honestly believe that transient visitors and 28 massive RVs are going to monitor their water use while locals are under stress about our own wells? Furthermore, the planning process has severely lacked the integrity referenced in the city planner's memo. My first abutter notice was missed due to an error. The second was blurry and illegible on the back. You can have my copy and see what I'm talking about. Our community asked dozens of questions in July. and we are still waiting for answers. There are also no meeting notes on the website. So we have to prepare for a final meeting in two days with outstanding questions and unreadable information. How are we supposed to do that? The city planner's memo recommends three additional meetings after tonight. I ask the council, is that not a massive waste of city time, staff energy, and taxpayer resources to keep kicking the can down the road when an entire neighborhood is standing up telling you this project is fundamentally wrong and completely misaligned with the comprehensive plan? I just have one more paragraph. As someone who moved here from away, seeking quiet woods, wildlife, and a safe, peaceful neighborhood to raise my children, I know a seasonal commercial influx of noise and transient traffic is permanently going to alter our tight-knit corner of Ellsworth. Please vote for the moratorium. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Good evening. My name is Kim Smolich, and I've lived at 31 Outons Avenue for the past 28 years, which I feel like you all know at this point. I understand the concern stated by city officials that a moratorium could disrupt a process that is already underway. I respect the time and effort that the applicant, the planning board, city officials, as well as all of my neighbors have invested in this process. But I would ask you to consider this. What is more disruptive, to temporarily pause one application while the city reviews its regulations, or to allow potentially numerous campgrounds to be approved under regulations the city already knows need to be reconsidered? The city is telling us that campground standards should be a priority in phase two of the comprehensive ordinance review, but the timeline for that process could take 18 to 24 months. That's 18 to 24 months in which additional applications could be submitted and approved. And this isn't just about one campground. We are here because we believe the current rural zone ordinance does not adequately consider the impact large-scale development can have on the people who already live there. These are long-time tax-paying residents who chose a rural area because they value its rural character. They invested in their homes and their communities with the reasonable expectation that the city's land use policies would protect that character. We are asking you to think about what happens if the next campground is proposed next to someone else's homes and neighborhoods. And then another. and another. At some point, we are no longer talking about individual projects. We are talking about changing the character of Ellsworth rural zone, one approval at a time. A moratorium is not distrust of the planning board, it's not a permanent ban on campgrounds, and it does not mean development can never occur. It simply says, let's establish the right rules before we allow more development under rules we already know are going to change. The people who live in our rural zones deserve that consideration. You cannot put rural character back after it is gone. You cannot unbuild the campground, undo the traffic, turn off the lights, or restore the peace and quiet that drew people there in the first place. This is our opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive. Please enact the moratorium. Give the city the time it needs to get the rules right before more rural neighborhoods are changed, one approval at a time. Thank you again for your time.

Good evening, my name's Ian Braun. I live at 74 Alton Avenue and have for the past 24, almost 25 years. I'd like to thank the board for giving us this opportunity tonight to speak and continue working, or continuing to listen to us as we advocate for a moratorium. I'd also like to thank Mr. Newman for his service to the military. I have two points I'd like to make, well, maybe three, but I'll try to make it quick. First of all, I just want to reiterate some of my concerns from the last time we met and to clarify some things. At that last meeting, I said the same planner engineer, Mr. Salisbury, that's working with Mr. Newman, also worked with Mr. Ray to develop Seavey's lot. That lot at one point in time violated the EPA regulations. My concern over that isn't that that happened a while ago, is that the same planner, engineer, is responsible and overlooked items in that time period with his lack of or limited information provided at the planning board meeting. and thank you for updating us for the first time in two months on what the present condition of the land and the EPA is looking into. Past opposition of Alton Avenue development has been made several times. I'm not sure why, but maybe they were justified with the damage done to the wetlands in the Union Bay. Let's not repeat those mistakes. I'd also like to talk about that between the The statement that Planner Merrill made in the report here, the papers, that she anticipates limited rural, commercial, and recreational uses and identifies expanded recreation, a balanced tourism economy, and elsewhere as a recreation and vacation destination. I'd like to say that also on page 51 of the comprehensive report, the community has emphasized the desire to preserve rural character of the city and protect water quality, natural resources, including wetlands, vernal pools, aquifers, and wildlife habitat. They recommend limiting development in rural areas can help protect these resources. The future land use, also in the comprehensive plan, has made adjustments to existing zones to protect these resources. Alton Avenue would continue to fall into the rural area but it is now designated as a non-growth area and provide opportunity for low density residential family homes with open space for conservation of wildlife and limited non-residential uses. Growth areas should be combined to downtown, urban, and commercial areas. I'm taking local ordinances to design to meet these goals, I think is the intent of the future land use plan, and according to the comprehensive plan, should be completed by November of 2026. Whether that was feasible or not, I don't know, but the lack of an implementation committee to oversee this is concerning, that again, the city is ignoring the comprehensive plan and kicking the can down the road to play whack-a-mole, as one of the councillors mentioned last meeting.

Sir, you're past your three minutes. If you could conclude, please. Yeah, I will.

So I urge the city council to ensure environmental concerns, look at zoning as recommended, and provide assurance that RV campgrounds have the same ordinance and regulations when they abut a neighborhood. So not only are we certified business friendly, but at the other side of town, they were ensuring business, life, and leisure, and protecting all citizens and their rights, not just business owners. Thank you.

As you know, my name is Tim Mangan. I live on Marion way up in the neighborhood. I want to thank Mr. Newman for speaking tonight and thank you for your service from the film arena. Um, a moratorium is not forever. It is a temporary 180 day pause during which the city can evaluate these questions and revise the campground and zoning standards. At the end of that process there will be clearer rules for residential developers, residents, developers and the planning board. We recognize that this process takes staff time and legal resources. Because this issue is particularly pressing to us due to the anchor in application, neighbors have invested our own time and money in obtaining legal representation and developing proposed language to get this process started. We are not asking the city to do something It is not something it was not already planning to do. The ordinance alignment process was already going to take place. A moratorium will simply extradite the consideration of the relevant ordinances. The important thing to us is that the city takes this opportunity to pause and evaluate, listen to the public, and establish appropriate standards. So our request is straightforward. Please enact a moratorium before tonight. before you leave tonight. Please do not make the council's decision dependent upon the outcome of the planning board's decision. Please give the city the temporary time it needs to bring the campground regulations into alignment with the comprehensive plan. We believe the moratorium should apply citywide because the underlying regulatory questions is citywide. But if the council determines the rural district's appropriate geographic scope, we will also support that as a moratorium. We are not asking you to choose between development and residence. We are asking you to choose modern, thoughtful planning over antiquated rules. We are asking you to choose clarity over uncertainty. We are asking you to choose prevention over trying to undo a decision later. Most importantly, we are asking you to give Ellsworth the opportunity to finish the planning work that was already begun. And two more things. I heard you're trying to perfect your homestead. So are we. And in five years, it will still be a big deal, Mr. O'Hara.

Russ White, citizen of Ellsworth since 1963. I grew up here, and I was here until 1985 when I joined the service and was gone for 26 years. And when I returned, Ellsworth had changed drastically. A lot more development than there was when I was a kid growing up, when High Street wasn't one lane in either direction back then. But the thing that didn't change were the residential areas. The neighborhoods pretty much were all the same as they were when I grew up here. I'm for development. I don't want to see Ellsworth stop developing. But I don't want to see, an RV park in my backyard or anybody else's for that point. And I get what Mr. Newman's saying. I just think that the chance to sit back, look at what we've got for zoning, look at what we've got for ordinances, and do something that makes sense for everybody is the way to go. And I don't think the moratorium's going to kill development. I think it's just going to put a pause on it so that you guys can take a good look at it. And as they've said before, If they, after the moratorium, the board decides to go ahead and go forward with it, they accept it because you guys have done your due diligence and decided that's what's going to be. But I don't think there's anything wrong with taking 180 days to take a peek at it and see what we can do.

Good evening. My name is Cindy Avery. I live on Gameston Park Road. And I just support a moratorium because I don't feel that an RV park belongs in an established rural residential neighborhood. Thank you.

Clark Harris, the Bayside Road. You guys chose to sit up there and was elected to sit up there to serve and govern the community. We've had discussions that we should be talking to Mr. Newman and this and that. This is the first time he spoke in a public meeting other than the site walk when they said, is everything ready for September 2nd? We don't want any more surprises.

Thank you for your service.

Then we get into the last meeting. Councilman O'Halloran had a meeting with the Newmans and also some of the residents. This is where the transparency is. Public meeting, we're all here. We don't know what was said. So, you know, transparency is transparency. You've got to be there. But the crutch of this moratorium is the majority of you were here in November of 2024 when it was adopted. It was your responsibility to serve and govern. You were to serve to change the ordinances, to bring it in form with the comprehensive plan. that you spent millions, not millions, but thousands of dollars and hours creating. This is the site, the game plan of a football game or whatever you want to call it. It's the plan. Exactly as you said, Mr. Haller, it's the plan, not the ordinance. It's your job, the council's job, to make the ordinance. You have the plan. Make the ordinance. It didn't do it. you just drop the ball. So the moratorium gives you the chance now to drop back and get it all together. And then when it comes out, whether they go along with it or not, whether we change the rural district into different tiers such as Trenton does, but you gotta do your job. That's what you have to serve. Thank you.

Anyone else? Seeing none.

Well, I better act quick.

Seeing none, I'm going to close the public hearing. It is now time for the council to deliberate on the matter before us. So how would the council like to proceed? Councillor Martino?

I'd like just to address for a minute the comment made by Brittany, our city planner, us considering a moratorium or enacting a moratorium somehow suggests that we don't trust our planning board. I don't believe that's true. The timing of this looks like we are down to a last gun and that we have somehow procrastinated or put this off. But this is just the way the wheels of government work. It took a long time for these folks to get their objections in line and to get organized. It took time for us to hear about it. And so this happens to be coming down right before the planning board issues its decision. However, I believe that the perception of doing this before the planning board comes down one way or another is beneficial because it doesn't put us at odds with our planning board that way. It doesn't give the perception that the developer is one step closer and put the community in deeper one step into terminal anxiety over this because of the fact that this decision has been made. I think the point was made that this window of 45 days is a net in case you screw up. We're not screwing up by doing this at this point, and I think it's important that we do. But the other thing I do want to say is most of what I'm hearing here I agree with, you know, they're saying this is not necessarily going to stop RV parks. It's not going to stop development. It's a stopgap to get some time. But then occasionally there are individuals that have gotten up and spoken and said, we don't want this. And I've seen signs that say no RV park on Bayside. So I think we have to look at this with clear eyes and a reasonable outlook. And I think the only way that can be accomplished is to remove this pressure that all sides are feeling. And that's why I support this moratorium.

Thank you. I feel like I'm playing a little bit of catch-up, having missed the meeting two weeks ago. But I received my first email from a citizen from the neighborhood July 13th. I responded to that one. I responded to, I think I got some today. I didn't get to. But I've been responding to emails. I listened to the meeting you all had two weeks ago. I listened to a planning board meeting in August where this came up briefly. I've read the memos, I've read through the emails and I'm ready to weigh in on this. The question as I see it is do we need a moratorium because we have 2012 ordinances to address 2027 RVs and RV parks and one of the questions that's come to my mind is in 2012 did those ordinances anticipate the size and scope of the RVs that we have now and I don't know the answer to that but one thing that has stuck with me from the earlier meeting that I did attend was when someone said these new RVs are more like mobile homes than campers and that scale is interesting and I think worth worth the question that we have. I'm curious about the timing. I understand the push, the need for certainty before September 2nd, but I'm also hopeful that there will be questions answered at that September 2nd meeting. Just this afternoon, we got a packet so that we can see it was 85 pages long, so I didn't have a chance to read the full update. So I don't know at this meeting where this project stands, but again, the moratorium is bigger than one project. A question I have moving forward, we have a six-month proposed referendum. How fast can the ordinance be updated for the rural areas? There's talk, I don't know where 18 to 24 months came up, but is there, okay. Can it be prioritized that in six months we get this done? I think this is important. We also have the data center moratorium, but people are waiting for answers, both of the property owner, the developer, and the people in the neighborhood are waiting. And I think prioritizing this is going to be incredibly important. Let me track my notes here. And I think to build on something that Carol said, I believe that the public who is opposed to this development has worked in good faith and as promptly as they could. It came forward in May from what I understand is the first time they were aware of it. They raised questions in July. The planning boards outlined for them what they could do and if they wanted a moratorium they needed to come to us and they did. There has been a good faith effort here. In that when we're talking about the 45-day moratorium, I want to give a bit of history that I think matters. I was in the legislature when the law was passed. that limited retroactive, the retroactivity of moratorium to 45 days because they were happening more than a year beyond when a permit had been granted and there was an ugly fight. But what it came down to was what is reasonable and the idea that 45 days is enough time not to catch mistakes, but for the process to work. So, and again, I think I said this has happened in a timeframe that makes sense with the resources that the residents have available to them and the residents that the developer has available to him. These used to happen much, much later in the 45 days was seen as a balance of the rights of the developer to move forward with the project. and for the people to have time to respond to what they've seen. I have a question about the impact on the planning board meeting scheduled for September 2nd. I have it in my calendar. Before this meeting was scheduled, we were going to do something after that meeting because I think some of the questions would be answered. My understanding from listening to the recording of the other meeting was the attorney saying that a moratorium would not cease the process on September 2nd, but Charlie saying that it would cancel the meeting on September 2nd. And I'm wondering, as we move forward, which... did I misunderstand, which is the right process there. I think there's value in having the resolution and having answers that may and should come with the September 2nd meeting, whether it has to be then or in another venue. Oh, and also in the moratorium, Section 4 says that it would, my understanding of it is it would suspend the September 2nd meeting. But it's retroactive to July 20th, so I would look to the attorney to translate that for all of us. What we're dealing with here is the planning board is regulatory. I've heard it a little bit here tonight, but just to state it clearly, with all the respect for the planning board members and the staff, they are regulatory. Does the application meet the current rules? That's their job, not whether they like it or not, not whether or not the neighbors like it. Does it meet the rules? It's a really hard place to be for them. City Council sets policy, and one of our questions is, are the existing standards correct? And again, I go back to a 2012 ordinance for 2027 vehicles. I don't know the answer. I think I've hit on that. There's interesting points about I was originally supporting the narrower scope of the rural zones, but also I'm open to conversation with others on whether it should be citywide or within rural. And then I think two final points, maybe it's three that are more broad, but I think hopefully give context for this. The city has the business friendly sign. That was during Governor LePage's administration. It was a checklist you had to make. It's part of what we do. We are now the friendly city, meaning we are friendly to business, to neighborhoods, to people of all types, to the people who visit here. And so this is a balance. And I talked before about a balancing act. There's a balance of a seesaw where somebody loses and somebody wins. That's what a seesaw is. But there's also the balance that's what we do that I swear to God is spinning plates. And you've got one plate spinning and it's balanced and then you're going to pick up another one and you're going to spin it and balance it and that's our job is to make sure that everyone is balanced and everyone's got what they need. Very different and equally as hard to what the planning board does change happens Ellsworth has changed Ellsworth will change this council didn't create the change the planning board didn't this developer didn't it happens and our best bet is to engage in managing that change which is where the comprehensive plan comes in and I'm going to close I didn't know if I would need this or not I spent some time this afternoon organizing all of the reports I have, the housing study, the economic development plans, the comprehensive plan, and there was a comment that we've been ignoring the comprehensive plan. This is the implementation matrix guide for the comprehensive plan that shows every step, every recommendation in the comprehensive plan by category with who's going to lead on it, who's going to support, what the cost might be, how easy it is to implement, what's the timeline in order to prioritize how we move forward. This is the basis for the capital investment plan that we'll be taking up at our next meeting. meeting next couple of meetings i think um and it shows that the city is working to implement the comprehensive plan so please don't think it is a decorative volume to sit on the shelf we have copies of it we use it it's used to figure out where we're going to be devoting our time so i've raised a couple of questions i've offered my perspective i have um truly appreciated all sides and all arguments on this. If this were easy, we would have decided it already, but at this point, I'm looking at voting for the moratorium for the reasons we've outlined. We just need to make sure that we get this right and I want to put it to the city that we look at can we get that ordinance done as the priority in that six month period that we've got 18 to 20 18 to 24 months is reasonable to update all ordinances we've done phase one so phase two is next and I know we have reduced staff but that's going to be critical for this to make sense thank you

Any further questions, Nancy, that you asked that staff could answer right now?

I was hoping somebody was paying attention. There was questions about what happens to the September 2nd meeting, because I'm understanding different things, and then the likelihood of...

I might bring up our attorney, Tim Pease, and I'd like to... to have him maybe weigh in on an expectation of moratorium is passed tonight that negates the need for but that question also there's another question about the the existing, from one of the audience members, about the existing campgrounds that are here, would it apply to them? My understanding was that it wouldn't be retroactive to that they couldn't operate, even though they're larger scale, but I would assume that it would imply that they can't do any expansions. So I'd love to have you address that as well.

Sure, Tim Pease, city attorney. I'll take the last one first, because I had a chance to think about it when somebody raised that a few minutes ago. If you take a look at the draft moratorium, I drafted it in a way that you would say, and if you believe this, if you think it's true, that large-scale campgrounds, and that's defined as five or more lots, could have a very serious harmful impact on light, traffic, pollution, and so forth. I think you would have to be careful if you said that, but then exclude campgrounds that are in existence that might also expand. If you wanted to, protect those campgrounds that exist already and allow them to expand and not be captured by the moratorium. I think you'd probably want to do it from a geographic standpoint. You'd say large-scale campgrounds in this part of town. I don't know where those other four campgrounds are located, but that sort of moratorium to exclude those four would have to be something a little bit different than the way I've drafted it here because you can't make a finding that these are harmful except for the ones that are already in existence. That would be inconsistent. In terms of the retroactivity, and that's a good question, generally my understanding of the law, and I think it's accurate, is that if you want to have a moratorium that's retroactive, you can't just do a retroactive indefinitely in the past and look back for months or years. You really need to look back at the time that it was raised publicly. And so the first time when I look back that it was raised publicly in front of this body was on July 20th. It came up earlier in front of the planning board meeting. Some of the people that are here tonight, I was at that planning board meeting and I recognize that they asked about a moratorium, but I think in terms of fair public notice, you are the legislative body that would enact moratorium. So I put July 20th in there. Why is that important? Developers sometimes will raise vested rights issues and so forth. So you want to pick the earliest date that it came up because that's a fair time when the developers put on notice that a moratorium might come into effect. It's really when it's on their radar. So that's why July 20th is in there. I think I'm missing one of the other questions, Charlie.

The planning board meeting, I think, is scheduled for September 2nd. Would it even need to happen if a moratorium to consider this for approval or disapproval, or would that essentially be?

If you passed a moratorium tonight, I have it drafted, that would be it.

And I would note on that piece, and I very much understand the community and the council's desire to, you know, if there's a majority that feels like this project is essentially triggering a fast track of phase two of the ordinance reform, and thank you, Councillor Smith, for noting. We had phase one of the ordinances. The team has been hard at work with that. Our team, the project management team, Keeps a close eye on the comprehensive plan and aligns it to how we tiered our priorities at our recent workshop on discussions multiple times on ordinance reform. It had been noted about this process and Brittany's it. We also noticed we weren't going to do it with consultants. This time we were going to attempt to have a longer form. There really wasn't too much brought up by council or anybody else about that direction at that point. So in many ways for me, is this the project that triggers the we need to now fast track, something that we were already planning on doing with very limited staff resources in addition to planning for tonight. Brittany and Robert and our teams are also planning for a planning board meeting and which isn't just this project, but others, an incredible amount of growth in this city. The population growth in Ellsworth alone exceeds Bangor and Augusta combined. And we have much smaller staffs to manage this growth, to manage these processes. Our teams are at full tilt on a variety of areas. So it's a question. I think one of the reasons I was hoping, even though knowing that it does take more time, is to see the planning board's final approval or disapproval or notes so that our staff really can take into account what's been said here, our comp plan, the nature of this. This, to me, and maybe I can have our code enforcement officer talk a little bit more about you know, some of the language in the moratorium, some of the things that are noted that, and as you mentioned, the 2012 ordinance. This is the first time an RV park, I believe, has gone forward since that's been there. So unlike the moratorium on the data centers, this was anticipated at a time. This is the first time it's been tested. But how this project does or doesn't align in its final form is yet to be determined to weigh in on and extensively by staff. I don't know if, Robert, if you want to just note about campgrounds or ordinances, light, environmental, some of the things you've noted about how this applies.

Oh, sure. Robert Grant, the code enforcement officer. The draft ordinance, in my opinion, a little heavy-handed when it comes to all of the things it says that the city can't do, which is we may not be able to, let me get my glasses on so I can see a little better, may develop or produce mass quantities of septic wastewater that have the possibility of impacting wetlands, vernal pools, neighboring properties, as well as potential spillovers into the surrounding waters. Our campground ordinance already addresses that with 806.13, the toilet facilities. It requires that whatever the size of the campground is, that they have to have an engineered septic system that's designed to handle the campground there, the amount of water, waste water, and treat that waste water and that waste with the appropriate site of service waste water tools. That's all determined after planning board approval, but they don't get their permits to go forward until they have that designed. That's just one of the examples. You know, we have another stipulation in the campground ordinance about rubbish. They have to have appropriate rubbish containers that have closing lids so you can't have animals get into them, that sort of thing. That's all in the ordinance already. You know, I could go on. We haven't had a campground... come through and actually test this ordinance before either. So that's fair. But you can also use that as evidence that we don't have a lot of campgrounds that come to Ellsworth. This is the first one in, since 20, whatever it was, 2013, well before my time with the city, when the Universal Development, sorry, the UDL, the Unified Development Ordinance first came into effect, That's also the same time when we actually simplified our zoning rules. Before 2012, 2013, that time frame, we actually had a much more complicated zoning in the city of Ellsworth. We had three or four different rural zones. We had multiple commercial zones, multiple urban zones. And it was the comprehensive plan at that time that decided we should have a simpler zoning ordinance and now that the you know the the next the next one that we have the next comprehensive plan we have actually asked us to go a little more complicated so it's kind of a stop-start in that regard where we've been pulled in two different directions in two different you know subsequent comprehensive plans so I could keep going.

I think that's just one of the pieces on why it's difficult. This is an extraordinarily detailed areas for each one of these projects. This activity as a moratorium, this level of use, this type of moratorium really could be applied to the entire rural district, except for where it's a state law.

prohibits it, for example, housing. Housing is about the only thing you couldn't moratorium.

So essentially, this level of a moratorium and this justification for some of these pieces, it really could affect just about any type of use in this entire zoning area as a precedent for things coming forward. Now, maybe they will or won't be next. And it's worthy of discussion. So I think that, to your point, Councillor Smith, on can we in the next six months I think Bar Harbor's, I know I talked to our planner, and our economic development director is concerned that this won't be. I think in Bar Harbor, they're on one or two years on their hotel or lodging moratorium, and they extend this piece. And what that does for developers and the business community that, hey, is Ellsworth a consistent, reliable partner? We'd have to do it in six months, I know. And do we really tailor it in scope? Our attorney noted, are we going to boil the ocean? Are we going to fix this relative to RB campgrounds and consider do we want a much more restrictive campground ordinance? But also, let's talk a lot more about that campground ordinance. That's just one piece. There are plenty of areas relative to housing and other pieces where we may want to be less restrictive to encourage more housing in certain areas. So, you know, it will be kind of part of that as well, of how do we go super fast to just address this campground, or are we going to do a full ordinance reform that was really previously pegged at a much longer time horizon? I'm going to have to do a lot more analysis and research and moving around the priorities to get that done. But I think we would have to move within six months. We'd have to put this to the front of the line to get done. And I would note on the moratorium for consideration is just that if we're going to keep it to the rural zone or as it's currently written, which is the entirety of Ellsworth, that the council should discuss that or some piece of that as well.

Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Robert.

Thank you.

Further council comments?

Just to follow up with two points. What Robert's raising is that the campground aligns with the current rules. And it goes back to my question, are the current rules adequate? And that's why we're in this conundrum. I'm also struggling that we're talking about this moratorium as though it's outside of acceptable process. And it's not. That when a developer is looking at a project, they know that there is the possibility of a referendum within 45 days after it's been approved. And that should be factored into the thinking beyond the 45 days because of the law that passed 16, 17 years ago now, something like that. It won't at that point, but this is part of the process. The referendum, the vote on a moratorium is part of the process we're talking about. It's not an imposition to it. So the question is, do the current ordinances from 2012 provide adequate protections for 2027? And can we update the ordinance? Or what do we need to do to fine tune it so that in six months we've got a resolution? for the property owner and for the neighborhood so that they know what they're doing because extending it 18 to 24 months is not acceptable so those are I guess that the question is a philosophical one does it we don't know and again I don't know if anyone knows whether where they fit and where they don't but the key is can we get this done and I realize moratorium can be but for that six month target, can we, what does it look like to be able to do that? And is it narrowing it to rural or to rural in this quadrant of the town so that we can focus on it?

Any other councilor comments regarding this matter? Councilor Halloran.

Go.

This is really a situation that is difficult for everybody in this room. But at the end of the day, we have someone that has bought a piece of property and I don't hire a professional to guide through the process. And we start the process. I don't know if there was any communication with the city planner or code enforcement in this application process or not. Could we speak to that? Was there any communication prior to this with city hall about this project?

So typically we ask applicants to come in for a pre-application meeting that can range from any time at all. These guys to come in for a pre-application meeting a few months before they applied. Yes, there were some.

And were they given any direction by the city?

Yeah, we used the current ordinances. And we make sure to highlight any missing information, anything that we think the planning board would want to see to make their determination, just review the project. Typically, it's code, planning, and fire sometimes if they're available. So we look at those basic things before we take it to sometimes we will do a full TRT for a pre-application meeting. TRT is a technical review team, which includes Public works, water, wastewater, all the fire, police, all the department heads. I believe we just did a smaller pre-application meeting. The applicant is a frequent, the applicant representative is a frequent flyer through planning board, so he's very aware of the processes. I will note he initially submitted the application before the July 1st changes, back in, for the MAGE planning board, but because of a misabutter noticing, we had to table the project and re-abutter. So this has pushed this project into like a gray or between ordinance adoptions. So it does make it for a little bit messier of a process.

And who, how did this error happen?

It was the program we used to generate the abutter's notices. There was a recent land split, and it had not been updated. So when the abutter's notices property was selected, it selected the adjacent one and not the full 52 site one. And once the mistake was noticed, we put a pause on the project, which unfortunately was the same day as the planning board hearing, or else we could have maybe corrected the issue sooner.

There was a human error.

Yeah.

Okay. And I guess where I'm going with this, and it's not a popular stance, and I fully expect bullets to fly. However, I am hung up. Let's talk a little bit about, I'm no fan of moratoriums, okay? But I'm hung up a little bit here with the fact that we have somebody that bought property and hired a consultant who brought it to City Hall and is experienced and was following the then rules to go through the process. And now we're in the process and we don't like the rules and we're noticing a hole And with all due respect to everybody in this room, we're noticing a hole after the process has started. And to me, It's troublesome when we change the roadmap in route and it's a real troublesome spot with me that this developer decides to do this project and he's going through the proper channels at City Hall and now all of a sudden we want to change the rules. Maybe we should have changed the rules prior to this.

Folks, folks, public hearing is closed. I ask that you respect that and allow the council to deliberate. Thank you.

And to continue, changing the rules midstream is just not fair and sends a bad message. to prospective people in Ellsworth. Now, I don't expect anyone in this room to like this comment, but it's just a comment. I think that, you know, if we all board an airplane and go to headed to California and a whole bunch of us decide we want to go to Guatemala, the pilot would probably say we're going to Florida And the people that want to go to Guatemala will have to go on to Guatemala. But we started this process to go to California. And wherever it wants to be. But we can't change in flight. And that's where I'm hung up with this. That we start one process and now we're going to change the rules. Now I'm sympathetic to you not wanting it in your neighborhood. But at some point, where does this stop? How are we going to not change the rules on the next guy? Therefore, I'll be voting against the moratorium.

Can I just ask a question? I'm not making a comment. When did this process begin? Because we did not get a voter's notice until May. So we were not able to propose it if it was done sooner.

Let's continue with the council deliberation. I don't want to have a question and answer back and forth between the folks here. We're in the public hearing. It has been closed. It is now council's deliberation. We can note that question, but I think it's important to continue our deliberation through the normal course. Any other councillors like to provide comment? Councillor Smith?

This is something I have wrestled with as absorbing information and because I do trust staff and I do trust the planning board but for me such a big gap has been exposed that I do support the moratorium and a big part of that is the gap with zoning And I do also in particular support restricting it to the rural areas just to get it a little more surgical. And we do need time for this discussion and to do this process right. And that is currently where I stand.

Thank you. Councillor Smith. Councillor Martin.

I would also like to suggest that if we're going to delve into the theoretical analogies, that due diligence on the part of anyone starting a business or looking to advance a business plan Mike could conceivably include looking to see when the ordinances were updated last, if there's an issue with ordinances in the town, which has been... This has not been a secret that we have these revisions to make. I think casting... If someone is sophisticated enough to go to advance this kind of a business plan, this kind of a business venture, as a babe in the woods who's getting run over by us changing our mind midstream, is a little jaded, a little tilted. I'm hung up on that. Councillor White?

I think I made it clear last time that I was going to be in favor of the moratorium, but I do want to thank staff and the planning board. You guys do such incredibly hard work. I was really lucky to go in and hear your opinions on the matter and get your, not only opinions, but the rules and how it all works and the past zoning issues that we did have and how we've made the corrections and that we want to. It's very complicated. We are a very, our staff are incredibly burdened by the work that they have to do every day. So, you know, this process is slow and it's not a surprise I think to many of us here that it's taken us this long to get to this point and this is why this is coming before us because we weren't able to address a lot of the issues in our ordinances. And I appreciate this process allows the public to come here and actually speak out against projects, not just this project, any project that's happening in the city, and that we as a council, as policymakers, are listening to the public. I feel like we have been incredibly business-friendly in Ellsworth, but we might not have been very residentially friendly. And our residents make up... I would assume the majority of our populations here in Ellsworth. And it's really important that our residents have a say in how Ellsworth grows and how it's developing and what it looks like into the future. It's beautiful out there. I think it's something to note that when you cross over the Trenton, Ellsworth-Trenton line there, I don't know how many miles down the road it is. Two. Two? two and a quarter, that an RV park would not be allowed just to, but an RV park would not be allowed two and a quarter miles down the road. So it's something that Trenton took pretty seriously on protecting that area. I think Ellsworth, in my opinion, should probably follow suit there. I think our rural zoning is definitely too simplified And to Nancy's point about where our ordinance was looking at 2012 RVing and not 2027 RVing, just I quickly looked up are these RVs, these large RVs fully loaded could be up to 14,000 pounds in themselves, not the car that they're towing behind. That's a significant amount of weight to a state road that we all know gets There's no time on them when these roads are getting fixed. We are clearly going through that process right now with Bayside Road from Water Street to Beachland, where we have to chip in half of the amount of money for this project in order to upgrade that road to the point it needs to be upgraded because the state cannot afford or doesn't want to. I'm not sure exactly what the state stance is here, but it is not a priority to... to update these roads. And so I think, you know, we could see further deterioration on the Bayside Road even without these RV parks going on. So I feel like the traffic is one of the least effective ways to argue this, but it is something to note because we are all affected by this and we are beholden to the state on that road being maintained. But I will be supporting a moratorium tonight. And again, I just want to thank staff and the planning board. I do not discount the job that they're doing. I believe they're all incredibly professional and are upholding our ordinances as they should be. And I think it's a policy issue here in Ellsworth and not really the planning board's job or work that they're doing that's the issue. I think it's on our policy.

THIS IS AN EASY DECISION TO MAKE. AND I'M NOT GOING TO GO WITH THE NOT IN MY BACKYARD TYPE SCENARIOS AND STUFF LIKE THAT. AND I HAVE A GOOD SUSPICION THAT POSSIBLY IN 2012 Basically, it was a rubber stamp from the year prior, too. Okay? Because I keep hearing, kick the can down the road. That's one of my phrases, so. But I think there should be a balance on where things go. All right? If... You have a parcel of land and you wanted to do something with it, but yet you try to be a good neighbor to everybody. And I want to thank you for your service, from one veteran to another, okay? But there's things in, I live in the, I live right downtown in the urban, and there's things that affect me. Things shouldn't be happening in certain places, okay? I can walk to Main Street. I appreciate the neighborhood, and I appreciate the fact that everybody here is really a neighbor. I know everybody. I get along great. That's what my read on this is. I'm employed by RF Jordan, and I do various things, and one of them is I drive commercial truck. Yes, from Trenton down through to Bayside Road, you've got to use a level of common sense driving those big trucks. Sometimes we go through there empty, sometimes we go through heavy. but we try to do our darndest to drive the trucks safely. I have experience with RVs, and I've witnessed some of these people driving these RVs, and your concerns weigh very heavily with me, okay? Some of these people have just a regular driver's license. And they're towing something that really could be a sex object. And when they get in an accident, yeah, someone's not walking out good. Okay? But just because the road's posted 45 doesn't mean you should drive 45. Just because the road's posted 55 doesn't mean you have to go 55. You're supposed to maintain the control and be safe about everybody around. I would like to thank the city staff, the city manager, code enforcement, all the city employees that have been involved with this project. I respect the decision of what the planning board would come out to be, and I believe that I'd like to really hear about the outcome their decision would be based upon the law. Planning boards just deal with the law. We do the law. We implement the ordinances. We set the policy.

Councilor Smith? This is on a different tangent, but the more I'm sitting here, the more I need to ask those of us on council to choose our words carefully. Councilor O'Halloran, your choice of the phrase, expect bullets to fly, has hit me harder than... I expected it would. I am one of five at this table who earlier, just a few months ago, were subjected to three calls on social media to hang the traitors. And we can't control what the public says, but I would ask each of us to avoid using language such as expect the bullets to fly. I know that you weren't going to be the one flying them, there is damage done when that kind of language is directed at people, and I'm going to ask us to be thoughtful in the words that we choose. Thank you.

I don't understand, but maybe I don't need to.

Just accept what I've asked, I think. Thank you.

Any further comments from council on this matter? I plan to vote against the moratorium, not because I don't sympathize with the folks here tonight, not because I don't live in a rural zone myself, but I plan to vote against it in part because I believe the planning board process should play out. And also, you know, in my day job as a municipal land use attorney, I work with a number of municipalities and I've worked on a number of projects and I have a lot of experience with moratorium, moratoria. And based on the planning department's memorandum and analysis and for the reasons stated in At the very least, I think we should wait until the planning board has an opportunity in two days to deliberate on this. At the same time, if a majority of council seeks a moratorium, I certainly will respect that. There's plenty of good reasons to have a moratorium here that have been vocalized tonight. So this is a hard one, and I think I really do commend everyone for the opposition group in the neighborhood for what you've said and done. It's hard, and I do try to empathize with all of you. This could happen next to me, but I also believe that Our ordinances are in place. Mr. Newman purchased the property with the understanding that he could develop a campground, and I believe that ultimately the ordinances as they speak, and I haven't heard anything that This is not a data center. This is not something that our municipality has never dealt with. We have four existing RV parks. I have real concerns about a moratorium that would apply to the existing parks, as was noted here tonight. If they would like to seek an expansion, we've now caught them up in a moratorium, and I've heard nothing about any negative impacts from the other RV parks that are operating in Ellsworth. So I have concerns about casting the net so broadly to impact existing businesses. So it's a hard one. I could have gone either way, but ultimately I've planned to vote against the moratorium. City Manager. The public hearing is closed, ma'am. Thank you. City Manager.

I sometimes find myself in a tea reading position. And I think the legal counsel has noted on one of the questions regarding the sort of carve out for existing not being a recommendation due to the fact that it would essentially de-justify the reason for it in general, that you can't say, well, one campground's not allowed to or proposed coming forward to do this type of thing, but the ones there can't expand, and we're not going to have that policy. So I believe that the moratorium, as edited by our legal counsel, stands on that front. I think the last remaining question, I know Councilor M. Smith brought this up relative to if a majority wants to move forward with the moratorium, if they'd like it to apply to the rural zone narrowly, which our attorney can maybe provide an option on how they would have to recommend an edit, or if they'd like to keep it as a majority view as written and apply to the city at large. That's one of the outstanding questions I have as to how we would move that forward.

Councillor Smith?

Well, I'm just wondering what language would be appropriate for that, or there's two things. In order to get six months to be a reasonable time, does that, does it help to save for rural? But what district are the other campgrounds in? It may not serve that secondary role. The other thing is to clarify in sections... Section 3 of the moratorium language if it's not clear there It says no personal organization shall develop or operate a large-scale campground development within the city Is there something in that sentence? That would clarify that if there were small changes or additions for the existing ones, that's not The intent

I'll leave it to legal counsel maybe to provide a...

I think that would be a great idea. Clarification.

Tim Pease, city attorney. So is the question, could existing campgrounds that would be considered large-scale campgrounds propose some changes and alterations that you would not want to have captured up in the moratorium?

It's difficult not knowing if anything is planned. And again, if we're looking at six months. Yeah.

That's the challenge with moratoriums. That's the rub. It's trying to define it in a way that makes it so it's legally defensible. I think, as I mentioned before, If you could have it citywide, I think you could limit it to the rural zoning district. That would be an easy change to make.

Do you know if that exempts the other, the existing campgrounds?

I think if you wanted to, I think you could address it from a scale perspective. So maybe large-scale existing campgrounds couldn't expand by more than X percent, something along those lines.

It just seems to me that we're taking the butterfly effect to extreme and what's going to happen if we do this. We can't anticipate every potential movement on the part of businesses that aren't even involved here or have given no indication.

Well, I just want to make a comment on that. A moratorium is addressing a situation where existing ordinances aren't adequate or there's a harm to the public. If you keep narrowing that down to it's a moratorium on Tim's property, that becomes harder to legally defend. So that's why we're trying to identify the issue, which is, is it campground regulation in the rural zone right now? And that's what you want the city planners and leaders to focus on for coming back to you with new regulations. So I would encourage you to try to keep it at that level, identify the larger problem, and address it that way.

Councillor Shea?

I concur with what Tim, the city attorney, is saying. If you just pick rural, it's just you're picking on one bunch. It needs to be CityWalk because there's a campground just up over the top of Bridge Hill.

Okay.

that, you know, if there's another one that's going to be across the road or down on Christian Ridge Road or, you know, there's a lot of areas that the city also is combined. You know what I mean? And we want to make it so that it's legally defensible. So you need... Going around changing... who and where, if you do it citywide.

I was going to say, just to clarify, Pat, your position is if the ordinance is adopted, that should be adopted as written to apply citywide and to existing businesses as well?

No one's getting singled out.

Okay.

And... Some of the things in the ordinance that current could be adjusted for setbacks. It shouldn't take two years. It should take... There's no reason why we couldn't get it done in less than six months.

I would be okay with citywide. Citywide, okay.

I would be, too, and just a quick look on our map and Google Maps, our zoning map. We have one that falls in the urban zone, one that falls in our rural drinking water, which I'm actually, can they even do anything anymore at that branch lake? Are they, because we don't allow RV parks in our rural drinking water, are they just grandfathered in and stay at the size that they're at? So they're already exempt from, sorry, I just want to clarify that since you're here.

Probably they're legally non-conforming now, so probably they wouldn't be allowed to expand.

And then the rest fall in rural.

Correct.

Yeah, we do have them kind of in multiple zones.

Okay, so restricting it to rural doesn't, it may narrow the focus of the ordinance, but not to address whether or not that's an issue. Yeah. So citywide.

Yeah, I would be in support of that, and I would, this, we're saying this because six-month, we feel, we want, this to happen in six months. I don't think it's as complicated, I hope, as the Bar Harbor hotels and lodging where they're up years, but I don't know.

I think the attorney and I have discussed this. I think my next step With staff, too, we can't give an exact time frame or analysis, but we'll probably come back in a pretty short order. I'll really think about this in our current work plans. We have a project management team tomorrow. This will probably be the only item on that for discussion if one were to move forward. But one of the first things that come back, probably through workshop or others, is are we, if a majority were to move forward with a moratorium, basically I think that the This is pointing out a hole in our ordinances, or that is the opinion of the majority of council, and that the hole needs to be addressed. And then I think the big question for us will be kind of twofold. One, is it narrow in scope and it's a hole relative to RV campgrounds that needs to be rectified in these zones and to move forward? Or is it a larger... um you know full analysis of all of our because because the same type of rubric applied to this project and in fact we do have specific rules on so if the intention is to restrict those campground ordinances even further um there is a whole range of of uses, you know, incredible range of uses that would be in this as well. So if we want to basically, the intent is to preserve rural characters of neighborhoods like this, certain setbacks that wouldn't just apply to an RV park, but a whole range of recreational or non-residential uses. Residential is probably the only thing we couldn't limit, but we'd really want to start workshopping that in council and how big of an effect on, the rural zone is our largest zone, so effectively you'd be taking a lot of properties that people own And it could either be that you can't do RV parks, at least restrict them more than it's here, or anything that could satisfy that type of environmental impact at that level that's not housing. So those, I think that would be kind of the immediate first step. We'll come back to you all with an analysis of fast tracking phase two of the ordinance review process, and then how much we want to go into the fast track it so that we can really discuss our current ordinance on campgrounds and how restrictive that the council would want to make that as a policy or is that sort of a use case that we're also going to apply to a restriction of a whole range of uses of the entire rural zone. So I think that'll be probably stage one of workshop and discussion with council on where we're going and potentially the formation of a maybe an implementation committee to kind of start moving this forward from the community perspective so that it's not just, you know, staff has pretty limited bandwidth. They're already trying to keep up with all the other development moving forward so that we could really establish a process on how narrow or how broad we want this review to move forward and then the mechanisms and timeframes that we'd want to have council and community and feedback to kind of move forward. So there's a lot of questions that we'll have to figure out process-wise on that.

Charlie and to even get more narrow than that we don't even know how we want to adjust the campground ordinance right now so we would need workshops to do that so he Trent I would I wouldn't want to over promise that we could turn this around that quickly because we haven't done any work on it at all yet so

So, Council, I think we've had a pretty robust discussion. Would anyone like to make a motion? Councillor Martin.

I'd like to make a motion. I move that the Ellsworth City Council enact the proposed City of Ellsworth Moratorium Ordinance large-scale campgrounds as presented in the August 31, 2026 City Council Packet.

Second?

Second.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Further discussion?

I have a question. I just want to make sure that this, what Tiffany pointed out there, number three, moratorium on large-scale campground developments, says no person or organization shall develop or operate. So does that mean... Did we already, I'm not sure if I understood this clearly, but it doesn't mean that they can't operate, existing ones that can't operate.

That's correct. The 45-day clause, those other ones would be well beyond any review of that, but if they came forward to expand or change use of this, they would be in a moratorium of this type.

Thank you. Correct. Okay.

I got a nod from our attorney.

Any further questions or discussion on the motion on the table? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Gays carried. Final matter on the agenda, adjournment.

Make a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All those in favor? I have a question. Is it about something I'd want on tape? What's that?