City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, it is 6 o'clock. I call this monthly meeting of the City Council to order. Next on the agenda, the Pledge of Allegiance. Agenda item number three, rules of order. This council has adopted Robert's rules of order and we will proceed through this meeting accordingly. Agenda item number four, adoption of the Ellsworth City Council minutes from the following meetings. June 15th, 2026 regular meeting and July 7th, 2026 special meeting. How would the council like to proceed?

Move to accept minutes as written. Second. Second.

Any further discussion from council about the minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor, unanimous. Agenda item number five, presentations of awards. We were going to present 30 years of service to Frank Pearson, but Frank came down sick tonight, so we're gonna wait to do that one, because 30 years is a pretty big deal. But we do have a proclamation here to read tonight. celebrating the 100th anniversary of E. L. Shea, Incorporated. Now, I believe we had some representatives here, our state reps that may want to speak to this, and I'm happy to allow you folks to go first before we do the proclamation. Please approach the DS and provide your name for the record.

Hi, really an honor to be here this evening to recognize this phenomenal company and a great amount of years in business. I'm Nicole Grahowski, state senator for most of Hancock County.

Russ White, state representative for Ellsworth, Waltham, Fletcher's Landing.

And we have here a proclamation from the state, which I will read. It's probably your preference. Be it known to all that we, the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, join in recognizing E.L. Shea of Ellsworth on the company's 100th anniversary. We extend our congratulations and best wishes, and be it ordered that this official expression of sentiment be sent forthwith on behalf of the 132nd legislature and the people of the state of Maine.

Well, we've got another proclamation for you. It's a big deal. Whereas EL Shea Incorporated, founded in 1926 in Ellsworth, Maine, has proudly served the community for 100 years, building a legacy of quality, integrity, and dedication that has become a cornerstone of the region's business community. And whereas through a century of growth and innovation, EL Shea Incorporated has remained committed to excellence while adopting to the changing needs of its customers, contributing to the economic vitality and continued development of Ellsworth and surrounding communities. And whereas as a family-owned business spanning multiple generations, EL Shea Incorporated exemplifies the enduring values of hard work, community stewardship, and exceptional service, inspiring other local businesses through its longevity and commitment to excellence. And whereas the company's success is made possible by the dedication of its owners, employees, customers, and community partners, whose collective efforts have strengthened both the business and the community it proudly calls home, And whereas the centennial of EL Shea Incorporated represents a remarkable milestone worthy of celebration, honoring 100 years of service, leadership, and lasting contributions to the City of Ellsworth and the State of Maine, now therefore be it proclaimed that the City of Ellsworth hereby recognizes and it celebrates the 100th anniversary of EL Shea Incorporated and extends its serious congratulations on this extraordinary achievement, and expresses its gratitude for the company's century of dedication, service, and investment in the Ellsworth community. We have further proclaimed that all residents are encouraged to join in recognizing this historic milestone and celebrating the legacy and continued success of EL Shea Incorporated as it embarks on the second century of service. In witness whereof, this proclamation is presented the 20th day of July, 2026.

Oh, wait.

Never mind.

But wait, there's more. I've got to sign it first, then.

Okay. Nice start.

Okay. And with that, we'll move on to agenda item number six, the city manager's report or deputy city managers.

Good evening. It's hard to follow that one. Um, Charlie is unfortunately, um, experiencing some airline delays in his trip home from his family vacation. So he has asked me to deliver his, um, city manager report. So I'll do my best. Um, it's been a really busy couple of months for the city and we certainly have had our share of unexpected challenges. We've also made some tremendous progress across the organization. Ellsworth continues to grow. New housing, new hotels, new businesses, increased traffic volumes, and new visitors. And with that growth comes increased demands on our infrastructure, our public safety departments, and the services we provide every day. All of these increased demands continue to put pressure on an organization that remains relatively small for the community and region we serve. What continues to impress me most is our staff. No matter what comes our way, our employees continue to show up, work together, solve problems, and keep projects moving. Staff have also been managing several complex and unanticipated matters that have required considerable time and attention. There is a tremendous amount of work that is happening behind the scenes that often goes unnoticed but is making a real difference in our community. While the last several months have certainly kept all of us busy, staff across the organization to continue to move important projects forward while providing the day-to-day services that our residents rely on. And I'd like to highlight just a few of those items of work. Our public works continues its road maintenance, construction, downtown support, and seasonal operations following a successful creation of a new courthouse road. And the groundbreaking, which we recently celebrated with the state judiciary and other dignitaries, representatives were there. It was a really great event, beautiful weather. The Parks and Recreation Department and Public Works continued improvements to the downtown. They opened the splash pad on schedule and are advancing new online registrations, reservations, and work management systems. Staff across administration, finance, assessing, planning, code enforcement, IT, the clerk's office, and the tax collector's office have worked together to strengthen our tax commitment and billing processes. We're going to hear more about this later, but tax bills are on track to be mailed out on time this year, well in advance of the 30-day due date. And we believe that this has not happened for probably six years. One of the projects I'm most proud of is the capital improvement plan, which we're also going to spend some time on tonight. Every department head contributed to developing a comprehensive inventory of the city's infrastructure, facilities, equipment, vehicles, and long-term capital needs. Tonight's discussion is another important step as we begin prioritizing those projects and developing a sustainable funding strategy. Staff continue to modernize our procurement process, improve contract management, strengthen our financial practices, and update many of our internal systems. These improvements position us for better management of increasingly complex projects and pursue millions of dollars in outside grant funding. Economic development continues to move forward with attainable housing, commercial investment, infrastructure planning, and two new tax increment financing districts that will help us invest in Ellsworth's future. Our one-person communications department, led by Amy Kenny, continues to do an extraordinary amount of work to keep the community informed and tell Ellsworth's story. Amy manages the city's social media, press releases, websites, project updates, emergency communications, media relations, photography, branding initiatives, and coordination across departments. She has also developed a growing series of blog articles that provide residents a more engaging and in-depth look at city employees or major projects, new initiatives in the city, and new initiatives in the city. This work is especially important in a time when misinformation can spread quickly and the steady positive work happening throughout the city might go otherwise unseen. The library and its trustees continue to advance the proposed library renovations and expansion, including pursuing significant federal support with the backing of the city council and the members of the main congressional delegation. The Water Department continues to modernize its operations, strengthen staff training and certifications, and a plan for a future water treatment facility that is expected to represent an investment of more than $20 million in the future of Ellsworth. Police, fire, and dispatch continue to manage growing call volumes and unprecedented demands that come with serving Ellsworth and the surrounding region. Their professionalism and readiness remain essential as the community grows. We are excited to welcome Chris Namath as Ellsworth's next finance director. Chris brings municipal experience, significant private sector financial leadership, strategic expertise, and a strong commitment to public service. He will join an excellent finance team and provide leadership in one of the city's most critical departments. And before I move on, Charlie asked me to acknowledge that we missed the mark on a couple of things, the cemetery mowing and the crosswalk striping before Memorial Day. Those delays were a result of the changing in our procurement process. And while the transition created challenges this year, we are confident it will position us for better results moving forward. And we should have done better this year on that one. And I also wanted to provide a couple timely community updates. First of all, nomination papers will be available this Thursday. Making sure I get the date right. FOR THE CITY OF ELSWORTH CITY COUNCIL, SCHOOL BOARD, AND THE BOARD OF LIBRARY TRUSTEES. LOCAL GOVERNMENT IS STRONGEST WHEN QUALIFIED, THOUGHTFUL, AND COMMUNITY-MINDED RESIDENTS ARE WILLING TO STEP FORWARD AND SERVE. ANYONE INTERESTED IN THIS SHOULD CONTACT THE CLERK'S OFFICE, AND THEY'LL GIVE YOU ALL OF THE ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS AND DEADLINES. SECONDLY, I WANTED TO FOLLOW UP ON... Recently heard concerns about the plow truck rollover near Branch Lake Watershed. Staff completed the cleanup earlier this month, including removing the remaining impacted soil, restoring the area with seed and mulch. The release was approximately two gallons of engine oil, and it remained on land, and it did not meet the main DEP reporting requirement thresholds. We appreciate the residents bringing the concerns forward, and we always take the protection of Branch Lake and our drinking water very seriously. And lastly, as previously mentioned, in an effort to better serve the public, the city is in the process of relocating all customer-facing services to the first floor of City Hall. This includes code enforcement, assessing, and planning, and while the Finance Department and City Manager's Office will have been relocated upstairs to the second floor, This relocation improves accessibility by placing departments most frequently visited by the public on the first floor, making it easier for residents to access the critical services provided by City Hall staff. Once the relocation is complete, we will update the signage and let the public know via our website and social media. Ellsworth is growing, and with that growth comes opportunities and new responsibilities. The work we're doing today, whether it be planning for infrastructure, improving customer service, or strengthening our financial practices, is building the foundation for Ellsworth's future. What gives me confidence isn't the work itself, but the people doing it. Every day, I have the privilege of working alongside employees who care deeply about this community. They show up, they support one another, they solve problems, and remain committed to serving our residents. We won't always get everything right, We may fall short, but we'll own it and we'll learn from it and continue improving. That's the kind of organization we're building. On Charlie's behalf, thank you to the council for your continued partnership and support. Thank you to our department heads for your leadership, and thank you to every city employee for your professionalism, dedication, and teamwork. We are fortunate for this exceptional team, and the best is yet to come. And that concludes the city manager's report.

Thank you, Sarah. Committee report agenda item number seven. Councilor Smith.

Um so there is a there's still a vacancy for the rec commission so if you are interested in helping improve recreation recreational opportunities all across Ellsworth you can get involved there and there is a vacancy on the Harbor Commission as well. These are all areas where people can get involved, and that's just the report.

Great. Thank you. Any other committee reports? Councilor Halloran?

I want to go back to the city manager's report. I had raised my hand if you didn't notice me. Could you repeat the nomination papers? I don't think you mentioned city council on there.

City Council, School Board, and Board of Trustees, they're available this Thursday, July 23rd.

Thank you.

Any other committee report updates? Seeing none, we'll move to citizens' comments. Citizen comments, a time for folks to come and provide comments to the City Council that are related to the city's business. If any of the items on the agenda that are scheduled for a public hearing you're here for, you'd like to speak to, we'd ask that you wait until that matter. And as far otherwise, if you could please approach the DS, we'd ask that you provide your name for the record and that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. Thank you very much.

Okay, I'm Dottie Vashon, and three minutes is not very long because I have to talk, so I'll try to keep it brief. I am here to represent the City of Ellsworth Cemetery Commission, which is a relatively new organization, and I was asked to please give a little update on what's going on with the Cemetery Commission, and to let you know we have a lot of big things in the works. For example, we are writing our first ordinance. We have a one page. This is what the cemeteries of Ellsworth needs. And that was done probably in 1910. So this summer, we were told that we need to write our own commission update ordinance. And we are looking at the historic commission, ordinance and other ones to try to pattern after them and get some things on paper as to what our job really is. Because when I took the chairman position, I thought, oh, this is fun. We'll go to the cemeteries and look at the stones and take pictures and look at the fun epitaphs and the great names and get to know some of the history of Ellsworth. And then I realized fairly recently that this job is bigger than that. And so the meetings have been really great and somewhat productive, but we're about to get very productive because of this charge of making our ordinances up to date. First of all, we are charged with overseeing the cemeteries that are in the city's care. including the ancient burial grounds, like next to the Congregational Church, and then one at the top of Beechland Hill Road, and the little one out on the Winkapaw Road that's called the Wilson Cemetery. And there are probably 30 cemeteries in Ellsworth. And most of us think there's all, well, it's probably going to be three or four. There's Woodbine, and maybe Remick, and Nicolin.

Hey, Dottie. Dottie? What is it? Could you speak into the microphone?

Nicolin, and there's a few more. And when I came into this project, yeah, I knew there were a lot of them, but many of them are on private property, and many of them are ancient and not maintained or not under our maintenance agreement, which we really don't even have yet. But we do have charge of one active cemetery, which is Juniper out in North Ellsworth. And, um, we have been busy getting the mowing done and we finally got a contract for that and the funds were released. And so that has been mode. Not perfectly, but it will be the next time we are gathering and scanning all the documents having to do with that cemetery and preparing to offer plots for sale. We've had two or three people request. that they be interred there. And we are not sextons. We have two people on our commission who have experience running private cemeteries. So we are in the process of setting plot prices and making that available to people who want to be buried there. We've done some spring cleanup. On a fun note, Nancy and I were out there one day digging around looking for how big are the plots? They're like 20 by 20 and the little ones are 10 by 10 and how are they laid out? And there was one of these, if anybody's ever been in an old cemetery, there was one of these up on a rusted post with no name. And we looked at the map that we were given and we found a name. And I started digging around and went back with this handy-dandy little metal detector. We found all these little letters, these little metal letters in the sand. And we found out that it was Benjamin R. Giles. We don't have a birth or death date because there wasn't one on his marker. But this will be put back. Somehow it will be hooked back onto that rusty old post, which is still there. We identified two people. who were not on Find a Grave, not marked in Ancestry.com, and we've added them. So those little things make me really happy. We also put rebar markers on top of the rebar.

Am I done? Thank you very much.

Anyway, we're having a really good time, and we're working hard. It's really fun, so thank you for having me. Thank you very much.

Any questions? No questions in public comment. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Kelvin Moat, citizen of Ellsworth. You've got this coming up later in the program, but I'm going to be leaving right after this, so if that's okay.

Yes, it is.

May 5th, my son went missing on Graham Lake, and A lot of people showed up to try to help, especially, you know, the fire department was there lickety split and along with a lot of other people, but the fire department showed up without a boat and they had to use mine. Luckily it was in the water or we'd have just been standing on the shore throwing rocks. I know the question of the boat coming up is, is today. So I just kind of wanted to put my two cents in there. Um, Lemoine has a boat. The town of Lemoyne has a boat. The city of Ellsworth does not. We have more waterways, lakes, that sort of thing. More opportunities for things to go wrong when seconds count. And speaking of someone who's gone through it, you know, just the hope that that brings, seeing them out there, trying to find your son. That's something that I think is important to look at as a city, as a community. We have cruisers. We have fire trucks. A boat seems to me like it would be a tremendous asset, especially given how many lakes, streams, Union River that we do have. So I just ask you to vote your conscience on it. I'm not going to stand here and preach about it. But it sure would have been nice to see them pull up with a boat. get that in the water to start looking i don't know if it would have made a difference i'm not saying that it the reason grayson didn't come home was because the fire department didn't have a book i'm just saying that had they been there and been able to get right out on the water who knows what the outcome might have been thank you

Good evening. I'm Dr. Ruth Moore and for those of you who don't know me, I am someone who appreciates details and so I'm going to ask for a little bit of an accommodation today. I am a disabled veteran. I have Meniere's disease which causes me to lose my balance and also I'm losing my hearing. So part of that is I need to make contact with your faces as I speak so that I know that I'm getting the appropriate Feedback that I've been heard I'm not doing well tonight, but I had to come in here and I do have brief comments But I also want to address the three things that are further on I just don't know if I'm gonna be able to make the full meeting I'm sitting there doing my medicines and inhaling them as I go through. So I'm going to ask, can I please read this? And can I please offer these comments?

Of course.

Okay. So, good evening. My name is Dr. Ruth Moore. And for many years, I worked in the business world as a compliance officer. You may have seen some of my work holding the Veterans Administration accountable. For corporations, I was paid to get results not to play nice. So now as a taxpayer in Ellsworth, I'm concerned with the vetting and hiring process of our city's new chief financial officer. Because with over 60 applicants, the law of averages states that at least 25% of them or 15 should at least hold a CPA credential as the very minimum for the industry generally required for municipal leadership. So after digging a bit and talking to a few Surrey neighbors, I want to know why this man was specifically hired without a CPA, not having submitted the financial reports that he should have done, and only 1.5 years of municipal experience. And he left quietly. Why was he chosen over 60 other applicants? And so the question that I have, which is relevant, is looking at it from a CPA standpoint, talking with many of my colleagues, it seems that there is a $3.22 million deficit and a $9.75 million federal fund allocation that was not recorded in revenue and may have been what we call passed through the city to go to partner nonprofits. We don't know. We're asking questions. I don't need an answer. But there are many inquiring minds who will want to know these answers. And so there are many more. including the Veterans Administration and the OIG, who want to know why some 100% veterans are being unfairly assessed and are losing their homes because their disability checks don't pay the rising taxes. And if you don't believe me, I can show you the White House line and the government lines that have been blowing my phone up. So, the second question is, do our residents know that our city manager does not live in, own property, or pay property taxes in Ellsworth, yet derives a six-figure income while some of our veterans and senior citizens go hungry and lose their homes due to high taxes? I actually saw that when I was out collecting signatures. An 86-year-old woman a 70-some-odd-year-old disabled veteran, both being forced to sell their homes because they didn't have enough money to pay their taxes. They didn't have enough money to go to the store and buy food. They couldn't drive to the food pantry.

Ms. Moore, you're at four minutes. If you could wrap up your comments, please.

Yep. Respectfully, I think that you, as city councilors, should tender your resignations. And I think that our city manager and our deputy city manager should tender their resignations because our city is a mess. Speaking to the other items, there is only three.

Ms. Moore, I'm going to ask you to stop your comments now. Thank you. It's at five minutes.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Well, I'll try and stay and come back.

Thank you. Any further public comment this evening? Seeing none, counselor comments. Counselors, same rules, apply please. Keep your comments to three minutes and remain to city business. Counselor M. Smith.

Over the last year, I have hit several challenges many never face in decade. Planning a wedding while campaigning, a recount on my three-week wedding anniversary, having a council room sing happy birthday to you the day before you turn 30, learning the budget process in a recall effort. I have learned so much in this budget cycle. I expect to learn so much more. Despite these challenges, I remain committed to public service, Ellsworth and her residents. One of my quieter achievements have been figuring out how to pronounce ordinance. If 10 years of speech therapy teaches you anything, it is the value of determination in discovering your own voice through hard work and writing. In the last three, in the last, Last two months have been a crash course in drafting and writing statements. I look forward to returning my full focus on my work with the harbor and rec commissions. Ellsworth has pressing questions over the dam, possible data centers, and affordable housing. Residents' voice matter. Answering survey and providing feedback is critical. We all love Ellsworth. Let's work together so that Ellsworth can thrive. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other further Councilor comments this evening? Councilor Halloran?

Several speakers in the last three months stand up and ask when the answer period is from the City Council. seems like we've taken on this role of listening but not responding and I think perhaps obviously I don't agree with the treatment that our citizens are getting when it comes to feedback from the city not everybody is an email guy or gal And I think maybe some middle ground to that would be to take a workshop and remove this tight agenda and simply have a workshop that people could get up and speak and engage with counselors. Now I realize that August is too close for that. Probably September, there's not a meeting. But maybe October would be a time that citizens could come in and freely engage in conversation. One-sided conversations aren't fair. I believe that we need to listen and engage. When I got here, there was no such thing as a scheduled workshop. Um, now there is a scheduled workshop and the agendas are way too tight. And my suggestion would be October to make it a free citizens night to engage with the council. And I'm requesting that be done.

Thank you. Any other councillors?

Councillor Shea? I'll yield to Nancy.

Okay. Councillor N. Smith.

Thank you. I want to follow up on Dottie's remarks by the Cemetery Commission. There's so much going on. We knew it wouldn't fit into one three-minute session. She mentioned what's going on in Juniper Cemetery, and she and I have been there several times, and the best part is the scavenger hunt mystery of trying to find the people who are there. But in addition that day, we also were confirming the maps we had with the on the ground plots, incredibly important before we start selling plots. We, the commission, is preparing to remove brush and tree saplings from the undeveloped cemetery land for future use as cemetery space. The Commission hosted a spring cleanup in Juniper and Beachland cemeteries, and as mentioned, contracted with Professional Services to mow and maintain the two cemeteries. In addition, the Commission is working on the cemetery finances, ensuring accurate accounting of the various accounts that are held by the City, for the cemeteries and the appropriate use of funds in each counts. And finally, related to the veterans' graves, that the VFW continues to place flags annually and help with appropriate monuments for veterans. The Commission is updating the list for each cemetery of the veterans there and exploring state reimbursement to the VFW. for the costs of the flags and to the cemetery committees and sextons for their care of the veterans in those cemeteries. That work is ongoing and we can't find record where it has happened in the past. To close, I want to thank the members of the Commission. As Dottie outlined, each of them comes for a love of a different part of cemeteries, whether it's veterans or the hunt for the stories behind the stones. One is there because she loves the landscaping. the feel of cemeteries, and another for the cemetery that was out behind her land that got her interested. There's a variety, whether it's your family, the land, or the stories that aren't being told yet, and none of them They came to the commission for that love and they are doing the hard work of finances and ordinances and minutes to the meetings in order to be able to move this forward. So my thanks to the commission members and especially to Dottie as the chair of the commission as we continue to move this work forward. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Councillor Smith. Councillor Shea.

I've been getting a lot of, I listened to what everybody's been saying to me. emails talking to me on the phone and I'm very approachable and I hear your concerns and I pass those concerns on and I asked for results. It takes time to get these results. The city has been very, very busy with this staff. A lot of the things that are not getting done should be getting done instead of exploring new possibilities, new projects, new ideas. We should pump the brakes a little bit and take care of the stuff that we should be taking care of and then explore doing other projects. We need to make sure that the community is well taken care of That means taking care of the public safety departments. Make sure that they're staffed. But we also need to make sure that we watch where the dollars go to. Now some people say that I'm looking for paper clips. I could be looking for thumbtacks. Those are a lot smaller than paper clips. But really, honestly, we need to do better. Everybody needs to do better. Everybody in the community needs to do better. People need to watch their speed when they're driving. People need to pay attention to signs. I've been to quite a few places in the city, and it blows my mind to see people parking on the side of the street in between signs that said no parking from here to the corner, and no one's done anything about it. Okay? And, you know, and then people parking on people's lawns. people disrespecting our parks. We need to be a little bit more aware of each other. There's no need to legislate that. But there's a need to let people know. Be kinder. Be gentler. So when you say something, mean what you say, but don't say it mean. Okay? This is... There's no room for that. No name calling. You can call me names all you want. I don't really care. It doesn't hurt me. All right? And when it comes to recalls, that's the citizen's rights. Okay? And I hear you.

Thank you, Pat. Councilor Martin now?

I would like to say I have actually thought about Steve's proposal. I've thought about it independently. If for any reason except to try and dispel the absolutely eye-watering amount of misinformation that seems to be perpetuated not only about individuals but about how city government works. Just as an example, one very enthusiastic poster posted in reference to me that I should be removed from council, and I quote, before I take over downtown with my historic preservation commission. I haven't the faintest idea what that meant, and the poster didn't either. But my question would be, if we were to do something like this, a question addressed to us individually, we can only answer individually. A question posed on a large issue from voters or from the citizenry, I can only speak to myself, and I don't know if that would give the satisfaction or just make the waters even muddier than they were. When we come together and discuss this stuff is when we come to a coalition and when we vote on it. I think it might be very frustrating. But if Steve has a method that can avoid that or has a plan, I would be interested in hearing it.

Anything else? Any comments? I have a few comments. The citizens of Ellsworth have spoken by rejecting the recall petition. Twice.

I don't mean to be rude.

Okay.

I can't be rude.

I don't mean to be rude.

Okay, that's all right. Have a nice evening today.

Is the intercom system working? Well, this man's not alone. Maybe we need to address that.

Why don't we take a quick pause? Nate, is there a way to increase the intercom volume in the council chambers?

Did you hear that?

All right. There we go. Could we go get that man and tell him we've improved?

Okay, well, I'll get started again. Citizens of Ellsworth have spoken by rejecting the recall petition twice. Indeed, the same voters that rejected the recall efforts are the ones that voted to pass the school budget by over a two-to-one margin. The hypocrisy of the effort was astounding. The petition was advanced on misinformation and false allegations and abused the recall process in order to retaliate against the five councilors that voted to hold Councilor Halloran accountable for his actions and violations of the city's ordinances and its code of ethics. This whole ordeal was a massive waste of time and city money and resources that could have been avoided if people just treated each other with dignity and respect. The council is a non-partisan body. No one runs with an R or a D next to their name. Sadly, the recall group brought ugly Washington politics to Ellsworth, where the truth doesn't matter and politics is a zero-sum game. Their use of social media and AI-generated slop has spread lies and information about the city's finances, caused further division in our community, and fostered calls for violence against city council members. The past few months have been hard on me and my family. And I know the same is true for my fellow councilors and city staff. Having people assault your character and integrity with lies and misinformation takes its toll. Although I have been saddened by these efforts, I've also been encouraged by the overwhelming support I've received from the majority of Ellsworth that wants nothing to do with these tactics. Many of these folks that have reached out I do not know, but they've reached out in support of the city council and the city staff. We are living through a time when disagreement has become more common than listening to each other and working together. Conversations that once happened face to face now unfold online. Opinions are shared instantly. Frustrations travel quickly. In this environment, it can become easy to forget that there are real people on the other side of your words. The principle Many of us learned as children remains remarkably relevant today. Treat others the way you would like to be treated. Respect does not require agreement. Civility does not require consensus. We can disagree strongly and still choose kindness, professionalism, the truth, and basic human decency. As a community, we all share responsibility for the culture we create. Every conversation, every comment, every interaction contributes to the kind of place Ellsworth becomes. If we want a community where people feel safe contributing, serving, volunteering, leading, and speaking up, then we must be willing to extend the same respect we hope to receive ourselves. Together, we have to continue building a community where people don't just live and work, they flourish. And that is something worth protecting. Not just the city employees, not just for elected officials, but importantly for everyone who calls Ellsworth home, because at the end of the day, a community isn't defined by whether people always agree. It's defined by how they treat one another, even when they don't. Thank you. And with that, we are onto agenda item number 10, unfinished business. Agenda item number 10 was going to be a presentation from Eric Marischal about the rec commission, but he reached out to me this morning. I was unable to attend and he apologizes, so I would entertain a motion to table this matter.

Move to table.

Second? Second. All those in favor? Any opposed? Agenda item number 11, council order number 062611, public hearing and potential action on the request of the public works director to send the greater four repairs. I believe we have our public works director here tonight.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Mike Harris, Public Works Director. I appreciate your comments, by the way, Patrick. Thanks, Mike. So we are back today to discuss, I had come previously to look at getting approval to repair the grader that we currently have. And during that conversation, there was more conversation about, does it make sense to buy a new grader? Does it make sense to try and hire it out? If you bought a new grader, is it possible to lease or finance it? So all of these questions were asked. It was tabled, and with a request to give you the answers to those, which I believe I have given you the answers to each of those questions. And so I'm here today, now that you have that information, to still request that we repair the grater. I still think that's our best option. But you have in your packets quotes that we received from multiple companies that supply graders. Financing options from local banks and one of the manufacturers. A quote from one of the local contractors on what it would cost per hour to do the grading and how much potentially that could cost us. And so really it's just a matter of what your pleasure would be in terms of do we get the grader repaired and move on and we hope to get another 10 years out of it. And during that 10-year span is when we would look to add it to the long-term capital improvement plan. Or do you want to look at purchasing a new grader, financing a new grader? All of which needs to be carefully thought out because it's not in the budget. And we didn't budget for a new grader. And so if that is the position that you want to take, then that piece would also have to be figured out because it would be off-cycle.

And it's not in the CIP currently. Right. Sorry, the Capital Improvement Plan.

Can I ask a question? Yeah, Councillor Shea's hand was up first.

I agree with Mike that it's, we'd be far, we'd be better off to repair this, the existing grader. It's going to cost us, the prices that they've got are just for the base model grader. It doesn't include the other implements that go on to that. And when you get into that and you go with the lowest bidder, you could, and who knows, one might start building graders again. They're not because the machines have been pretty reliable and still supporting the parts and repairs of them. But if you're not selling a $500,000 machine, Why would you want to continue manufacturing? They'd done something right for a change. But we'd be way ahead of the game just repairing what we got. Great, thank you.

Councilor Martin?

Theoretically, I'm not being an expert on graders. Does the repair option is the one that you think is the most sound? Yes, ma'am. Is there some other big thing that, like, when we get this done, it can come back and fall apart somewhere else? I mean, that sounds like a stupid question, but...

No, I understand exactly what you're talking about. So we're looking at a full rebuild on the grader. So really the big things that you're talking about that could come back to haunt us in the future would be either an engine failure, which we're not. We'd have to put a new motor in it. Or transmission failure. But other than that, all the other moving parts of the grader would all be taken care of as part of this refurbishing.

Are the engine and transmission rated for ours? I mean, I know it's old, but...

I don't, I mean, Brian would have to.

Come on, you're supposed to have this at the tip seal.

To speak on that, but typically, like, you just maintain them and you do the proper product maintenance on it and you get the life that you get out of it. Yeah.

Brighton Highway Superintendent. It's 13,000 hours on it. We're a little over 13,000 hours on it. It's had a little bit of work done on the motor, so the motor's pretty strong. Transmission, we've had zero problems with this. I don't foresee anything that's going to go wrong with this. I mean, it's chain and gear driven, so it's pretty sturdy and pretty reliable.

Thank you. Any other questions from Council? Councillor Halloran?

What's the value of this crater today?

So we did, when we were looking, two things to be fully transparent here. The prices that you have for craters right now are budgetary quotes that we have. If the option were to buy a new grader, I just want to make you aware that it would have to go through the procurement policy. So you would have to actually put out a request for a bid through OpenGov, which I don't know, you know, that would take a while. But I just want you to understand that the prices that you have in front of you may not be the prices that we would pay if we were to pull the trigger on buying a new grader, which I'm not recommending. But to be, to answer Steve's question, we did ask when we were getting quotes what we would possibly get for trade-in on the current grader. And just mind blowing, but it's surprisingly it's around $25,000 for, right?

Well, there's one for $25,000 and there's a couple, there's an auction that's for $60,000 and $70,000. So you're looking between $25,000 and $70,000.

Because Volvo doesn't make them anymore, and Case actually quoted us, but they won't build the machine for us. They won't work on it. They won't do it. So I was shocked by that number.

What year is the machine?

2009, I believe. It's still strong. I mean, the steel's strong on it. It's just the pins and bushings are all worn out. The ring gear needs putting brass shims put in it. It needs a couple axle seals on it. It's just maintenance. It's been deferred for many years.

I mean, Pat can speak to the fact that graders, if you take care of them, they'll last.

They'll last a long time.

Yeah, 30 years. They're great.

Yeah, they I mean they do it. It's just the problem is that it costs a lot to fix them and maintain them.

Yeah, clearly any further questions. Steve did for the questions. Before we go to public hearing.

I just have a comment. I think this is a conundrum. That is before us. When you have a 13,000-hour machine and you have other options of outsourcing and balancing what you have, you have a $157,000 request on a 2009 machine, which has got some age on it. And I wonder if this is an accumulation of a lack of maintenance that's got us to $157,000 where the city hasn't maintained things properly and we're paying the bill today. That's one question that I would ask and I don't expect anybody to answer that. The next thing I would just throw out is maybe there's a hybrid model with a contractor use And you're saying that the grader is strong today. Maybe you could supplement a contractor use with your backup grader that you say is strong but needs some major repairs. And the other thing that I think bears consideration is if you have a $50,000 value and I'm picking, you said 70 to 25, I'm going to just say 50. If you have 50 and you have $160,000 estimate when it goes in the shop, that's going to grow when it goes in the shop. That doesn't happen just by people cannot give you a quote to do things and they don't know what's in there. So if you take your $50,000 and your $160,000, you're pushing half of a new grade or a return from rent with low hours. Just food for thought.

Any further questions from council before we do the public hearing? Seeing none, this matter is noticed as a public hearing. I will open the public hearing. If you have any comments that are relevant to the greater question, feel free to approach the deist, and you have three minutes or less. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Counsel, how would you like to proceed? Counselor Shea?

I move to authorize the city manager to execute necessary documents to approve the repairs to the highway departments, low-low, G946 motor grader by Chadwick Bayross in the amount not to exceed 157,585.39. Funding through the highway equipment reserve account, 149,762. and the capital equipment reserve account for 99,661, with the remaining approximate 8,000 coming from the FY27 highway budget. Motion to have a second?

Second. And Ms. Smith? Motion and a second. Any further questions or discussion from the council? Seeing, oh.

I know it's a big ticket for the repair. And if, I caught on what you said was trading value. But if there was no trade and the actual outright sale is gonna fluctuate because it goes out to bid. And so it could bring 200,000. to 100 or the amount that we are paying to repair the grater, all right? So even though the trade-in amount is lower than the repair cost, the value of the machine is up there. Because you don't find, if you find a grater out there for 55,000, it's got problems. And it's very, very old.

Any further comment from council? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion? Opposed? Motion carries. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

Thank you.

Agenda item number 12, public hearing and action on the application for renewal of the following licenses. Danielle Potts, DBA Lakeside Cedar Cabins, 397 Moriahville Road, for renewal of a city lodging license. Ellsworth Lodge of Elks, number 2743, 317 High Street, for renewal of a class B license, victual liquor and amusement, and renewal of a state club on premise with catering, malt, spiritus, and venous, class one liquor license. Taste Jamaica LLC 190 State Street for renewal of a class C, city class C license, victular and liquor and renewal of a state restaurant class three and four wine and malt liquor license. Melanie Omlor Fox, DBA Helen's Restaurant of Ellsworth, 55 Down East Highway for renewal of a city class C license, ficular and liquor, and renewal of a state restaurant malt spiritus and venous class one, two, three, and four liquor license. and Focktown Brewing Company 25 Pine Street for renewal of a city class B license, vicular liquor and amusement, and renewal of a state brewing license and restaurant class one license. This matter is noticed as a public hearing. I will open the public hearing. If anyone would like to provide comment on the applicants before the council, please approach the DEIS, state your name into the record, and please limit your comments to three minutes or less.

So again, my name is Dr. Ruth Moore. I live at 413 Mariahville Road, which is literally just a stone's throw from the lakeside cedar cabins. I also live a stone's throw from where Mr. Mote lost his son. So this conversation basically falls into two areas, which I'm going to summarize it, and then I'm going to head home. So Mr. Potts with his Lakeside Cedar Cabins, I want to know if an inspection has been completed because the cabins are out of date, there are safety issues. Has the watercraft as part of his rentals been investigated? And are the personal flotation devices for the guests up to date and safe? Frequently, I see people tootling around outside the cove, going into the Union River with outlife jackets, with alcohol and beverages. They're not aware of things that are required for water safety. And I don't want to see that again. For your information, I used to do rescue diving in the Navy. I was the person who went underwater and set broken bones. and pull people, sometimes living, sometimes dead, out of the water. And that also kind of jumps on to item number 19, where is there's going to be a discussion about purchasing a replacement boat. You need that. My husband and I have a pontoon boat. We're open to going out and helping, but I don't want to live that horror again. And I will tell you the one thing that is not on your budget that you need with this vote, and I want you to hear me, please look at me when I talk about this. You need a hummingbird helix sonar that can effectively map the bottom of Graham Lake because it constantly changes. And this is a $700 purchase. If you all can't afford it, I will. because we need that. I don't want to ever hear about another child dying within a stone's throw of my house. So with that, I want to thank you all for your time. These are my comments, and I hope that you will do the right thing when you vote on this. But maybe have a little more discussion before you start granting renewals of licenses until these are properly inspected and notated by the code enforcement officers, marine patrol officers, wardens, et cetera, that fall under the purview of Lake Life from Grant. So I have a water bottle, if you would grab it, and then I will head out the door. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further public comment on the proposed licenses?

Raymond Williams, 56 Hancock Street. I am coming here this evening to oppose the licensing as it is currently proposed for Fogtown Brewing Company for as much as I can figure for a Class B license, visual liquor and amusement. Amusement is the word. and also renewal of the state restaurant, no that's the wrong one, and also renewal of the state brewing license and restaurant class one license. Those are state licenses. Fogtown Brewing is a brewery, but I'm not opposing that. It also runs a pub food selling operation and a music and entertainment operation which requires under both the city licensing chapter 14 and chapter 37 which is the special amusement permit license. A special amusement permit license because it is having a providing music and entertainment, especially music at a place which also is selling alcoholic beverages. This was... Fogtown was first licensed in... 2017 for this type of, for the Class B, for pitchless amusement and liquor. At that time, it was It was licensed at a meeting September 18, 2017, and Class B establishment, and it's been licensed that way ever since then for the Class B establishment for amusement, liquor, and vigils. When it originally opened, when the license was granted in September, Then City Clerk Heidi Grindle explained that the applicants had received a conditional occupancy permit. They had permission from the owners, for the owners and employees to occupy the building. However, members of the public cannot occupy the building. If approval is granted this evening, and this was at the council meeting on September 7th and 18th, 2017, the license will not be given to the applicants until occupancy permit is issued. I can speak from experience that Fogtown sometime opened that pub operation and selling drinks down there, beer, sometime in the late winter of 2018, which was January or February or March.

Ray, you're at three and a half minutes.

I would like to request that I go on, because I'm going to take some time to make points, but I'll try to be fast.

Ray, I've got to apply the rules evenly to everyone. If you could wrap up in 30 seconds, that'd be great. Thank you.

Point is, they have never got a special amusement permit. This permit they had was for an amusement permit. And if you will go on, and you could have computers go on and look at the definitions. And the only trouble is you probably can't get into the definitions for the previous one. But the point is they have never had a special amusement permit and you should deny this tonight or table it because you also had some changes in the ordinances now, which has changed what you adopted for the changes to the city code and chapter 14 on licensing. Under the, you were told by city staff that it was basically housekeeping things. There were some serious substantive changes also that's in that having to do mainly changing the Class B license from not being for, amusement, but to special amusement places. And so you've got to also figure out, and I don't know when this... Ray, I'm going to ask you to stop. You're at five minutes. Thank you. You get my point? You can't make a decision on this tonight.

Thank you, Ray. Any other public comment on the renewal for licenses that were for the council? Seeing none, I will close public comment. Council, how would you like to proceed? Councilor Smith?

Is there staff who can address some of the issues that were raised?

Is the code enforcement officer? Oh, we've got the Sue of many hats is here.

Sue McLean. It's a clerk. I've been talking to Ray today and over the last few days about this and essentially we continued on what Heidi had done. The clerk before me just continued, if Heidi said it was so, we didn't question that at all. I'm not sure that I agree 100% that this license isn't correct. But I understand what Ray is trying to say. And maybe we do need to take a look at that type of license in the future. But I don't see a reason to stop this. This is what we have been doing right along for him. Maybe for the next one, we make a note that we take a look at it and fix it if it should be fixed. We've done that for others. I don't think we should stop this one. And as far as inspections, I mean, it's the clerk's office understanding that all the inspections are done. They're signed off on. So we would not have any questions about that. But I'll let Robert talk about those.

I missed some of what Sue was saying from walking in here. So could you please? That's the best part. Well, sorry. So what am I answering is what I'm asking.

They want to know about inspections.

Specifically for the Lakeside Cedar cabins and then also if you have anything regarding Fog Town's license and inspections.

Okay. So hi, Robert Grant, Code 14 officer. Lakeside, we do an inspection every year. I don't look at every cabin because some of them are occupied, so I ask to see a cabin that's unoccupied. They are rustic. They're not the newest amenities by any means, but I think that's part of what they're going for. So there's nothing about them that is not up to code. I just checked... If it's in my purview as the local health officer required them to provide life preservers and everything that Dr. Moore was talking about, I don't believe that I can require that of them. I think that's on the individual to do that. So I've never asked them to provide them. So I wasn't aware that I would have to. So I guess I'm not. As far as Fogtown goes, they've never had any issues with their inspections either. Any time I've ever found anything there, they've always fixed them promptly. They've been great to work with any time anything comes up.

Thank you. Any further questions for Robert or Sue while we have them?

Yes. Just looking for clarity about Fogtown, are they in compliance with the licensing that they're up for renewal here?

According to how we understand it, yes. And I'm not saying that I'm not going to review it for next year, but as far as I understood or understand how that whole process is, yes, he is. He's getting a license that includes amusement. And that was the biggest issue, I believe. But again, I will, I have no problem with reviewing it deeper and seeing if there's maybe, if we need to do something different for him. But just going by what I do know, It's my feeling that he is in compliance. That is the right license for him.

And this is the same license type that the city's issued since 2017? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Which is part of why I haven't really looked at it, because... Heidi is such a stickler, was such a stickler. I mean, she, if there was ever a perfect clerk, it was Heidi.

Don't count yourself out too soon.

Well, so, you know, we didn't, I didn't, I don't second guess anything she did, but maybe, maybe I should now. There have been changes, so.

Okay. Counselor Martineau?

I'm just a little, I'm a little uncomfortable with, I, I, I, I think I understand what you're saying, but maybe I just don't understand the wording. We'll fix it for the next time, but give this, I feel uncomfortable with that.

Yeah, well, I mean, the amusement, he has, his license includes amusement. I'm not sure a special amusement license is required in addition to the license he's getting now. But I haven't read the small print. I haven't read all the legalities of it. Just in what I do know, I think he's fine. If we have to, if we find something, I'm willing to adjust it. But I don't think that needs to, I don't think we need to hold up his license today. He's getting an amusement, or his license includes amusement. So that should cover what he's doing.

Could we conceivably carve him out of the group and say, give him an extension until this can be looked into? Can we do that?

We can, but I wouldn't support that. I mean, others, if there's a majority of the council that wants to, but, um, but as I understand it, we're wondering if he needs an additional license on top of this one, which we don't know, but we do know that he's been operating under this same license for nine years. So I think if we're going to require additional licensure, maybe, but it doesn't mean we don't grant these licenses is my opinion. And Sue can look into it, and if there's any need to update or amend the licenses, we could proceed so. But, you know, this is a business that's been operating for nine years in Ellsworth with a good record, and I don't think we have any reason to alter that.

So if we can make a note to maybe hear back on this either in email before next month or next month just to close the loop. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you for the clarification about there may be an additional, but that this is what it's been for nine years.

Yes, and it includes amusement. Great.

Thank you, Sue. Any further questions for Sue or Robert while they're here? No. Seeing none, I would entertain a motion from the council. Councillor Ann Smith.

Move to approve the business license renewals as presented. Noting that all of their, according to the memo, all of the renewal fees, personal property taxes and inspections by code enforcement and by inspector have been completed.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second. Motion to second. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Unanimous? Thank you. Agenda item number 13, council order number 072600, capital improvement plan discussion. And we have our deputy city manager slash SIP or KIP, depending on how you like to pronounce it, expert.

I think we all know how I like to pronounce it. No offense. I somehow got myself on do not disturb, so I have to try to get off of that.

Did someone put me on do not disturb?

Sorry for the, your status is set to do not disturb. I'm so sorry.

Let's try it again. Thank you, Ebony.

It's still saying do not. Oh, you got me? Thank you, Nate.

We'll see if I can help you. We'll find out.

I'm so embarrassed. It happens. Charlie's never going to let me play city manager again.

Oh, I think he might.

from my computer.

I can just do it from my computer.

Oh, I know. I see your Wi-Fi needs to be reconnected.

I got it. I got it.

That's all right. They won't get to see my exciting PowerPoint, but that's all right. Okay.

So this is our probably fourth or fifth capital improvement planning discussion. So I'm not going to get into too much of the details of the methodology and what's gone into the plan. But the purpose tonight is to talk about the FY27 SIP and how it provides a long term roadmap for investing in the city's infrastructure and public assets. And tonight it's really meant to identify the initial phase one projects that council wish to advance. And following the council direction, staff will return in August with recommended financing options, which, as we know from prior discussions, really our only financing option at this point is band bonding. But that will be an additional phase of the SIP for our next budget cycle. And with the new finance director coming on board, looking at some realistic financing tools for our capital planning in the future. So the SIP was developed more than a year ago with collaboration with all of our city departments. It is a comprehensive inventory of municipal assets and infrastructure. It's data driven of our roads, our sidewalks, facilities, vehicles, equipment, technology, and utilities. Projects aligned to the comprehensive planning pillars. Projects were prioritized using objective criteria, including public safety, asset condition, regulatory requirements, operational impacts, community benefits, and financial sustainability. And the whole idea behind this process was to design a capital improvement plan. Oh, it's up there. I didn't know it. That can be renewed and update annually because it is required as part of our charter to have this planning tool. So the guiding principles is preserving the existing municipal infrastructure and public assets to protect public safety and essential services, prioritize projects using objective data-driven information, leverage outside funding opportunities. A lot of the grants that we go after, either with low match or no match, ask if this project is part of your long-range plan. So it's really important to have the whole host of projects be included. Support long-term financial sustainability and economic development. So you all have your capital planning notebooks that I provided in prior, God bless you, in prior meetings, so this is a snapshot of, and I'm not driving this, I think Nate is somehow, so I can't zoom in, so I don't know how this is happening. So.

The wizard.

Yeah, it is like the wizard. If there are specific questions, but, This is our year one, and don't get, I mean, it is labeled FY27, but as I've stated before, there's no way we're going to do all of these in FY27, but these were just what were prioritized out of the 220 projects identified in the 10-year plan. These are the prioritization for FY27. So there's a lot of projects there. Some of them are in planning right now, a planning phase, in development. But really what I'd like us to focus in on and I have a recommendation on is what should we fund? What should we move forward to fund because projects are never going to get less expensive than they are right now. delaying further is just going to continue to kick the can down the road. A lot of work has gone into prioritizing these projects, not in silos, but comprehensively, the department heads got together and used this prioritization process to prioritize these projects across the entire city. So it wasn't just each department, it wasn't me doing it by myself. So I propose that we move forward with the top one, two, three, four, five, but I have a caveat on that. I propose moving forward with the top five projects, which is the core network switches, year one of local roads, which in your CIP notebook, it specifically outlines what roads those are based on our street scan data that we have used The South Street siphon has an asterisk around it because that is not included in this 3.9 million total. Mike might be able to give an update on that, but I have a note about that. So that's not included. That is an enterprise account, so that's not included in what I'm proposing. The Courthouse Road reconstruction project, we have a developer agreement that requires us Build that road, which includes utilities, so that's why it has the price tag of $2 million. Local sidewalk improvements, again, from our street scan data that we've used, those are only existing sidewalks. There's no gaps that we're recommending. I do believe that... we should be looking at gaps in future years. And then the Bayside Road, which is an MPI project that was not identified in our CIP, but we've already approved funding for that with the state match of 750 as well. Other projects that will continue in progress that we have talked about is the Knowlton Park design and phasing, the fire boat replacement, we'll talk about that tonight. Community Dog Park is under design, and the City Hall seal replacement. So continue planning for future CIP investments in those projects. And there's others as well, but those are just some that I did highlight. So some things for us to think about when moving forward with this, and I just want to state that this is for discussion only. I would just kind of like to know if you would like staff to proceed with this set of projects to come back in August with the financing, which would follow its public process, the process laid out per the charter. This is for discussion only, so there's no action on this. But things to consider is that the courthouse road has to be done. We have to fulfill the developer agreement. Project components of the judiciary, they're contributing a $415,000 to intersection improvements for the intersection of High Street and Mary Lane as part of that. As part of the developer agreement, we will be overseeing those improvements, but they'll be reimbursing us for that. The Bayside Road leverages a 50% state match for $1.5 million. Staff is coordinating with other funding partners to reallocate resources on the South Street Stipend Project. I believe the High Street Project has been under budget, so the funding agencies are willing to work with us to reallocate that money. And a lot of times that requires it to be in our capital plan. So having it be our second or third ranked project is really important. And then just these projects emphasize infrastructure preservation, public safety, and preserving the long-term public asset. So what I would like to hear from you all are, do these projects represent the city council's highest priorities? Should any projects be added, removed, or reprioritized to that short list? And does City Council support advancing these projects as a phase one of the CIP? Councilor Martineau?

Well, first of all, I apologize for, as far as coming before the Council again with the seal information with getting it down. I haven't done that, and that was due to this turmoil and unsettled atmosphere that's been plaguing us all for the last few months. If I wasn't going to be around to work with this, I wasn't going to put a plan together. I can do that by August. I think compared to most of the things that are listed up there, just the removal and getting into storage probably would be far less expensive than a lot of that stuff. I could be wrong.

We have it slated for $80,000. Okay. And it's, just so you know, for order of magnitude, it's in a year two. And I don't necessarily think, when we're thinking about how we fund these projects, it's not necessarily a situation where we have to fund all year one before we can go to year two. It's about identification and scoping so that when opportunities become available, we can pivot quickly. I mean, yes, if we could wave a magic wand and not have a bubble, we would say let's do year one first. and then move on, but that's, and we also have to balance staff resources and things like that. So I just wanted to make that point when considering moving things along. So it's slated for year two and it's $80,000. That's what we have in the budget, right? That's what we have identified.

It's just every year we wait. It gets a little more rotten.

Yep.

So I will come back to you. some correspondence that I have to finish with state preservation. So I do plan to come back to council in August with this information. I was really hoping that that could get off the building before the snow flied, but if it can't, it can't.

Councilor Schmidt?

Looking for clarification in that conversation, you were talking about removal and storage. What was the $80,000 estimate figure? Was that for the total?

Is that just removal? It says city seal replacement.

Okay, so probably a broader project, not just... It was sounding like it was $80,000 to remove and store, which seemed exceedingly high, so I was looking for that clarification.

I mean, because we're not replacing anything. This is the whole point of this. The replacement sounds like a holdover from when we were going to have you may mold one out of composite.

I believe at that point when we developed the CIP, that might have been the scope.

Yeah, I think perhaps that might be.

Sorry, I'm just trying to pull it up to see, but we can figure that out.

I just wanted a clarification that that $80,000 wasn't just for the first step that Carol was looking to capture this year.

No, I believe it was for the composite lab to work on it.

So I agree that step one of getting it safe and getting people who walk up the stairs safe is important.

It's going to be me who gets to hit the handle.

Any other questions from the council or answers? Nate, could you put the questions back up?

I think I am running it actually now. Sarah, you could put the questions back up.

That would be great.

Can public jump into this?

This is just a discussion among council. When these matters come back to council meetings for vote on appropriation, there'll be a public hearing.

I'm just thinking about the surgery room sidewalk.

I understand, Gordon, but there's no public comment right now. Thank you. I ask that you respect that. So I... For me, I honestly default to the city staff as far as they're the ones that know that these are the largest priorities, the biggest needs. We have to fund the courthouse road, so that's not really an option. So as far as I go, these priorities that staff have recommended, I'm fully in support of advancing. You know, as far as the seal goes, if you can get numbers together that we can have to discuss, I think that would be helpful. And yeah, as far as phase one goes, yeah, yeah. I mean, if these are the top priorities and these are where the biggest needs are, our staff knows that better than public works and everyone knows it better than I do. So I'm fully in support of it. Councilor Smith.

Would you put the list back up so I can look?

And I might be able to zoom in.

Pardon?

I might be able to zoom in. Oh.

Well, there was the room one that was helpful. Like the next slide down? This list? No. Yes, that one.

This is the planning list that we're going to continue.

No, go back up to the prior. The one that had the ones, this one. Thank you. I wanted to look at it to be sure that what I was seeing is, I think, a good balance of taking care of what we've already got versus new. And the new is the courthouse that we've already been discussing. The year one local road program improvements is improvements to existing roads.

Yes.

And then I was encouraged that the sidewalk program is let's fix it first with our sidewalks as well. I want to make sure my understanding is accurate. Yes.

So the year one local road program consists of maintenance treatments on segments of Maple Street, Garymore Road, McKenzie Avenue, and Redbridge Road. I had no say over there. Just because I live on Redbridge, it's not by my house. It's going to be a variation of shim, overlay, reclaimed pavement. No real reconstruction for that amount. So that's for that one. And then the sidewalks. Oh, we were going to do the sidewalks on High Street. That's the recommendation, was the sidewalks from about in front of Bar Harbor Bank and Trust down to around about Governor's. And then that was year one. And then year two was looking at the sidewalks up on the top of Main Street on both sides, both sides of the intersection and both sides of the street, and then up to Beals Avenue a little bit.

And all of that matches with the USDOT project that we're working on with High Street. This is like immediate need that's got to be done. Yes, yes. And then, of course, Bayside is an existing road that we all know needs work, and you've got match for it. I still, we're going to watch speeds go up. So as it happens, we need to set, what is the phrase, same road, new road, same speed limit. Just have those concerns. So what I like about this is it's taking care of what we've got, fix it first with a couple of, you know, the courthouse being the exception to that, so.

And that's also why we felt it was really important to talk about what we're going to keep working on within our existing capacity. You know, Roddy's already working on the Nolton Park redesign and phasing. The community dog park has been something. And these, again, are things that are just being moving forward in design. Nothing has been funded or approved. It just gave authorization for staff to keep working on it and the city hall building and seal. And now that we have... A full facilities team. We're going to be looking at the building envelope study that was done 2019, I think. We've been working on things like the cupola, the window repair up on the cupola, the mold testing. All of those things have been checked off so that we don't have to just have that be our one year. That could be a CIP for one year, just that envelope study. and nothing else. So we're trying to balance among facilities too, among departments. I know this one looks a little road heavy. I think the courthouse road and the opportunity with Bayside Road have kind of led to that.

You know, the siphon, that needs to be addressed because of drainage and water and fire protection. And the courthouse, we're tied with that. There's no getting away from that. Yeah, along with roads and stuff like the Bayside River, we're going to do some drainage and then maybe some more underground utilities feeding up through part of that. So those could be upgraded, so.

And this isn't, if we decide to move forward with these projects, we're going to come back in August with different funding options and terms. So we're not just going to do 30 years on the $50,000 switches. You know, we're going to be smart about that and work with the department heads about the true useful life of these things that we're investing in.

This looks terrific.

Any other councilor questions, comments regarding the proposed SIP?

Was the issue that we've been discussing about Chapel Street and Malone, is that going to be part of a SIP?

I don't think so because I think we can probably address that with current resources. It might not be long-term infrastructure upgrades. There might be a phasing approach of that that there might need to be. But I think the initial thought is that the first phase will be done with more maintenance than infrastructure upgrades.

Yeah. Because it is an old part of the city. And, you know, we might find one more, but we need to do a little correction. That sounds reasonable.

And I think there's going to be more situations like that as we do our flushing flow test and color coding in the fall of all of our fire hydrants. So we just have to make sure we have a process in place for evaluation and correction.

Mm-hmm.

Is there a list of all the sidewalks? Is there year two sidewalks? You have three sidewalks?

We have a list. We have an inventory of all of our sidewalks and the conditions that they're in. So hypothetically, yes, we could grade them and rate them. I do think it's really important that we do identify the gaps in sidewalks because it's great to repair a sidewalk that goes to nowhere. But I think when you're there repairing it, you should think about extending it and making those connections where we can. So I think that we should think about doing that analysis as well in the future.

And Carol, there are sidewalks in the city that the city has abandoned for one reason or another.

It has to be the one on Dean Street where you fall into the road when you walk up.

Yeah, I mean, I used to deliver newspapers up Dean Street, and there was sidewalks on both sides, and then next to you... But Church Street, it's there, partially, and then Oak Street's missing its sidewalk.

Okay. Seeing no other comments or discussion, thank you.

So we'll plan on coming back to the August meeting with a bond package to be voted on. That will have terms. It will go through the whole bond process with bond council, and it will be for funding for that.

Just to confirm, in that time, as these issues are proposed for the agenda, the agenda will be made public. The public can provide comment on the proposals through email, through phone calls, through reaching out to staff, and then again at the public hearing.

Absolutely. And I would also note that we're finalizing the actual CIP documents, and we have the appropriate GIS licensing now to put our public-facing tool of the story map, which will have a map of the city and indicators that you can click on and get information about all of these projects with appropriate information to how to contact people to give feedback on any of these projects.

Excellent.

You can always email, call me, though.

Great. Thank you, Sarah.

Or come see me on the second floor.

Okay, great. All right, on to agenda item number 14, council order number 072601, main office of tourism, MOT grant project presentation. And I believe we have Cara and Twyla on this. Or whoever? Carla? Or Kar? Sorry.

That's okay. No problem.

You've been called worse.

Absolutely.

Good evening, council and the public attending this evening. My name is Kar Urbano. I'm the director of Heart of Ellsworth. Back in 2024, we applied for a Maine Office of Tourism recovery grant, and I'm going tonight to speak on this project now that it's complete and where it's going at this point in time. Thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening. Tonight I'd like to introduce to you the project that Heart of Ellsworth completed in 2025 through a $2,000 tourism recovery grant from the Maine Office of Tourism funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. This was the first time that we've shared this work with council and it's my goal to provide a brief overview of what was accomplished and why it matters to Ellsworth's future. I handed out kind of an overview of all of the things that we accomplished as well as some of the marketing initiatives and deliverables that are now at the main office of tourism and some of the other tourism centers around. Before I talk about the project itself, it's important to recognize that this work didn't begin with this grant. It builds upon priorities already identified by the city's 2035 comprehensive plan, the city's business attraction plan, and then Heart of Ellsworth's manifesting main project that took place in 2023. Each of those efforts pointed towards the same opportunity, which was strengthening Ellsworth as a destination, supporting our downtown businesses and other Ellsworth area businesses to build a stronger year-round economy. At its core, this project is not just about tourism. It's about economic development and the year-round ability for downtown businesses and area businesses to be able to have a longer season here because we are so seasonal. The goal was to use tourism as a tool to help our existing businesses become stronger by encouraging visitors to stay longer, spend more locally, and experience everything Ellsworth has to offer. By positioning our city as more than simply a pass-through community, we can encourage visitors to stay overnight, shop locally, and dine in our restaurants, experience our arts and culture, and enjoy the parks and trails, and use Ellsworth as a launch pad to explore down east Maine. Ultimately, the goal is to extend our visitor season and to help build a stronger, more resilient year-round economy. The project produced three lasting assets for the community. First, we created the Discover Ellsworth website, a destination brand and marketing platform giving Ellsworth a professional tourism website, marketing materials, photography, video assets, and a consistent way to tell our story to potential visitors. Second, we completed the foundational planning for a community-wide wayfinding system. This work inventoried our visitor destinations, identified opportunities to improve navigation, and develop recommendations that can take support of the city's implementation and newly adopted rebranding and future wayfinding program that's underway now. Finally, the project explored the feasibility of creating a tourism development district. It's a potential long-term funding tool that can help sustain destination marketing and visitor initiatives well beyond the life of this grant. What makes this opportunity unique is that it's not funded through local property taxes. Instead, it creates a mechanism for the hospitality industry to collectively invest in destination marketing and visitor attraction efforts that directly benefit their businesses and in turn support... Where am I? Sorry. Full report for each initiative and for the final... Sorry, where am I? and in turn support the broader local economy. Maine law allows municipalities to establish a district through local processes if they determine doing so serves the community's economic interests. The full report for each initiative and the final Discover Ellsworth site have been shared with you all via email as well this morning. I sent links to the full, full-blown reports, which are anywhere between 60 and some of them are 100 pages long, but those links are in there, and it will take you to a Dropbox folder for you to be able to view them in there. I'd like to close with one final thought is that Oh, wait a minute, sorry, I'm in the wrong spot. While the grant itself has come to an end, the work it produced provides a strong foundation for the full economic development efforts. Ellsworth now has a destination brand, a tourism website, marketing assets, and wayfinding framework, and the recommendations can inform future city investments and community partnerships. These tools position us to continue building a stronger visitor economy while supporting the long-term success of our businesses. I'd like to close on one final thought and tourism marketing isn't simply about attracting more visitors. It's about creating the infrastructure that helps people discover our city, navigate our community and ultimately choose to spend more time and more money here. Every additional overnight stay supports our hotels, restaurants, retailers, attractions, artists and small businesses. Those businesses are the backbone of our downtown and our entire city and many rely on a relatively short visitor season to sustain them throughout the year. So roughly our businesses are doing the majority of their business five months out of the year and then the rest of the year trying to just survive to be here for all of us and visitors. Extending that season even by a few weeks can have a real meaningful economic impact on our community. I also want to leave you with a quote from a recent Airbnb guest that was shared with Heart of Ellsworth, a person who stayed here in downtown Ellsworth, because I think it really captures the essence of what we're trying to accomplish. It's in a perfect location and has everything we need. Ellsworth has a couple of bars, and one had live music, just a more laid back area versus the madhouse that is Bar Harbor. 10 out of 10 would stay here again. So to me, that sort of says everything about the character, maybe a little bit more about Ellsworth. But the foundation of this work has been built, and the opportunity is to build on that investment that we have now sort of shared with the city to help more people discover Ellsworth and encourage them to stay a little longer supporting our local businesses and helping us become a more strong and resilient year-round economy for everyone who calls Ellsworth home. There was one question that was sent to me ahead of time that I just want to address and then I'll open it up for any further explanation. It was asked of me if the video library that we've created, who has access to that. So I just wanted to explain a little bit about the video library. The city's communications director currently has access to the complete library of approved and edited photography that we were able to glean from this project. The video assets throughout have also been shared in the project folder. And at this time, to our knowledge, those assets have not been distributed more broadly to city departments or boards or commissions. Looking ahead, Heart of Ellsworth and the city would like to develop a curated partner asset library that would make approved images and videos available to community organizations. businesses and tourism partners for projects that may promote Ellsworth. Any broader distribution would be jointly coordinated between Heart of Ellsworth and the city to ensure the assets are fully and appropriately and consistently used with the Discover Ellsworth brand. Organizations interested in accessing approved materials would work directly with Heart of Ellsworth's director and assistant director and the city's communications director.

Thank you. Any questions? Kara?

I was just wondering if the City of Ellsworth website has a link to Discover Ellsworth there.

I believe so, but I'm not sure.

Is it on there? I believe it is. Yes, it's on there.

Thank you.

In your summary, it mentions the possibility of 2026 destination planning and development grant for phase two. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

I think I'll let Twyla elaborate on that.

See, Twyla, I knew I'd get you up there.

Good evening, Twyla Fisher, Economic Development Director. Yes, we, in May, we submitted a letter of intent for this grant and we were invited to apply, which we have done. And if we do get the grant, then it would be brought before council for, there was really no council approval needed to apply for it, but if we're granted it, then we would come before council with a proposal of how to use the funds, when, and hold a public workshop as well and just get further guidance about how to move forward based on all the great work that was already done.

Do you have a sense of when we might hear?

I think mid-August.

Can you kind of give some of the elements of what that grant was looking at to do? Was there some wayfinding signage and things like that for our downtown?

Right. The primary piece of it would be it would fund an entire wayfinding signage rollout, which we we really do need, especially gateway signage, but also corridor signs. There would be historic marker signs, signs in the downtown as well, for our parks, for our public parking, and some other municipal signs. So it would really be a very comprehensive wayfinding signage program. And then the second piece would be to explore even more what a tourist development district would look like. And that would include meetings with our local hotel owners. Um, and again, a lot of, uh, or heavy stakeholder engagement from the community to hear how they would receive it, how the business community would receive it. So that would be the second phase of the, of the grants. And then based on that, and with frequent reports to council, um, ultimately council would decide if a tourist development district is something we want to do, we would be only the second city in Maine next to Portland to have one of the districts. So if it made sense at that point, then we would move forward in that direction. But that would be about a year-long process. Not for the signs. Hopefully the signs would go in sooner. But the tourist development district would be about 10 months until we would get to the point of deciding how to move forward. Any other questions?

Any further questions from council? Councilor Smith?

Thank you. This is terrific, and I want to build off of your comment about the wayfinding signs and getting those going, but also seeing that there are QR codes on here is, I think, a really significant, for visitors and for the rest of us. I've played with them on my phone, and it's terrific to see that work through. QR codes, I think, in addition to the wayfinding for people who aren't comfortable playing with their phone, but I went to Fourth of July Parade in Bar Harbor, this year and some of the floats had QR codes on them. Including there are knitting people and they had knitted their QR code and it worked. So I think using this and again in combination with the way finding signs is a terrific way to remind us all the cool options that we have for dining in Ellsworth and for folks to stay here when they're visiting. So I think that's terrific.

Councilor White.

Where can local businesses, hotels, Airbnbs pick up these?

So they can pick them up at the Heart of Ellsworth office. We have a depleted supply because they are now currently at the Kennebunk and the Trenton rest areas or the travel plazas. And that was also part of the grant that we received was money allocated to be able to pay for that support for this year. along with the printing. As we all know, printing's not cheap. And there's actually, I was only able to give you a couple. There are a few more pamphlet sort of pieces, too, that we just don't have any of them left because they've been so popular. But if any business is looking to have some, they certainly can email us or stop by the Heart of Ellsworth office at 16 State Street in downtown Ellsworth.

Can you track clicks on that QR code?

The backend of the website is generating all sorts of data right now as we speak. That's really terrific. Yeah, it is. It's really exciting. And the other thing I will note is that this Discover Ellsworth, while it's branded Discover Ellsworth, it's really about... trying to get people to come here and stay in our city, rather than staying other places that may be more populated, but using us sort of as a hub and thinking about pushing traffic out to the Blue Hill Peninsula, to the Scudic Peninsula, and maybe you only go and hang out a day or two in Bar Harbor, but you have your little stay here in Ellsworth, so that we're really able to capitalize on dollars spent here in our city, because they're all driving through And if we don't tell them to stop, they're not going to stop because we don't have any way of finding it. Some people come by and don't even know that downtown exists, so it's kind of wild, but we've heard that before. Thank you.

Any further comments or questions? No, thank you. Thank you. A lot of hard work went into this. It's great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. With that, we're on to Agenda Item Number 15, Council Order Number 072602, Tax Assessment Update from RCS Assessment Services.

So this is actually going to be Larry and RCS kind of doing this in coordination with one another, which is how our tax assessment has been done this year. Yes. So it's fitting that they're going to present it together. Thank you.

Great, thank you. I would like to introduce Josh Berry and his company, Municipal Consulting Group. They helped me this year. They helped me this year with a lot of stuff. The permitting, the new construction, the personal property items, reading the deeds. They did a tremendous amount of work. They had a good team. As they were doing the new construction, the building permits that they did. People didn't recognize the faces knocking on their door or on their security camera, even though they were in Florida. Somebody's at the house. But they did a fantastic job. And because of them and my assistant, Tracy, did one heck of a job so that we were able to have final values this year. On July 13th, and in past years, it has, in fact, It has been as late as September the 2nd to get all this done. So it was a tremendous amount of work that I received assistance on with Josh and his team. Nate, he's working the computers tonight. And so he's working on getting tax bills ready to go as we speak. And so they're going to be coming out real soon. probably within a couple weeks, we hope. And last year, for valuation, we saw a tremendous increase in value, especially in waterfront. Waterfront properties, a lot of them were up about 30% their value-wise compared to the year before. Non-waterfront property didn't go up that high, but they were around 17%, 18% increase in value. This year, I can report that there is no significant increases in value because what we shot for last year was 90%. of sale price value. And this year there hasn't been a huge amount of appreciation in the real estate market to have a significant increase in value. So what we did, we went 3% across the board. so that every property, including the waterfront property, will see a 3% increase in their valuation, not a 30% increase in their valuation. So with that, with the budget that we have, I can report our tax rate will be $16.25. Last year was $15.66. Pretty much almost every property, unless there's been new construction, if there's been no change in additions, new buildings, most every property, well, it's a 3% across the board increase. So I do have a spreadsheet.

It's up there, Larry. Oh, there it is.

Thank you. I don't know how I did it, but it's up there. That's fantastic. You'll notice it starts out at 25,000. It goes all the way to a million, but it's every 50,000 increment. So last year, let's go with... Let's go with the $300,000 property. Tax rate last year was $1,566. The tax was $5,481. The increase in value is 3%. That gets it up to $412,000 this year versus $400,000. Larry, I think you're on the wrong number.

The one that's colored. You want the one that's colored. That's $300,000. Yeah.

Yes, 309 versus 300,000. Oh, yeah, and that tax was 4698. I need to get taller so I can reach these things. Now, this year's tax rate at 1625, the new value of 309, it'll be a tax of $5,021. over last year's 4698, that's $323. And as a percentage, it's 6.9% increase in the tax bill over last year. So that's basically it. If you have any questions.

Councilor Smith.

Thanks, Larry. This is terrific. One of the things that we have been anticipating, trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together in this, is the valuation for new construction. Do you have a sense of what that number is and then how that played into tax bills?

I do. The total increase in value for the whole city for the real estate was 73 million.

Is that new construction?

Well, that's the total. Okay, that's the total. Of that, roughly 22 million was the new construction.

Thank you.

And roughly 52 million was because of the 3% across the board increase. Thank you. And I wish to also say I was very surprised last year when valuations were so significantly increased over the year before, especially for the waterfront property. that there was not one abatement appeal. We have a local board of assessment review that if people disagree with their value, if they come in and ask for a tax abatement and they don't receive it, they can appeal to the local board. The local board, it's the same board that does the zoning appeals. And not one appeal, that was... very surprised that there wasn't even one appeal last year. This year, you know, it's a 3% increase, but I'm not expecting too much complaints over 3% versus 30% increase last year.

Any further questions from council?

Josh, did you want to come up and talk about how you're going to incorporate this into the data visualization that we've been working on, the new stuff? Watch your head, please.

I should have come up here and given you a hand. Thank you. Josh Berry with Municipal Consulting Group. Just to clarify on the agenda, we started here as RCS assessment. And since we started the company, we've grown in our footprint and what we offer cities and towns. So we've gone through a name change municipal consulting group because we just offer a lot of different consulting for different municipalities. But one thing that we're bringing to the table for Ellsworth is... some data analytic tools that are really going to help us from year to year to really see where the numbers are going, see where the trends are within the city. It may be a good idea to come back on a less busy night once we get our commitment information into our analysis platform and just kind of run through what we're going to look at and how we're going to project out from year to year where values are going to be and just try to help Larry as much as we can to just see where we're at. So if there are changes that are coming your way you'll be able to see them before they get to you. We've also started a program with a a mobile assessing platform where our inspection work this year was done basically by property card like you normally do, but we're even going to take that up to the digital era where we'll be out there collecting all the information next year digitally and be able to link it to the vision camera software that the city uses. So while we're out there making updates, we'll be able to capture what we found Our home office, which is in Herman, will be able to see those updates, approve them, and automatically apply them to the tax assessment role for the city. So we're in a position, and my goal is to make this department as efficient as possible. Ellsworth is nearly a $2 billion valuation city. That's pretty substantial. Like everything else, it's just continuing to go up. We're trying to limit the impact on maybe bodies that need to do the work. That's a struggle with every city and every municipality in the state is just finding people to do the work. We're looking to technology and finding ways to help less of us do more of it and I got to give a big you know big shout out to the staff at my office that did a lot of the work behind the scenes Larry and I down here the inspectors but we have a really good crew that supports us Courtney that your office would hear from quite regularly, so it's certainly not just me doing it, but we just have a really good staff and a good thing going, and looking forward to the next couple years to see what else we can do, and happy to hear the $22 million amount. We had conservatively projected about $10 million of inspection work and new pickup, but that's a good sign.

Great, thank you. Any questions? Councillor Martineau?

Could you go back to that graphic that showed the difference in taxes between on the $300,000 dollar? Yes, just give me a second. Oh, okay. Oh, thank you.

And we'll put this up on the city's website as well. Yes.

No, my comment was, I mean, yes, that incredible reevaluation of the waterfront property and the large increase, that was before my time. I understand that. I just think we have to be careful about how we characterize things. in these times, how we characterize even what we have said is a necessary and fair budget. I mean, this is still a $320, more or less, increase per year. $320 is $320. And I think to say that, you know, it's great that people didn't complain. Believe me, they did. We just got finished with them complaining. And I think we should be careful because that increase is an increase and everybody's feeling it.

Oh, yes. Yeah, that's... One of the things that I preach all the time, especially when people come in and talk to me about their values is you would think that there would be more tax relief measures coming from the state. It's like the two city managers ago, we had David Cole, three of his five years he was here, the homestead exemption increased, but it hasn't increased since. It's at $25,000 reduction, and I don't know, Things like that. I hear some of the debates for the governor's office and there's some running for governor who suggest raising the homestead exemption from $25,000 to $300,000. That would be almost impossible, I think, because the state of Maine reimburses 76% of the tax loss for an exemption, homestead exemption. So I doubt if something like that could happen, but certainly if we could get another $5,000, go from 25 to 30, Maybe do that on a regular basis based on the economy, of course. That would help.

Thank you. Any further questions for Larry? Councilor Halloran?

I have a comment. I was just... First of all... This is the fifth season that I have sat through this and this is awesome that we have answers. We may not like the answers, but we have the answers and we don't have the, well, I don't know approach. We have here's what it is approach. But to echo a little bit, and it has nothing to do with your department. But it has to do with the city spending. And in quick math, we mentioned a $300,000 property. So bottom line is yes, a $300,000 property has a $323 increase. You have no bearing on that. You're reporting market conditions and you're reporting it on time and I think the tools that have come into play obviously are effective. With a blend of our own office and some outside help, I think that makes a lot of sense. But last year, the $300,000 homeowner brought $90.35 a week to City Hall. I'll say that again. Last year, the $300,000 homeowner brought ninety dollars and thirty five cents to city hall this year they can bring ninety six dollars and fifty six cents per week uh... so you know it doesn't sound like a lot but collectively throughout the city uh... That's a lot of money, and it's not your doing. It's our spending that's asking for this money. But thank you for doing your part and telling us where this thing is standing in July.

Thank you. It should be said as often as we possibly can that the tax rate, you just take the budget, what you're going to have to spend based on what's been approved for the year, for the fiscal year, and you just divide that by the total valuation of the town. And of course, if you have a lower budget, dividing into a high, almost $2 billion value, you're going to have a lower tax. So I totally agree with you.

Any further questions? Seeing none, thank you, Larry. Thank you for your help folks. Appreciate it. We're moving on to agenda item number 16, council order number 072603, tax increment financing redesign report out. Kayla here and our consultant.

Good evening again. Twyla Fisher, Economic Development Director. Just, and I know we've got to keep things moving along, but a brief recap of where we're at before I hand things over to our consultant. Last fall, the city of Ellsworth retained La Rochelle Consulting to carry out a review and potential redesign of the city's four existing tax increment financing, or TIF, districts. Beckwith Hill Municipal TIF, Leonard Lake Senior Housing TIF, Oriole Way Workforce Housing TIF, and Oriole Way Senior Housing TIF. And there were several key deliverables in there, and I just want to say they were all met with impressive attention to detail, and no doubt many hours beyond what was initially anticipated in Reagan's project bid. And I just want to also say of note, the consultant went above and beyond, added a workshop with city staff in January, and then out of that we understood that we were able to apply for two We had a window to apply for two new TIFs with a two-year value capture look back, and so we did that, and they were approved last month. And so because of that several-month effort to apply, this final report was kind of put on hold until that came through. Also, I want to note that the finance director vacancy in February made it difficult for staff to adequately provide all the information she was looking for because we had that vacancy and we did the best we could. But Despite that, Reagan has prepared an incredible report tonight for the final presentation, and I know you'll appreciate with me again the attention to detail.

Thank you.

And may I, can I turn this a little bit to the audience, and you can still see it?

Yeah. Can you still see there?

Yeah, and we have a printout in our cell, so it's good.

That's good. I'll do my best to drive. Thank you.

I appreciate it.

You're doing a great job.

Good evening, everyone. Happy to see many of you back since November. My name is Regan LaRochelle with LaRochelle Consulting, and Twyla has teed up this project, and I'm going to move forward with talking to you about the outcomes from the analysis. As Twyla mentioned, we did have some hiccups in terms of going through the material and taking a break in order to move forward with two tax increment financing districts that the city approved. But this analysis included reading through, and when I started, there were four tax increment financing districts in the city, so reading through those applications the amendments and the approvals, looking through the historical TIF revenues since the beginning of the districts. Your first district began in 2001, so we're looking back several years at revenues for that district in particular. looking at the revenue projections and tax shift analysis for each district, both historical and going forward, review of all of the city's available audits to get information about expenditures from the different TIF districts and the balances of those current TIF districts, looking at how your TIF districts are set up and what they are able to spend money on comparing that with new laws that have been passed since some of your districts have came into effect and providing recommendations on how you might amend those districts to better utilize your TIF revenue. And finally, looking at the short and mid-term projects from your capital improvement plan, which you heard a little bit about tonight. as well as your comprehensive plan and your most recent housing plan and matching up how TIF revenues might be able to be used with some of those projects that have been identified in those different in those different reports. So that's where we're coming from here. Next slide, please. But I certainly didn't want to assume that everyone remembered everything I said from last November regarding TIF districts. So and for the benefit of the audience, I wanted to very quickly just give a high level overview about what a TIF district is and answer some questions around that if needed. So once again, tax increment financing is a tool that is in state statute. There are two major types of TIF districts. One, the first one is often thought of as a business or economic development TIF. Those are called municipal TIFs or MTIFs, and those are regulated by the Department of Economic and Community Development at the state. The second type of TIF is an affordable housing TIF district. And that requires that at least 33% of the development in that district is affordable to 120% or below area median income buyers and renters. So that's what qualifies a development for an affordable housing TIF. And those are regulated by Maine Housing Authority. So when we're talking about why would Ellsworth even want to have a TIF district, there are two major reasons, I guess we could say. But there are many reasons. I could go on quite a while about all the benefits of TIF. But one thing from a city council perspective is that it helps the council be able to direct development to high priority areas. and also incentivize outcomes that the city would want to see. And those can include things like cleaning up a blighted area, adding affordable housing, adding quality jobs, expanding your tax base. And so oftentimes, if a developer were to come to the council with a project and need a tax reimbursement for that, the city would weigh those benefits of what the developer is bringing to the city in exchange for that tax reimbursement for a period of time. The second and equally important benefit of tax increment financing is sheltering new value from state and county funding formulas. And if you could just move forward one slide and then we're going to go back. I'm going to make you do a little gymnastics today. So each TIF district requires that a revenue projection and a tax shift analysis be completed as part of your application. And what this revenue projection on the left and tax shift analysis tells us, and I know it's too small for you to see and I apologize for that, but I just wanted to give you the visual. is that, and this is the case with all new valuation in a community, when Ellsworth's municipal valuation increases, that value is fed into state funding formulas. And the funding formula assumes that if Ellsworth is getting richer, then it has more ability to tax and therefore needs less of the incentives or less of the revenue from these certain pots of money. The first one is aid to education. So your municipal valuation goes into that. You get your AIDS education each year. The second one is revenue sharing. So your municipal valuation goes into the both of those. This example shows, and this is something that I did for your downtown corridor TIF district. You can't read that, but the $6.6 million that was projected to occur in new value in your TIF district would generate 103, $104,000 in new taxes for this year. Looking at how that $6.6 million would affect your aid to education, you would be losing about $40,000 The revenue sharing, you'd lose about $20,000 and your county taxes would go up about $3,700. So adding all of those shifts together, you're looking at $66,000 that the city now has to make up in lost revenue. So that's what they're talking about when we're saying tax shifts. Yes, you're bringing in $103,000 new taxes, but you're also losing those other revenue sources and having to pay more county taxes. So all that to say that that is what we call a tax shift, and that's why TIF districts can be so important, because when you create a TIF district around new development, that basically hides the increased value in the TIF district from those funding formulas. So now, instead of only keeping 64% of that new tax dollar, you're keeping 100% of that tax dollar. So that's a really important piece of TIF to understand, is that now a TIF district allows you to keep that whole dollar in the community, and when you can use that whole dollar to offset costs that would be paid for with your general fund revenue, then you're winning. So that's, again, something I wanted to... touch on just to remind the council about why TIFs are important for municipalities to consider. So if we can go back one. Thank you. So finally, TIF districts and TIF revenue is actually highly regulated. When the TIF district is created, and you saw a couple of these this past year, Twyla presented you with the downtown corridor TIF district and the central corridor TIF district. That is the development plan as part of the application. And in that development plan, it records details about the district, the starting value of the district, what the projections are for that district, and which parcels are part of that TIF district. So all of that's included in the application. It also talks about... how TIF revenues can be spent. And finally, TIF districts can be amended at any time going through the public process. So you're not locked into the properties that you have in the TIF district or how you decide to spend that TIF revenue going out 30 years. You can amend that and change that at any time. So again, for the next slide, Actually, two slides.

There's a little delay, sorry.

Oh, that's okay. I promise it's coming. Okay. So this is what is included in every TIF district application. It's your municipal development plan, and it tells how the city is planning to spend its own TIF revenue. Next slide, please. And just if you ever want to look at this for any TIF district, these are the components of it. This first large column here is the description of the projects that TIF revenues can be used for. The cost estimate is the, it shows the maximum amount that TIF revenues, of TIF revenues that can be spent in that particular category without doing an amendment. Like I said, if you're getting towards that ceiling, you can always do a TIF amendment and increase that cost estimate. The third column shows the citation from main statute that allows that project to be funded with TIF revenues. And then the fourth column shows the funds that have been spent in each category. And so that's how we keep track of our TIF districts. Next slide, please. So again, in the interest of time here, I'm going to quickly touch on a couple of your TIF districts. Right now, as I said, you have six. But the two that need most attention, I would say, are the Beckwith Hill TIF district and the Leonard Lake TIF district. So the Beckwith Hill is an MTIF. It was created in 2001. And it was economic development focused for commercial and business use. This TIF district was set up so that the city captured, again, this whole idea of sheltering the value from those funding formulas. You were sheltering 67% of the new value in that district during the whole duration of the district. We are at a point now in the last five years of this TIF district where the people who set it up, understandably, did not want the city to fall off a cliff and have all of this new value come back onto your municipal valuation all at once. So what they decided to do was taper down the percentage for the last five years. So this year, you are slated to capture only 60% of this district and then on and on down to 20%. So I just wanted to make you aware of that. And this, in fiscal year 26, your TIF revenues from this district were $627,000. Next slide, please. So the Leonard Lake Senior Affordable Housing TIF is a 26-unit senior housing project on 2.83 acres. The district is actually almost 21 acres and you use that TIF revenue in that district to do other projects like the Moore Senior Center and the Knowlton Park development are two projects that you use TIF revenue on in that district. And this TIF district has an incentive back to the developer, so half of this TIF goes to the developer. It is set to expire. It's only a 21-year district, and TIF districts can go up to 30 years. So you're reimbursing that developer for 20 years, and then the district is completed. Next slide, please. I'm actually going to skip ahead a little bit. The other four TIF districts are newer and have much less flexibility involved in their TIF revenues. Again, I'm just trying to be sensitive to time, but I'm happy to answer questions afterwards if people have specific questions about those. So if we could go continue forward. One more, I think. Okay. So when we're talking... Sorry. That's okay. Great. So when we're talking about the financial impact of Ellsworth's TIF districts, as I mentioned a little earlier, TIF revenues are most effectively used when they offset costs that you would be spending general fund revenue on. So remember, we're going to be able to use the whole TIF dollar as opposed to just a portion of the general fund revenue dollar. And so we always want to keep that in mind as we're looking at projects that we could use TIF revenues on generally. I would, general recommendations for your six TIF districts are unless you are saving for an identified capital expenditure, try to spend all of your TIF revenue in the year that it is generated, so that $627,000 that we talked about from Beckwith Hill. Ideally, you would want that money to go back out and start working for projects or to offset your general fund in that same year. That doesn't always happen, and some budgets are what they are, but that's, I'd say, a good goal for the city to work towards. I would also suggest that you review your allowable TIF expenditures for each district every three to five years. That ensures that city funds are being spent. It also allows you to look at statute to see if there have been changes in the law. There have been some very significant changes in the past couple of years that we're going to go over quickly. Right now, that would really benefit Ellsworth, especially looking at your capital improvement plan, if you chose to go that way. So the next slide, the TIF district expenses to be added. This is a list of expenses that I would say are likely to offset your general fund revenue expenses right now. These are kind of just more generic expenses that I would recommend for any TIF district that was being set up to include. It includes, you already fund your economic development office with TIF revenue, for example, but a portion of your city manager's salary that could be related to economic development work or oversight should be included. Any municipal employee that works with or on TIF districts, a portion of their salary should be included. And again, these aren't always taking the whole item off your general fund revenue, but it is something that helps to offset increasing taxes every year if you can kind of continue to chip away at some of these smaller amounts. Next slide. So the next two slides, I went through the capital improvement project lists, and I unfortunately couldn't see them on the screen when you were reviewing them. But this is just an idea that you can get of how TIF revenue might be able to be used help to fund or fully fund some of these projects. And I say that because right now, as we're talking about Beckwith Hills percentage going down, my strong recommendation would be to amend that TIF district and retain that TIF revenue so that you might be able to put it towards some of these short-term capital improvement project costs that are eligible for that. Again, keeping the whole dollar instead of a portion of the dollar that would go into the general fund. And again, I apologize for rushing through this, but I'm happy to go through it more with Sarah and, you know, after the fact, or any counselors who are interested. Okay, so we're at Beckwith Hill MTIF recommendations. So my recommendation for Beckwith Hill would be to amend that TIF district and allow for up to 100% capture of the district. That gets a little tricky. I'm not necessarily saying that you should just capture all of the value in the Beckwith Hill TIF district now because, of course, about $300,000 a year in taxes have been going into your general fund consistently. So you don't necessarily want to swoop that away from your general fund because then you have a hole in your general fund revenue. But at the very least, I would say maintaining that TIF revenue where it has been and consider maybe you might want to capture more in a given year. The up to 100% gives the council the discretion to, modify how much it captures in certain years if that was something that would be helpful. So that would be a recommendation that I had. Let's see, municipal investment plan. So I talked to you about some of the expenses that aren't currently part of your TIF districts that I would recommend for any TIF district to be included. and then look closely at your capital improvement plan and see if there might be some items that could be funded on your short-term plan with the Beckwith Hill funds that you might want to recapture. There's a new piece of the statute which allows your TIF districts, your MTIFs, to be extended an additional 20 years if 75% of the TIF revenues that are captured are used for affordable housing or transit-oriented development. Again, looking at your housing study and your comprehensive plan, that's something else to consider. It's just, again, the whole dollar that would be able to be used towards affordable housing and transit-oriented development that the city may already have planned.

Would that have to be in the district?

No. And then the next slide, the recommendations for Leonard Lake. As I mentioned, Leonard Lake is only a 21-year TIF district, and your credit enhancement agreement, what you're paying to the developer, ends at that 21-year mark. I notice, especially in your capital improvement plan, that there's a lot of... There are a lot of projects or some projects around Knowlton Park projects and more center projects. I would recommend extending your TIF district to 30 years, capturing all of that value and putting it towards those projects that are already in the TIF district and would allow you to offset those costs without touching the general fund budget for those particular projects. The next two districts, so Oriel Way and Oriel Way Affordable Housing and Oriel Way Workforce Housing and Oriel Way Senior Housing are pretty locked down. And so I'm not going to make any recommendations about those at this point. 50% goes to the developer. 50% goes to your school district. That's exactly where you want it to be. That is a cost that is offset. My final recommendations, if you could move to the last slide. Next. Okay. So, as Twyla mentioned, you know, this process kind of got elongated. And during the process, many of my recommendations were actually fulfilled by Twyla working on the side. So the city has already maximized tools for Ellsworth's downtown by creating your downtown corridor TIF district. Another recommendation would have been to develop cascading TIF districts with overlapping projects, and that's what the central corridor TIF district is doing. It's kind of overlapping with Beckwith Hills projects, so you won't have that cliff. that I was talking about originally. Creating a process for developers and businesses to approach the city with requests for tax reimbursement. I believe Twyla is already on that, but there are many different ways that different municipalities have developers approach them, and I've provided some of those examples to Twyla, and if she hasn't already approached that with the council, I'm sure she will. And then, finally, provide a means for staff to evaluate planned development in the city and determine, just like Beckwith Hill, if it would be advantageous for a TIF district to be created to just capture that value and shelter it from those tax shifts that I was talking about, being able to use those funds for general fund purposes, except using TIP funds. Do you have any questions?

Question I have is kind of for Sarah. I like the proposal of kind of matching our SIP with the TIF priorities, and is that something you guys are working on or plan to work on as we progress through the SIP?

Well, as we noted on the Bayside Road, the bond will be paid for through TIF funding, and when Chris comes on board, It will definitely be something that when he takes a look at the SIP and how we're going to fund it, taking a look at all of our TIF districts and what can be used where is going to be really important and might adjust timing of projects a bit.

Yeah, yeah, but being able to maximize the TIF proceeds for those obviously is great. Yes. And I think just thank you for this. It's really helpful. I've learned a lot about TIF. and I've even worked on TIFs before. So, and it's great to see that the economic development team at Twyla through the work has already been implementing all this work. So I feel, I'm excited about what we can do with the TIFs as it relates to our economic development and infrastructure and capital improvements. So, yeah, no, thank you. It's very helpful.

Yeah, this has been a really, really helpful exercise for the entire staff. I know we had a workshop with Just Staff to look at where TIF can be used where so that we can be mindful of that when developing our budgets. Twyla has been really great about reminding us to plug things in where they need to get plugged in. So thank you so much for the work you've done. This has been one of the biggest learning experiences in my short time here. They've all been learning, but this has been a really, really helpful one.

Any further councilor questions or comments on this presentation? Great.

And I will say, if you have individual questions, again, I apologize for going so fast. My phone number is on the back page. My email address, feel free to reach out to me individually. I'd be happy. Love TIF talk. I'll talk TIF all day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, how's council doing? Do we need a five minute break? Would that be helpful or do we want to keep plugging? Keep plugging? All right, we'll keep plugging. Next agenda item, council order number 17, council order number 072604, discussion and potential action regarding tax acquired properties including council review and direction on which properties to authorize for sale.

Hello again. I'm Sue McLean, and I am the tax collector. But before I get into this, I just wanted to thank the assessing department for getting me the commitment today. I can't even tell you how excited that makes me. I know it doesn't make others happy, but it does me. And the tax bills, we're working on them to get them printed here shortly, get them to the printers, but they are available online. If anybody wants to go into the website, they can see their bill. It's there now, finally, as of today. So way ahead of schedule. So having said that, you were given or you should have received a list of properties and with a few notes of what I've discovered on each of the properties. I have a binder here that has a lot more information if anybody wants to look at it, but it was just impossible to scan everything in here and get it to you. But it is available and I am trying to keep that updated. And so at this point, I think that we're at the point of just trying to figure out which properties we want to put up for sale, and if there are any that we don't. The list that you have is not everything. The list you have is... are all the properties that they're tax acquired, but there are other properties that the owners or prior owners have contacted me and I'm working with them to get a payment plan to eventually deed it back to them. So you don't have any of those in here, except for one where the person called after you got the list. So that one I will be taking out. But other than that, all of these are available. They've all been foreclosed on. I don't have any payment plans. However, I don't know the current status of the properties as far as if there's anybody living in them. Some of them are empty. Some of them have people living in there that I don't know who they are. I don't know what the condition of the house is in. I don't know anything about it. We're in the process of setting up policies and procedures what we do when we foreclose on a property. And that's kind of where I'm at. Now I'm just waiting to find out which ones you want me to take a look at and sell. There are steps I need to do before we can list it with a realtor. And that can take, oh, anywhere from a month, 90 days or more. We have to track. the prior owners down, and some of them are hard to find. But we have to make a really deep dive and try and find it. We've got to document every step of the way. So we've got to go on to public records everywhere and anywhere we can to try and find the people. So it might take a while. That's all I got.

Any questions for Sue, Councillor Howell?

Could you maybe give us a little briefing of this new process where it's now listed with a realtor as opposed to the bid process? Sure. Just because they're all posted for sale, that doesn't mean they'll all be sold. Is that a fair analysis?

Yeah, probably, yeah. But we have to make that effort. So in the past, we could put them out for sealed bid or auction. And the state of Maine has now said that you cannot do that. You have to list a foreclosed property with a realtor. Now you don't, if you own something, if the city bought property and then they decided to sell it, that you can do whatever you want with. But the foreclosed properties have to go to a realtor. Now, having said that, they have, once it's listed, they have 12 months to sell it. If it doesn't sell, at that point, we can decide to auction it or, yeah, sell it by a sealed bid. So, but we have to go the realtor route first.

And to further that, The city of Ellsworth hasn't done this yet.

Correct. Okay.

And so my question about that process, I think we are all going to have questions before it's over because it's never been done this way before. Right. The realtor establishes the price and the price is contingent upon council approval. Could we talk about that a little bit?

Yes, so the realtor will have to do they'll have to come up with a value, marketing, come up with a marketing plan and get the property, I don't know all the realtor terms, but coming up with the value basically. And then that and their sale, their plan for that property, they present it to us and then we agree or don't agree, whatever. And then they will list it with, they have to list it with everything they would any other property, whether it be MLS or on social media or their websites. They have to push it like they would any other property. Any offer they get, they have to bring to us, which we'll present to the council. And you can, you know, yes or no. We need to be careful, though, because if they come with something very low and we accept it, then the state can come back on us for, Yeah, it would be us for agreeing to sell it for such a low price. So it has to go as close to a market value as it can. There's no way around that. And then once all of that process is done and we have a buyer, it comes, again, to finalize all the paperwork and then we sign off and it gets sold. And then my work really starts because then I have I have a lot of calculating that has to be done, which, I mean, I'm sure the realtor will do some of that as well. But we've got notifications that we have to make to the state and post at the registry. There's just a lot of legal finishing up of things.

And to further that, the city of Ellsworth does not have to pay to list these only when it's sold?

No. Nothing comes out of our pocket. The city will pay nothing. It's all of the, what will happen is the sale of the property is reduced by what is owed to us. And then the realtor takes their commission out of the excess. And then the rest of that goes back to the prior owner. But we do not come up with it. The only thing that it costs us is our staff time.

And liens. It's sewer, water.

Oh, yes, yep, and it will cover all of that.

And the liens that, yeah.

Yep, yep, no, yep, it covers all of that. Any kind of, any legal fees that we incurred for whatever reason, SOAR liens, back taxes, any, if it was something that had to be demolished or any upkeep of it, if we had to do anything to the property to secure it or make it safe, all of that gets added to the total that is due back to us out of the sale.

What would be the downside to listing all of them?

Just a lot for me at once, but no, I don't see any,

It's a lot for you at once at this juncture, but once the mill gets going, it would be a routine. The only reason there's a lot now is because it hasn't been done before.

Right, and that's where I was going with this comment was I think I anticipated the council saying to do them all anyway, but I think once we do that, it's... We may get all of these... How can I word it? We may start the process of listing all of them, but they're not all going to go at once because there are some that I'm going to have a hard time finding people or whatever. So even if we say we're going to do them all, it's going to just be kind of a domino effect. They're not all going to be able to. get posted at the same time. And then going forward, I think, I mean, on average, generally, there's four or five accounts that we foreclose on a year. So that won't, you know, that's not that big of a deal as far as getting the paperwork on those done. So... Councillor Shea.

I see one here in the notes that fire department, FD may be interested in that property.

Yeah, that's the one I'm pulling. That's the one that I got a call just the other day that, and I don't think they were interested in it anymore anyway, but that's the one that the prior owner has contacted me and said that they are wanting the property back. So we're going to work with them.

Okay. Any properties that the city decides to keep, it has to be appraised by an outside appraiser.

Yes, we have to actually buy it.

Yeah, and we actually have to buy it.

Yes, yeah.

For the appraised value.

Yep, that's correct, yep.

Councilor Slate? 16 C Street was being talked about the ending of Riverwalk North, potentially, as a potential future park. I didn't see that there in the notes. What is it? 16, I'm sorry, 16 Central Street.

It's down towards the bottom. Yes. We were talking.

Yeah, so there was the idea, at least with Parks and Recreation, that they would potentially be ending the Riverwalk North Trail there at that, 16 Central Street, and making that a park, and I just didn't see that as notes.

I didn't know about it.

That would be something to talk to Roddy about.

Are they all going to go to one realtor or are we spreading the wealth? No. So do you think approaching this as a package, a big package, and giving it to the realtor will make it more attractive to the realtor or less attractive? I mean, I'm just thinking.

Yeah, I've had some discussions with her. I don't think... I think either way, she's just willing to work with us no matter how we decide to do it. And, again, she realistically understands how this all happens, and she knows that she's not going to get all of these at once. It can't happen that way because... I've got the mailings that I have to do and then it filters back and the post office, you never know how quickly they're going to get something back if it's not claimed because I have to do certified mailings and I have to find the people, do certified mailings. And then if it comes back, I have to do more research and try and find them and send it out again. And if it comes back, I got to do it again. So, you know, they may get a handful of them right up front, and then it's going to be kind of sporadic.

Do you know if utilities are on in any of those houses?

There are some. I don't know. Because some of these houses, people are still in.

I know. I'm just trying to make the differentiation between people who have a legitimate reason to be there and people who might not have such a legitimate reason.

Well, I know that there are a couple that the people shouldn't be there.

Okay. So now you're talking about the ability to get them out. So...

Right, so MMA legal is pretty clear on that part of it in that they feel we should not evict them. Even squatters? Even squatters. They feel, and I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, I don't know, but they say it is up to the new owner. to do it. If we try and step in, we're opening ourselves up for more liability. As far as evictions go, it can take a year to get them out of there. If that's going to tie this up for a whole year, but yet... somebody will buy it and maybe if it goes up for sale, people will move out. I don't know.

That's common practice of my municipal clients is they're sold with the occupants still in there and it's up to the new owner to... Squatters wouldn't make a property less attractive? Well, they can. It can reduce the price, but then you've got to... Otherwise, the city's... taking on liability, paying lawyers to try to evict people.

Right, and MMA legal said stay away from that. If they're there, just acknowledge that they're there, but we can't, we shouldn't, not that we can't, but we shouldn't try to evict them.

Well, from my perspective... I think we should sell everything we can, except maybe that Central Street property for consideration of the park, or at least hold off on releasing that one. That's my two cents. But otherwise, yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to... Rough math, looks like we've got somewhere around $2 million, a million and a half in value. In value, yeah. Getting it back on the rolls and getting it back to... Good use.

Yeah. Now, a few, quite a few of these actually are islands, little tiny islands, which, I mean, I think it's kind of cool to buy an island, but I'm not sure how well or how quickly those will sell.

Well, and if they don't sell, maybe the city considers making those into a park or something. Who knows? Make it a campsite.

Yeah, right.

Councilor White?

Is there any interest for the fire department to look at 1375 Bangor Road? It's about an acre less, but I don't know if that's been looked at.

I don't think so. I think they had something else.

The original property that was looked at for the fire department was on Gallants Hill.

It is right next door. 1375 Bangor Road is the property that would still be there. And the other one that you were looking at was 1399. So it's pretty close by. But it is about an acre, 0.93 acres less.

I wouldn't recommend it.

You would?

I would not.

Would not.

Again, we're starting to get close with that McAllen's Hill. It becomes a lot of site issue. We've held on to it. Hey, Scott. My apologies. Scott Gilroy, Fire Chief, City of Ellsworth. Originally, the original property on McGowan's Hill was held onto in anticipation of eventually building out in North Ellsworth. Over the years, based on McGowan's Hill, wintertime, line of sight coming up and down the hill, apparatus getting out onto the road with the speed of traffic that we already know is out there. 55 is a rule of thumb that we know that's not the traffic speed out there. We don't think it's a safe place to put a fire station to be aggressively moving out into two lanes of traffic that's traveling at that high speed and not have a controlled intersection. At some point in time, we'd have to look at some other property that may come up that puts us closer towards the Branch Pond to Colon Road intersection. That's a safer avenue with a much longer line of sight.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Councillor Smith?

Thank you, two questions in addition to what you've heard. Ronald being 34 acres, I'm curious, there's a note that it's wetlands but it's valued at 73,500.

Yeah, I asked the assessor about that and he said about four acres is wetland and the rest of it is not.

Okay.

So I didn't have that information. I just saw a note that it was wetland.

And then I get a broader question. You've got somewhere the foreclosure was January of this year. And as I first read through this, I thought, is that too soon to be going forward to foreclosure? So a little bit from you on what got you to the point of foreclosure. You mean... How many years has it been in process to get to the point of foreclosure?

Oh, it's just shy of two years before it forecloses from when it's first built, from the commitment date.

That's in statute, so there's a time period. Right, right.

So there are four that were foreclosed January 15th of this year. Yeah. It just... I want to make sure that everybody's had the opportunity to reach out to you if they... Well, they have.

I mean, they have had that opportunity. And I mean, I'm very willing to talk to anybody that is... That goes without saying. But also, before I can list these, I have to send that letter to everybody. And it gives them, right, and it gives them, that is like, that will be, since it foreclosed, probably be the third notice at minimum that they get saying, do you want this property? So I think that covers us.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Councilor Howard.

I'm very uncomfortable with this cherry picking process. I think the city of Ellsworth needs to establish a process and stick to it no matter what name is attached to it. I don't like this hearing that I'm going to pull this one. I think it needs to be the same process regardless whether it's Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, they get the same treatment.

It's only.

Everybody needs to get treated the same. And cherry picking processes is dangerous. It's not fair. Everybody needs to get treated the same during this process.

Okay, Steve, what am I cherry picking? Can you explain that to me?

Yeah, I can. I don't like the conversations that we're having that, well, what about the, there might be, the city might want this for a park. Oh, the fire department.

But according to state statute, that is the first thing we are supposed to do is go down through and the city has the first option whether they want to keep it or not.

Okay, but... That's fine. As long as it's that way every single time. Like hearing that I'm pulling this one.

Well, I'm pulling it because they just contacted me.

Right, right. But hear me out here, okay? It's been since 2017, okay? And no matter what procedure is established... It needs to be the same every time, every day. And sure, if someone wants to reclaim their property, that's fabulous if they could do that. But I don't like the conversation about – and I'm not saying you, I'm saying we – I think that, you know, when it reaches a certain point and the city hasn't acted, I mean, you got some old properties and some new properties, it needs to be the same every day, every time.

So are you saying though that if they don't call me, if the prior owner doesn't call me, within a year or six months or whatever that it's too late, it's too bad? No. So sad?

What I'm saying is simply that it needs to be the same treatment for everybody.

Well, I think I do.

And I grant you that this is a new process, okay? This is a brand-new process. Yes, it is. Living, you know, with a realtor, and there's a lot of moving parts here, and there's going to be mistakes made, but I believe the city of Ellsworth needs to establish the same treatment for everybody. And if the same treatment for everybody means that they could reclaim their property at any time when it's about to go for sale, that's fine with me. I'm perfectly fine with that.

That is the same process I use for everybody. I do. And I think I said earlier that I am in the process of working up procedures, processes and procedures. Everybody gets treated the same. I don't favor one person over another. I'm not saying you do. I'm saying we. It sounds like that's what you're saying to me.

Well, I'm saying we. We as a group.

This table. That's what we're doing right now. We need to establish. That's what we're doing right now. This is the first time. You're directing your comments at her.

Look, you can put any words in your mouth that you want, but I don't have to accept them. No, you don't. What I am saying is we need the same process for everybody.

And Sue has explained that we have the same process for everyone. Sue, do we have the same process for everyone? We do. Thank you.

You got it on statement, you got it recorded. So you're good, I'm good, we're good.

I think you're doing a great job. I appreciate all your hard work despite other comments. And I do think this process right now is appropriate for the council to have this discussion in an open meeting as is required. And if we're identifying any properties we think the city might want to hold on to, that's what we're doing. And the remainders will be sold according to the same process. And that's that. And you can't make up stuff that doesn't exist, Steve. I know you try to, and that's your MO, but...

I disagree. I'm allowed to make my comments. You don't have to agree.

Clarification that when we say the city might want to hang on to, whether it's Central Street or the fire department, The process is the city would then have to purchase it and go through the same of reclaiming your expenses and any balance goes to the others. So it's going to be the same process whether we, the city, chooses to take first option or not.

Exactly. The only difference is it doesn't get listed with a realtor. That's the only difference. But we would still have to have an appraisal done or whatever.

Right, to make sure that there's an equitable settlement. So it sounds like there were two. If the fire department is no longer interested in 1399 Bangor Road, then that would go into the sale.

That's the one that she reached out, though, right, 1399.

Oh, okay. Yes. Okay. And then the other question it seems like we need to address is, do we at least for now hold on to Central Street? I did the James Walk tour where we ended up where I remember when the building used to be there before it was torn down. And with that one, too, the value, the cost of the tearing down, I would imagine, I think it was the city and staff, and I may be getting too far into the details.

No, the city did take that down.

So that would be reclaimed as part of the process. So that's the only one that seems tentative. Do we want to hold it out for now to see if it makes sense for parks and rec?

Yeah, I mean, I can bring it back next month, that one, next month. I have to come back next month anyway because I have a second book that is city-owned properties, not foreclosed.

Okay, so now we've just got the foreclosed.

Yeah, this is just foreclosed.

There's nothing on that list that will hold 20 school buses, is there?

I don't think so. Just want to make sure. Well, we got one place that's 34 acres. It's wet, but.

But not all of it's wet.

But you said four. Only four. Only four acres. Only four acres.

Any other questions for Sue? Thank you very much, Sue. You're welcome. Thank you.

So there was a suggested motion. Oh, wait.

Hang on.

No, I'll make a motion.

Yeah, I don't. Do you need us to make this motion? I don't. For this, I don't. I mean, it wouldn't hurt.

No. Take it. There's a lot of them there. Take ten. List them. After those get listed. Take a break and list the other ones. That way you can send out the notifications to the people you need, okay? And then you can continue on with the process. Because you, this isn't just the only thing you do.

No, it isn't.

And your staff, okay? But you can't, we just shard an elephant. We're not going to sit down and eat the thing in one sitting.

You know what I mean? Exactly.

So be reasonable about it. But listen.

Just to be safe, why don't we make the motion that's proposed. It was proposed for some reason, and if it doesn't, it's unnecessary. You know what I mean?

Because either way, if we keep one of these properties, it's going to cost us money.

Yes, it is.

No matter how you look at it, we really shouldn't keep them.

Well, unless we find something we want to use it for, like a park for the piece of property that's valued at $30,000. School buses. Or school buses. I move that the City Council review the tax-acquired property inventory and authorize staff to proceed with listing the properties identified by the Council with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, the Macielo Group, in accordance with the City's tax-acquired property disposition policy and applicable main law. All those in favor? Unanimous. Thank you, Sue. Thank you.

Good to see that moving forward. Yeah. It's been a long time coming. Yeah, you look really excited about looking at it.

I can't wait. And next month you can come to us with more.

With the other side, yeah. Right.

Yep. And some of that might be more acceptable seeing how we already own it. Right. And nobody's paying taxes on it. Exactly.

Okay. Agenda item number 18, council order number 072605, discussion and potential action on the appointment of a finance director. Is Carrie here?

No, Carrie's not here, so I can take this one. And unfortunately, Chris was unable to make it tonight. But Chris Namath, we've heard about him already this evening. He was selected as the... successful candidate for the Finance Director for the City of Ellsworth. We went through an extremely lengthy vetting process. I'd like to clarify that we did not have a plethora of CPAs apply. We actually did not have one CPA apply that had any municipal experience or that lived even in the area. So I just wanted to clarify that some figures that were thrown out about percentages of how many of the 64 candidates were CPAs, that's not accurate. And I also would like to clarify that we checked Chris's references and he did not have to leave the town of Surrey quietly. He wanted to give a lengthy notice to wrap up some projects he was conducting there. So I just want to clarify those two things. He comes with a strong resume of financial leadership with mergers and acquisitions. at the world level. He has been working for another municipality most recently. He was a great fit for the team. The finance team was part of the vetting process. They unanimously selected him. So we're very, very, very lucky to have him both for the kind of making of the donuts and nuts and bolts of what goes on in finance, but also to provide some high-level leadership for the city.

All right.

And his starting pay is what?

$120.

Any questions for Deputy City Manager Mr. Namath? I got to work with Chris a little bit in his role in Surrey as I'm town attorney for Surrey, and I found him to be great, and I don't know, I can't speak to his specific financial work, but a really nice guy, enjoyed getting to interact with him, and as soon as I heard that that's who we had hired, I was very excited. I think it's a great fit.

Make a motion.

Make a motion.

Move to appoint Chris Nesmith as Finance Director for the City of Ellsworth, effective July 31st, 2026. I think it's Namath. Second. Namath, excuse me. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries, six to one. Number 19, council order number 072606, public hearing and action on the request for the fire chief to purchase a replacement boat.

Good evening, council. Scott Gilroy, fire chief, city of Ellsworth. We've come before you today to ask to replace the rescue boat. The rescue boat that we had has been out of service since September of last year. It is no longer serviceable. It's 27 years old. It has well exceeded its life. We originally brought this forward. We were going to bring it as part of the FY27 budget. And in discussions, we had moved it over to the capital improvement plan. This process, well, we've done a lot of work with the CIP. This process has been a little delayed, so the boat has obviously not been purchased yet. This year, we've already had three incidents where we needed to be on the water, and we were significantly delayed getting on the water without utilizing the general public and allowing us to use their motor crafts. Last week, it was an hour before we could get a boat in the water. So it took almost an hour to get my crew out to an island, which was, you know, for the people that live in that area, it was very frustrating to them that we couldn't respond in a timely manner. So obviously you've heard conversations before. We've gone out. We've been working. During that CIP process, we've been looking at funding and different funding alternatives. We have found a manufacturer who works with Sourcewell, which will help us expedite the obtaining the boat, which will take us about four to six weeks to obtain a boat. They will deliver it here to Ellsworth for us over to Peary, which will finish up the remaining work. This will be done through Sourcewell. It will be a much larger boat. It will be capable of carrying our personnel and our equipment, depending on what type of incident we have, which has been one of the things we've struggled with with the previous boat is the previous boat, I could put two people on it and no equipment, and it just wasn't a successful boat for what we're using. So our request today is that you authorize us to go ahead and replace the rescue boat and put us back into service on the water as we have been in the past.

Any questions from council for the fire chief?

Certainly it sounds like an important tool, much like the venture into the ambulance to serve people in Ellsworth. I guess my first question would be, Does it line up with other departments? In other words, I realize if you have your boat, you don't want other people using it because it might be an emergency. But what does the city own for other boats?

So the water department has a pontoon boat, which we have used a couple of times. But from a rescue standpoint or for what we do, it's not ideal. And we have to go all the way out to Clearwater to go get it, to bring it back across to have it here. When I had the other boat that was in service during the summertime, it sat here so it was immediately deployable.

Where is that old boat?

Right now it's sitting up at the training site off Simmons Pond.

Okay. And so like the harbor boat, that's always in use too?

On the river.

Right, right.

Right.

Okay.

And we have access to that if we need to.

So this boat would be here at your department at all times, much like an ambulance or a fire truck?

Correct.

and ready to rock and roll as needed. Correct. You mentioned three times this year. Is that this calendar year?

No, since the end of May. We've had to be on the water three times.

Okay. And there was an incident last year. Well, maybe I'm dating myself, but there was a major incident with some people on Graham Lake with a haith. at one point in the last couple of years, if I remember correctly?

I don't recall. We've had several instances. We had a couple instances out on Branch Pond a couple years ago where we had to utilize another person's boat also for potential drowning.

So half a dozen times a year you're improvised with this? Yep. They're enhanced? If you have this boat, is there enhanced services that Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth could receive?

Such as? I don't know.

I'm wondering if you could expand your ability.

So really for us, it just allows us to deploy a lot faster. It's a bigger boat. I can get more manpower on the water, which is needed if we have to do a rescue. It's really hard to have one person on a boat and not have room for anybody else. We want to be able to bring a victim onto the boat and be able to take care of them on the boat. The previous boat, that was not the case. It was too small. This one has the room, the capability. We worked with the vendor to customize so that we maximize the deck space up front to allow us to have that room to move equipment and people and victims as needed. the boat will be able to hit all the major water bodies, plus it can also go in the river. If the harbor master is already out on their boat, we still have the capability to get on the river and do what we need to do on the river all the way down to the bay.

So it's safe to say the prior boat was simple transportation. This is a real rescue opportunity. Correct. Thank you.

Any other questions for the chief? This is noticed as a public hearing, so I'm going to open the public hearing. For anyone in the public that would like to speak to this matter? Don't go anywhere, Scott. Seeing none, I'm going to close the public hearing. Council, how would you like to proceed? Councillor Smith?

I can make the motion.

Thank you.

I move to authorize the city manager or fire chief to execute a purchasing agreement through source well collaborative procurement contract for the replacement of a municipal rescue boat and associated emergency response equipment for the Ellsworth Fire Department in an amount not to exceed $85,000. with funding to be drawn from the city capital reserve account and the fire department training site account.

Second.

Any further discussion from council? Councillor White?

I was just wondering if you, since it went out of commission in 2025, if built into your budget is still the maintenance that would be needed and the winterization and the storage? Is that all kind of...

The storage will be a little bit different just because it won't fit in the building that the old boat sat in. Obviously, it will have a taller canopy, so we'll have to make arrangements for a cover, which should come with the boat, and we'll be able to store it outside at the training site, which is secure. Well, I don't want to say it's secure, but we have camera capability to monitor that. As far as the equipment and stuff, In the past, we've been able to winterize. When Branch Marine went out of business, we winterized the boat the last time, and it stayed indoors. We have pure steel, so the winterization costs aren't that excessive that we couldn't take care of it through our professional services.

And we can see if we can get some sort of economies of scale with the winterization of the harbor and the water department boats. We have to winterize those as well, so we'll see if we can maybe get a deal.

Thanks. Further discussion before we vote? Seeing none, all those in favor? Anonymous.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, agenda number 20, council order number 072607, discussion of potential action to reassign the recently vacated role of tree warden to Roddy Erlenbach, director of parks and recreation and facilities.

Danielle Gift, who was our former planner, has moved on to another role, so that leaves a vacancy. for the tree warden position. Charlie was formerly the tree warden, but we felt Roddy was more appropriate to be in that position. Per the charter, we have to have a tree warden.

Is Roddy here? Are we railroading him into it? Does Roddy know he's being richer? He knows about it.

He's thrilled.

I bet he is. Sure he is. I just want to say the Arbor Commission definitely supports this. Oh, great. We're here to help him.

He has so much to do.

Okay. Well, would anyone like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion. Move to approve the request of the Arbor Commission to reassign the role of tree warden to Roddy Erlenbach.

I'd second that with permission from the Lorax, which will be going to Roddy Erlenbach with this new position.

Should we amend the motion to make sure?

It's okay. I trust the process.

Okay. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Give Roddy our warm thanks. I will. I will deliver the Lorax. And the Lorax. And the Lorax. Okay, council agenda number 21, council order number 072608, discussion and potential action on moving the regularly scheduled August city council meeting from Monday the 17th. This one's sponsored by me. I and at least one other councilor will be out of state on that date. I will be camping and have no access to any way to participate remotely. And considering that at least two of us wouldn't be available, uh, I was hoping the council would consider moving our August meeting date to either August 13th or August 24th. I believe those are dates that the city staff identified that would work as far as noticing and getting that all out in time. Um, I, I think. Personally, I think it makes more sense to keep it on the Monday, the 24th, just for consistency. But if the council disagrees, it's up to the council. But that was my request. Councilor Hallerman?

This has happened a couple of times with workshops and maybe one time in the last five years or so with... moving meetings to accommodate people. And it really puts a strain on those of us that make a plan around those meetings. And that's happened to us in the past when, and I'm not saying anything wrong about being gone, but because two people have planned to be away or have to be away during a meeting, I don't think that's fair to the rest of us that plans our schedules around the meetings. I think we ought to leave the meeting exactly as scheduled.

That's a fair point, Steve. That's why I raise it. That being as that may, I don't know if the councilors have been able to look at these dates to see if they work for them as proposed, if there's any councilors that either of these dates wouldn't work for.

Those dates don't really work for me. And I had already planned a trip abroad around the trip, the time that we had the scheduled meeting before I found out about this.

And these don't work for me either.

So you're on a trip abroad before and after the council meeting?

Before that, and then I have another meeting Scheduled for the other one. Okay. On the 24th.

I would just say I couldn't do the 13th. I could do the 24th if we needed to.

I can do both. I can do either.

Both of these states work for me.

Well, I think to be fair, if Pat and Steve can't make it, Steve's correct that this is our regular scheduled date. So in all fairness, then if that doesn't work, then I don't think we should reschedule the meeting around my schedule if it doesn't work for the other two councillors.

So if we go with the 17th of August, I can't make it either. So either way, we lose two councillors by the sound of it.

And we won't be able to... Is the supermajority four or five? Five. We wouldn't be able to vote. Well, we would be able to vote on the bond proceedings. if we bring it back in August. We might want to wait to bring it back in September.

Well, we just wait to bring it back in September. Okay. Well, if that doesn't work for the council, then we'll proceed with the regular date. If for whatever reason, Steve or Pat, your schedules change at all, let us know. But if not, that's fine. And we'll proceed to the next agenda item. Council order number 22, agenda number 22, council order number 07260609, public hearing or discussion on the proposed anchor and campground. This is sponsored by Councilor O'Halloran. I believe we have folks, Brittany Merrill, city planner, to address this, if you'd like to kick it off.

Brittany Merrill. Could I address it in the beginning before?

If you'd like.

Thank you. I received several inquiries from a group in opposition to this proposed campground and I wanted to hear what they had to say and I met with them and listened to all of them, which I think is important to listen to all. During that time, I mentioned I was going to go see the developer and talk to him about it as well, and I did. And I disclosed to the group that I was opposed to the courthouse, but I wanted to hear everybody's view. But in the end, I voted against moving the courthouse. And I think it's important that we listen to everybody's view on this. However, at the end of the day, I think that we ought to be thankful that we're all local people and we're not dealing with this giant corporation. that wants to build this park in a neighborhood that there's some opposition to. We've got reasonable people on each side. And I think the whole reason it's before the council is because the planning board suggested that the group would have to bring this to the council to do anything different than the planning board actions. And that's why I think it's important that we listen to everybody in this equation. And I had to press for the public hearing. Charlie didn't want the public hearing.

That's not true, Steve. It's not true.

It is true.

You're just making stuff up.

I've got an email.

You said you couldn't do it because the public meeting had already gone out. We had to pay more money to put it on the public hearing. Let me finish. I'll let you finish the truth.

We, again, changed it. And then finally... He changed the wording, and then finally we had to fight, and there's someone here that got a copy of the email. We had to battle that to make it a public hearing so these people could have their voice. I am here to hear all sides, but there's nothing I believe that can be done at this level. But I think it's important as counselors that we listen to everybody and what they have to say. Thank you.

I'm just going to go on the record. I spoke to Charlie about the request. The request came late during our normal public meeting noticing. The city spent additional funds to then notice the meeting in the Bangor Daily so we could have a public hearing. So I just want to clarify that, that Councilor Halloran is wrong. Thank you.

Councilor Halloran has an email that would say differently. But at any rate, it's okay that the city spends money on the people. to have their public hearing.

And we're happy to do it. I just want to clarify the record that there was no attempt at...

It's in an email.

Go ahead, Brittany.

Hi. Brittany Merrill, city planner. I'm here just to give a brief update on where the project is at. We received an application for... a planning board application for a major use site Sorry, I have a little voice. So back in May, we received an application for a major use site development plan entitled Anchored in Campground for the applicant owner's superior realty. The proposal is to construct a 28-site recreational vehicle campground at 566 Bayside Road located in the rural zoning district. Unfortunately, they were not able to present at that June meeting because it was miss abuttered or the notices went out incorrectly. So the planning board decided to table it. Then we put it on the July agenda. for the planning board. And the planning board, you know, did their normal routine. They reviewed the application materials for completeness. They listened to these lovely people, expressed their concerns, answered what questions they could, asked questions of the applicant, and then determined that the application was complete. So... That's phase one of the standard planning board process. Major use site development plans have to go to planning board twice. So the applicant, now that his application has been found complete, has six months to resubmit or to apply for the final plan review. And then the board will, at that meeting, decide whether the application is approved or not. That's pretty much the overview. Does anyone have any questions? I know your packet was pretty thorough.

Any questions from council for the city planner?

Thank you. Just a little bit of information. In your memo, it says that there's a site visit tomorrow at 5.30. Yes. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how long that might last? I'd like to attend, but I'll be coming up from Augusta and won't be there at 5.30. So a little understanding of that process.

Sure. The site visit will be at the site location. We're going to kick off at 5.30 p.m. The purpose of the site is to basically... have the planning board ask any questions they have, get a better understanding of the site itself. There is no public hearing at this site visit. Those comments should be saved for the next public hearing. Comments and questions can be submitted to planning at any time. So we expect Uh, the site itself, the development area area is about four and a half acres. So I think the area of most concern will be the Southern part of the site where it abuts the subdivision next to it. Um, so I imagine it would take probably an hour at most.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions from council? Okay. Seeing none. This is notices of public hearing. I'm going to open the public hearing. Um, if anyone would like to provide comments on this matter, um, please approach the DS. We ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less and thank you and state your name for the record, please. Sure.

Good evening, everyone. Thanks for hearing us tonight. My name is Kelly Brackett. I have lived at 165 Altnav for nine years now. And we are all here because the Anchor Inn Campground represents a major shift in land use in our neighborhood character, and we want to assure that all impacts and all avenues to oppose this are considered before any kind of approval is granted by the planning board. This is not in opposition to development in Ellsworth. We support growth and recognize the importance of tourism in our community. Our concern is whether this particular project, a high-density commercial transient use, is appropriate in a rural residential neighborhood. Residents of Alton Avenue and Bayside Avenue are prohibited by our covenants from operating public businesses on our properties, yet we may now be expected to absorb the impacts of a commercial operation directly behind our homes. State law and city ordinance, Chapter 56, Article 1, 101.1, requires land use and zoning decisions to be consistent with comprehensive plans. Ellsworth adopted its comprehensive plan last year, and it provides a clear vision for how growth should occur. The plan prioritizes preserving rural character, open space, and natural areas. It supports low density residential development in rural zones, protection of water quality, aquifers, and wetlands. balancing tourism with quality of life, reducing traffic impacts, and ensuring that growth is intentional, appropriately located, and sustainable. We believe that this proposal is inconsistent with all of these points. Even if the current ordinances technically allow campground development in rural zones, the comprehensive plan establishes the broader policy that the proposal should be evaluated against. Phase two of ordinance revisions are underway to align local ordinances with the Ellsworth Comprehensive Plan, a process that the city has stated will involve public participation, and we plan to be there. As an example of ordinances needing updates, the campground ordinance, Chapter 56, Section 806, is focused on protecting campground users and their experience, but does not provide equivalent protections for surrounding rural neighborhoods and residents besides requiring some buffering. And it's never had to because none of the other three campgrounds in Ellsworth, Forest Ridge, Patton Pond, and Branch Lake abut a neighborhood in the way that this proposal does. And I have satellite images here for the council to consider of these three other sites in comparison with our neighborhood, which is very apparent how many homes we have. So, in other words, the city's policy direction has changed in their vision, but many of our regulations have not yet caught up. That creates a gap in our governance where there is no rules around this. Because we are at the precipice of ordinance revision, on behalf of my neighbors, I respectfully ask the council to place a moratorium on this application and other campground applications in rural zones until all relevant ordinances are aligned with the comprehensive plan. I have brought similar recent moratoriums from Le Moyne and Northport for the council's reference. Northport's language was just adopted in May, is almost perfect.

You're at three and a half minutes.

Sure. This pause would allow ordinance updates, public participation, and careful review. allowing the anchor and campground to slip through the cracks would create long-term and potentially irreversible impacts for our area. It would be a failure of this council and the city to protect its taxpaying residents and the vision for the future of Ellsworth if this is allowed to go through.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time. And I know we have many more people who are interested in speaking tonight.

Who can I give documents to? Yes.

Hi, my name is Wyatt Braun. I am a resident of 74 Alton Avenue and I have been a resident there for approximately 24 years. I appreciate the time the council and staff have given to this project. My concern is whether or not this application has been reviewed on a complete and adequately supported record. As can be seen in the recording of the planning board on July 1st, 2026, a number of the technical questions remain unanswered. Several requested documents remain deferred to a later date, incomplete or never fully addressed before approval was granted. These requests are in brief. The board requested documentation regarding groundwater supply and the effect on neighboring wells. The applicant stated that additional documentation would be provided, but it was not available during the meeting. The board requested evidence from a civil engineer regarding water capacity and impacts on neighboring properties. Again, the response was, quote, we'll get that. When asked for a long-term maintenance plan, the applicant could not provide one during the meeting. When asked what would happen if a second well failed to produce adequate water, no contingency plan was presented beyond the expectation that it would succeed. Questions regarding lighting locations, boundary dimensions, traffic operations, and crash history likewise could not be fully answered with supporting documentation. I have all of these time stamped if you're all interested in them. Along with being unable to provide this information, neither the board nor the applicant acknowledge any of the questions brought forward by the public in the roughly two hours after the applicant was questioned. I cannot list all of the questions here, but they are all recorded adequately on the recording that is accessible to you all. So I have all of my questions here, but for the sake of time, I'm just not going to go through them again. If you want to hear them, you can find them. But again, none of them were acknowledged or I guess just acknowledged by the board or by the applicant himself. So... The Unified Development Ordinance requires that decisions be supported by evidence demonstrating compliance with its standards when key information is missing or left out to be provided after approval. it becomes difficult to conclude that these standards have been fully met. To reiterate somewhat, during the July 1st planning meeting, concerns regarding additional land clearing on the property were raised during public comment. These concerns were not addressed on the record before the board voted to approve the application. I'm not asking the council to determine tonight whether the clearing is consistent with the approved plans.

Or whether... Sir, you're at your three minutes. If you could wrap up, please.

I have a couple paragraphs left, if you'll indulge me.