City Council - Regular Meeting

Thinking of, you know, maybe we should start moving some of these ones to the auditorium at the Moore Center or something just so we can accommodate everybody. We do have an overflow area upstairs and obviously it's going to be on the YouTube as well for tonight for this discussion on short-term rental registration in this listening session. I just wanted to start off with a bit of the agenda for tonight. I'm going to do a brief welcome, and then we'll hand it over to our code enforcement officer, Robert, to generally share where we're at. And then our city planner, Brittany, will take us through a little bit of a citizen input session. And then we'll do some next steps and wrap up conversation. I would say we're at a very beginning part of this process. I know my role as city manager, I think oftentimes I get wrongly put in the role of that you know I'm trying to we as a staff are you know are here to solve problems or to say this is what the solution to be for something when really I think when we're doing the best jobs that we can do is that we're you know orchestrating a dialogue on especially on bigger issues in the community that involve conflict over values and expectations and on an issue like short-term rentals, which I know I've already heard a lot from the community in very differing opinions on preserving the character and the affordability and livability of Ellsworth and what makes this place so special, but also preserving the rights of property owners both in Ellsworth and the ability to have economic development and promote tourism and There's people from all ends of the spectrum, from folks that don't want to see any registration or any fee on short-term rentals at all to folks who really want to put caps on the amount that they're allowed in the city and pretty stringent regulations on short-term rentals. across the board. And we need to have a robust dialogue and discussion. Right now, just to give you kind of a general of where the city's at, I know Robert will go more, but we had a discussion during the budget season on starting a registration program for short-term rentals. I won't preview too much of your presentation, Robert. So we got indication that the council wanted to move forward with that program. at a very general level to start with and gave us guidance that we need to start the community dialogue and to report back to them on ways to move forward. This won't be the last workshop of this type, and we're going to continue that dialogue on every step of the way. Big thanks also to this team who's already put in a ton of work researching the issue, putting together this event. And with that, I'll send it over to our code enforcement officer, Robert Grant.

All right. Thank you very much. And thank you, everybody, for coming. This is, you know, not the most fun topic for discussion usually. But as you can see on the slide show, short-term rentals by the numbers. So before I get into the numbers, though, I will start with saying that both the housing needs assessment and the city's comprehensive plan outlined short-term rental as a serious issue that impacts the local housing stock, and that's how this whole conversation started. That all started before I even got to the city. I've been here almost three years. All that work was all started before I got here, and I was kind of... presented this with the the previous code enforcement officer and city planners departure so I kind of picked the ball up I've been running with it researching this stuff and To basically get into the numbers, in 2016, we had a couple hundred, two or three hundred short-term rentals in Ellsworth. That number, as it stands today, a decade later, is somewhere between, that number probably is closer, it's between 500 and 1,000. As you can see on the map that I've displayed on the right-hand side of this slide, that snapshot shows 515 listings. I pulled that off of AirDNA. It's a website that scrapes this data. By no means are they exhaustive on how many short-term rentals that they have on their website, but it is what it is. The average estimated daily rate for a short-term rental in this area is somewhere between $300 and $350 a night with an average annual revenue of $30,000 a year. If you do the math on that, that means most of these are rented less than six months. There are about 100 days of occupancy if you do the rough math on that. So that also shows you that... All right, it doesn't show you, but what I can tell you about that is that it's also roughly 95% single-family homes, the full house. It's not people renting one room or an ADU or something like that. It's people renting an entire house, which goes against what the initial thrust of short-term rental was. It was that you rented a room out to somebody who was transient and has become... nationwide and really worldwide it has become one of the major or the major alternative to hotel motel stays Ellsworth is the number two per capita most lucrative market for short term rentals in the country that study came out in Forbes magazine last year it's something that we definitely have to deal with one way or the other. We have more short-term rentals in Ellsworth than we do hotels and motel rooms. So we're seeing 24% year-over-year growth in short-term rental. Yeah, I'm not really sure what else. I gave a lot of numbers and a lot of facts and figures really fast.

Yeah, I think that's definitely there. I mean, I think I was looking at something like the largest hotel room in Maine is like 350 rooms or something like that. But you see that doesn't factor in that difference between 2 to 300 in 2016. Katy National Park goes from 2 million to 4 million visitors. How do you accommodate such numbers? an increase to me. I think those numbers, you know, essentially Ellsworth did build or converted, you know, a thousand key, um, hotels. Yeah.

Yes. A single family, but you know, there's multiple bedrooms there. So it's actually thousands of rooms. It's thousands of beds that have been converted. Um, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, you know, that's, you know, I hate to tell anybody what they can do with their personal property. Um, It's also a fact of the matter that we're netting about 100 people a year growth in Ellsworth. We're having 100 more people live in Ellsworth every year, year over year. And to keep up with that, housing stock-wise, we have to add at least 25 houses a year, if not more. That's assuming that's all four-person families that are moving in, which it's not. So you need to add at least 25 new houses a year just to keep up with that. Right now we're averaging about 50, but the majority of those are going to short-term rental, and that's data that I have from the – Working in the code office, I know who's taking up building permits, what they're using them for. The idea is that most of the houses that are being built, most of the housing units right now are actually going towards short-term rental and they're not going towards long-term housing, either for rent or for someone building a home. So while we do have a lot of housing still being built, we're still actually falling behind in our housing need. because of how these new houses are being built and used. So I have all kinds of more data I could throw at you, but I think it just starts to make everybody's eyes glaze over at some point. So we have a proposed ordinance framework, but the next thing I want to talk about The first thing would be an application, which is pretty standard for anything. We'd ask you really basic questions. What's your occupancy look like? What that means is how many bedrooms do you have? Do you have a septic design that is able to be able to meet that capacity? Yes, no. Do you have smoke detectors? That sort of thing. Very basic questions. Then the second step would be an inspection to verify that sort of stuff. And then the last step would be certification You would get a permit to operate. And that's about the extent of what we're looking to do. We don't want to limit the number of Airbnbs or short-term rentals. I don't want to say anyone in particular. But short-term rentals, we don't want to limit them. We're looking to do a basic registration, application, inspection, and certification. I don't have a whole lot more to say on that.

I think I've talked about that in other workshops before, the need for that.

There will be time for questions at the end and comments. I'm going to pass it on to Brittany.

Thank you all again for coming out. This is an important discussion to have, or rather, the whole reason we're here is to get your input to help us inform, help council inform their decisions. So we have several different methods for you to share your thoughts tonight. The first, I will point to the survey that we have up on the city website. We also have paper copies located at the front here. If you do take a paper copy, you can fill that out and return it to the planning code assessing offices and we'll collect that data. Both the paper hard copies and the online survey will be open until September 1st of this year. So please take that survey, tell your friends. We're looking to get a good amount of feedback from that. If we get more than 1,000 individual responses, I bet we could get Charlie to do something silly, like a dunk tank or something. So come on. 1,000 survey responses. Let's go. Second, we have tonight three working stations you'll see up on the walls here. One, two, and three. Just be mindful when you go up to them not to trip on chairs. Please leave space around for people to use them. Two of the sheets on the back two walls, we're trying to get your input on what you feel is most important. There are sticky dots or stickers that you can use to vote or, you know, tell us what you feel about each item. And then this one here, we want more, I guess, more feedback. So there are sticky notes, post-it notes that you can write your, three things on each or one, whatever you want to give us. So those stations will be set up for the entire event. Please visit them as you feel need or would like to. We'll be taking that data and consolidating it as well after. And the third way, the most fun way, which I'm sure you're all anticipating, is we are going to open up the floor for you guys to speak here at the podium. I'm going to lay down some ground rules, and Andrew here will be taking notes and will consolidate everything and post it on the website. Robert is here to answer any questions. process questions or data questions from what he's presented tonight we're looking more for your input your thoughts your concerns your comments less of a Q&A more about tell us what you're thinking so we can collect that data and use it to inform our next decisions so when you would like to speak I'll have you guys raise your hands and I'll pick one at a time to come up to the podium Please introduce yourself. Tell us why you're interested in short-term rentals and what your thoughts, ideas, or concerns are. And just a reminder to please be considerate of your neighbors, whether they are of the same opinion or not. We want to make sure everyone has a chance to speak. And we have quite a few people. I think there are some people in the overfill group. rooms, so we'll cycle out a few to keep within our limited amount of people we are allowed to have in the room.

Yeah, and I think, Brittany, once we've got four requests for speakers upstairs, I think kind of like the thriving communities, we might just at the end of, once the people who are here first, we'll maybe have one at a time come into the podium for those that are upstairs once it seems like this room is winded down on the questions or input. Then we'll open it up to upstairs, and I'll ping Sarah, who's up there, to bring people down.

Perfect. If you want people to speak in the podium,

Please. Yes. That would be great. Yeah.

Please come up one at a time to the podium and state your name and why you're interested in short-term rentals, whether you own it, your neighbor, whatever the reason, and then let us know what you, what your comments are. So I will, who wants to go first? You sir. Come on up again. We try to, we want to make sure everyone has a chance to speak tonight. So try to not go on for 20 minutes.

Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm Rand Griffin. I have several houses on Branch Lake. So I'm here as an owner. And as Charlie knows, I'm also president of Branch Lake Association. So we're not officially talking about their view on it because we haven't seen the ordinance or anything proposed. And also, so one of the first questions probably for Robert, is really have you examined what other cities are doing. I know Dedham last year passed an ordinance that has a certain amount for the inspection and an annual fee. I don't know if you're prepared to talk about that or other cities, but that would be very helpful in the thinking here for...

I wouldn't want to go into any specifics because we haven't decided anything for sure. I have reviewed a number of other municipal ordinances on this. It's pretty normal as a baseline, the things that I might be looking to do. They're pretty typical with a registration and then some sort of inspection and a fee to cover the administration and the inspection costs.

So do you differ, and this is very important why I'm speaking tonight for the late, do you differentiate between septic and non-septic on the rentals.

I certainly want to differentiate between that, but we haven't made any decisions, but that would certainly be...

But that's extremely important, and my personal reaction is that I would be totally in favor of the inspections, particularly as it relates to septic. We do have at Branch Lake a lot of rental, short-term rentals, and we do have septic issues that the city doesn't seem to catch. You can walk down the roads and smell septic, and they're heavy, heavy uses beyond the capacity. So part of the rationale then is, you know, how do you govern that? I mean, nobody wants to restrict the use and the income, but if you have a four bedroom and 18 or 20 people, staying, then you get into what's the capacity. And sometimes septics, they're working, not for that many people. But if they pumped it more frequently and you have certification of that, that can handle it. And so you need to be fair in the process, I think, of how you look at it. Not be too governing, but also fair. But from our standpoint, the safety is particularly important on the septic component of it. And then when you're looking at the fees, you know, there's a fee for inspection. Covering your costs and more is very important, I think. To go beyond that and to take fees from the income, I don't know what level. I know what the other cities are doing, but we'll see. But you do get income from the revenue.

Certainly.

And so I would ask if those fees at a certain level could come from the revenue rather than as an add-on. to other people. Some of the people, this is their livelihood. It's very important that they have rental income. Others, it's sort of pays for the tax increase or something like that, you know. So I'm sure you have lots of input tonight.

Yeah, well, I mean, to speak specifically on the septic thing, that is my background. I installed septics for decades before I became a code officer. Pumping the tank is not the only issue. It would also be the leach field. The amount of effluent that goes into the leach field could overtax that leach field in a very short amount of time if it's not built to handle the number of occupants. Even if it was only for a few months during the summer, you could ruin a leach field in short order by over-occupancy.

I think the enforcement is extremely important. How it's done, is it done fairly? The city, I don't think, has a good, consistent record of enforcement, not necessarily your, but maybe your predecessors. So I think that that's something all of us would be very interested in. All right, thank you. Thank you very much.

All right, who's next? All right.

My name is Alicia Johnson, and I have a short-term rental over on Graham Lake. I rent mine short-term because I can't afford that. It's a one-floor house, and it was left to me by a family member so that when I get older, I could go someplace and be safe. It's handicap accessible. And I rent it now because I can't afford the taxes on it. The rental I get from it pays the taxes. and keeps a house so that I can maintain it. So if someday I can't afford to go there, I can. As far as right now, the way it stands, as high as my taxes are, the $10,000 a year, there's no way I can afford to live there. And if I sell it, it would go to somebody who was out of state. And then we're back with, you know, we're not local anymore. I could never rent it because I couldn't make enough money out of it for rent to pay for the cost plus the taxes. So I'm kind of caught in a hard spot. Either I sell it and sell it to an out-of-stater because you're not going to find somebody around here to pay what I want for it. And it's not bothering anybody. It's private. And I just feel that if it was taken away, I would lose a house to the city, basically, because I couldn't afford to keep it. So I don't rent because I want to make a large income. I'm not making a large income. I'm making a living. And I work also. And I also someday want to retire. but I can't retire in a beautiful home because the taxes are way too high. So my suggestion is maybe we should reconsider the tax amount that everybody's paying so that they can be lowered so people can afford to live in these homes or afford to rent them out. They're just so very high that you can't afford not to rent them to short-term rentals. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. I'm Beth Smart, and I have a resident dwelling on Branch Lake. I have been here 56 years. at the lake year-round. I've been here over 70 as a resident because we were summer people. And the camp we have, I have a home, and right next door I have a family cottage. And the family cottage we've had for 35 years. And the kids are at the ages where they just don't get to the lake. It's empty a lot. We just look at an empty place. My husband and I were working and we couldn't have the energy and the time to take care of people in the next door in the house. So we decided three years ago to rent this property and it's not a property that elsewhere I can Anybody could rent year round. It's a building in 1944. Uh, it has a furnace in it, but if nobody could afford the heat in the winter, we just keep it at 50 kids come on the weekend, um, occasionally to ice fish so we can put some heat and they can stay in this place. But I could not rent this, um, 12 months a year. So, uh, this, um, I have, uh, pro uh, management prop property manager. And Airbnb is very strict on their rules. You have to have fire extinguishers, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors. You have to have an appliance manual. I have to pay for extra policy for liability that's over two grand. I don't know where the 9% tax goes and what Ellsworth gets of that. But if you say these people are making 30 grand a year, you are getting $2,700 more. So my place is $7,000 taxes. There's another two. We're getting to 10,000. We're retirees. We're just trying to keep a family cottage. And my experience, we put a new septic system. Ellsworth offered a grant of 10,000. I think it probably was 30,000. So we put a new septic system. We limit it to six people because we don't want a party house. We want a good experience for our neighbors and ourselves. And let's see. Like I said, it's not available for housing. And our experiences are amazing. I just had a family, and I've had several families, they want their children to have a lake experience. They're not in Acadia. And they're also in your restaurants. They love the lobster pot. A1 Relics, they're not in Acadia. They just aren't. And then they'll say, this is such a lovely lake. I wish I'd spent more days here. But they are staying. This family that I had was three days. They were fishing. A little boy came in with a bass quarter of 5 this morning and shows it to his parents in the bedroom. And the experiences, I can go on and on and on. It's a lake experience, and Branch Lake is a jewel. I'm on the Branch Lake, I was on the board, We keep that lake clean. And you know all our efforts. You've heard. And this is just bringing tourism. And Tim and I are retired so that we're diplomats, if you want, or ambassadors for the city of Ellsworth. And they leave, and they leave with, that's a great experience. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. All right.

I should just note on the 9%, that's the state lodging. And you get nothing? Nothing, yeah. It's one of the things I think, I'd love to hear the gubernatorial candidates. You see that increase, right? To 1,000, states get 9% of that, and they don't have to deal with the infrastructure, these other pieces. It's been a boon to them. There's also sales tax, all these other pieces. We get some revenue sharing, but on a lot of those pieces, not nearly as much as some of the pressure demands. I should point to Rand's point as well and some of the studies. It's not a one-to-one, and I think that is the goal here is to cover the registration fee and the time piece, but you're right, Rand, I know some of the studies that are out there on places that have regulated pretty intensely in order to have fees and generate revenue, the property value deep reductions because of the regulations, end up making it a wash because the property value taxes versus the fees. So it's not the way to think about necessarily regulating this market in that way is a great point. All right.

Hello. My name is Sabrina Sino. I live here in Ellsworth. I have long-term rentals and short-term rentals, one of each in Ellsworth. I would do more long-term rentals if I could afford to make that pencil, but that's a really hard proposition for a landlord in Ellsworth. Costs are very high. Rents are not that high. So I think a lot of us find ourselves in that kind of tricky place. I came from a place in California that I think is worth looking into. It's the city of South Lake Tahoe. About 10 years ago, I lived in South Lake Tahoe, and they were a little bit behind in regulating short-term rentals, kind of maybe in the same place where I feel Ellsworth is now. Started out kind of gradually with... the same kind of application and permit. And things got a little out of control a little fast. The housing was really difficult for people looking for long-term renters or rentals. And eventually the voters in South Lake Tahoe introduced a ballot measure to eliminate vacation rentals entirely in the city, except for in a very small area they called the tourist core. for a couple of years that stood and then it was actually eventually turned over it was found to be unconstitutional and so the city had to then allow vacation rentals back in again so I think that kind of the process and the growing that they went through as a city is something that Ellsworth might want to take a look at and and would be worth looking at Thanks.

Thank you. I'd like to say to that, you know, as long as I have anything to do with it, I would never advocate to get rid of them entirely. That's not feasible.

Well, that's great input. Does anyone have more? Yes. Lady in the blue dress behind. She raised her hand first. You can go next.

Hi, my name is Amanda Look, and I own Salter Properties. I'm also a resident of Ellsworth. I've owned property in Ellsworth off and on for over 10 years. I've owned a mixture of rental properties and started doing that in my 20s as a way to supplement my income as a banker here in town. If you aren't familiar with my business, I am probably the largest rental manager of short-term rentals in this area. And I want to share a couple of different facts. I appreciate that you've gone to AirDNA, but there's a lot of holes there. One thing AirDNA cannot and does not differentiate is seasonal homes, like Beth talked about, versus long-term or year-round homes. The other thing it does not take into consideration in ADU would be considered a full home. So that's not accurate. That's a full home, according to Airbnb, because you're renting the whole unit. So that's a little bit off. But other things that short-term rentals do, all of the booking platforms assess the distance as the crow flies, not as you drive. So that is why towns like Ellsworth and Hancock and Surrey are so valuable to tourists because they're seeing, oh, 15 minutes to Acadia because that's what Airbnb is going to tell them first. If you look in the written description, we do dial that in more. But that being said, what an opportunity for Ellsworth. Because if those people aren't staying here, they're just driving right through. And I know the city's had this conversation for years. Bypass, no bypass, high street, reduce high street, all these things. Main Street, how do Main Street businesses capture these people? Well, how they are now capturing these people is hosts like us because we're sending them a guidebook that talks about downtown Ellsworth, that talks about our restaurants. Last night, a family staying at the Phillips property wanted to know, what's a family grocery store we can go to? We sent them to Friends and Family Market. We are sending them purposely to Ellsworth businesses. And that's something that people don't talk about. The other thing I want to share, too, is that I employ 30 people. My starting wage for my staff is $25 an hour. It goes up from there. We partner with all of the area high schools, including HCTC and the hospitality program, to give these kids an opportunity to learn about hospitality, tourism, how to be a part of this industry. Many of those kids are now majoring in that in college and are coming back and now work for me year round. So we are creating jobs that are meaningful jobs for people that before might not have had this opportunity. And if you look across our portfolio of homes, I would tell you that probably 40% of my homeowners, these are not just in Ellsworth but elsewhere, would not be able to keep that home if they did not have short term tenants. And like Beth, their property can't be rented. So in the numbers that AirDNA presents, those things aren't captured. We don't know how many properties are really available. And you also mentioned, well, they're only renting 100 nights. What that's also not telling you is family use. Almost every single property that I manage, the family itself uses the property. So they are continuing a family tradition of coming here, using their property, and then the other days are available for guests. But like others, some of our homeowners open their homes up in the winter to traveling medical professionals. Traveling writers has been a huge one. Many of us here have housed solar workers for weeks on end. I personally house wreath makers every single winter. So these people are coming and staying here. There's three or four groups right now looking for housing that really only want six-week commitments, and that's because they're doing valuable work right here in this community, and a hotel doesn't fit the bill. So if you're thinking about traveling with your own family, do you want to take your three kids and cram into a hotel room? Probably not. That's why people are looking for the home experience. They want to prepare meals. The number of guests who are actually shopping in our stores and preparing meals at least one to two nights of their trip is on the rise. We're seeing it in the kitchens. So I would encourage you to think about the other side of this and think about the benefits. I have a lot of homeowners in this room that I manage their houses. They will also say that we have a bin in every single house to donate to the local food pantry. We're making those donations on the guest's behalf every week. And those are all going to local food pantries. A short-term rental doesn't necessarily mean it's all bad. We need to be looking at all of the factors of it. And I would be happy to sit with you and share other data besides just AirDNA, because you are getting a sliver of the pie. And it's not capturing a seasonal market. And the reason that our community shows up as number two, just because we were eight and then we were seven, now we're two. The reason for that is because if you look at the hot real estate markets that are big in short-term rentals, pricing, our home pricing, even though we feel like it's gone up, it's still low compared to those markets. So we score very high, very high on overall home price for value. The second thing we score very high on is demand. We have this incredible demand between May and October. And so our score, because that's a scorecard, goes up so high on those months. So we jump ahead of other communities across the country for those reasons. So you have to dig into that a little bit more, because I receive calls all the time, every day, from someone who says, I want to have a short-term rental. What should I know? And the first thing I say is, we are more seasonal. If you're looking at AirDNA, you have to think about that on a 12-month scale. So I appreciate the invitation to come tonight, and I'm happy to share any additional information or our resources if you would be interested.

Thank you very much. That's why we invited you. We wanted to hear from everybody and not just what I can figure out on the Internet.

Thank you. Hello.

My name is Travis Timmons, and God bless the three of you for, I don't know, just the open-ended, unknowing, lay it on me nature of this meeting. So it's the way I like it. Thank you for coming up here. I am, uh, I, we were out of staters from Texas about a short term rental up here and we liked it so much. We decided to move here. Um, I've got a weird view into this world. I work for a national real estate analytics and education company. This housing is kind of my world. And, um, You stick a quarter in me, I might not stop for a while. I think that it's the ultimate two things can be true at the same time issue. The problem that we have here, much like most of the country has, is that the median wages for a household here cannot afford the median home. That's just a fact. And that sucks. It just does. My wife works in the school. I coach baseball at the middle school. I see kids. I see the families that just can't afford housing. What I would love to see happen is for the value of housing to come down. The only ways that I know for that to happen is if we have a bunch of forced selling, which is not something that we want due to the economic ramifications that would come from that, or an increase of the supply. The fact of the matter is we came from Houston, Texas, where I think last year there were about 70,000 permits for new housing. We don't have... The economic growth, the job growth, the median household wages for a developer to come in here and to build large multi-family housing, to build 100, 200 home subdivision, that's just not going to happen. It's not the reality we have here. I am maybe the only one in this room. I am a pro-regulation short-term rental owner. I think that we do need to have some guardrails, and I think that everything needs to be tied to new housing. We don't build enough houses, and we've got an old housing stock that... Owner occupants cannot afford to fix. They just can't. The first house that we bought was in 2021, the hottest real estate market of my lifetime. It sat on the market for three or four months. The house that we currently live in now, it's a six-figure renovation bill. A normal, like the median wage worker here, they can't buy those houses. So I would love, love, love if we could tie some sort of short-term rental permitting or licensing to, hey, if you want to add to the housing stock, go for it. If you want to buy a house that was built in the 19-teens that needs $100,000 to get it into good working shape where somebody could live in it, go for it. But I don't think that... If you're on Branch Lake or you're on a waterfront property, that's always been and always will be seasonal living. But if you're in town and you're taking away a house from a family that needs it, that's not what short-term rentals are for. And I also think that the only way that we get new housing stock is because out-of-staters use us and we kind of use them. We need their money to build new housing here because I don't think that we can do it bootstrapped on our own. So if there is any sort of regulation, and I am all for that, I think that the problem that I see in my job with so many towns and municipalities do is that you either want to feel good or you want to do good. A lot of places want to feel good. I'll use just right down the street Bar Harbor as an example. They didn't make it more affordable for the residents. It's just now a place as a second home that doesn't get used and sits empty another 100 days of the year. So practical solutions and regulation, I think, is a very good thing. But from my viewpoint, everything needs to be tied to new housing stock and updating the older inventory of homes that we have. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Did you want to speak? I did. And then you'll be next.

My name is Pamela True, and I live on Grant Street in Ellsworth on Leonard Lake. And I'm a retired school teacher, grew up in Trenton, lived in Falmouth and Portland for, I don't know, 40 years, and moved back here with my husband, and we built a new home. And we're very excited. And we moved here. And my husband passed away a year later. So now I'm a retired school teacher with a house on Leonard Lake where the taxes are over $10,000, even though they were five when we first moved here. So we thought we could afford it. OK. So moving forward with that, I think everybody's situation is different. Mine is that when I Airbnb my house, I have to leave. It's not a separate rental. I actually move out of my house for a minimum of five nights. People have to come for five nights. It's a two-bedroom, four people maximum. I'm very safety conscious. I have extra insurance. Obviously, I have a new septic, new everything because it's a new house. I don't think Ellsworth is ever going to say no Airbnbs. That would be ridiculous. It's a huge income. I'm not here to say that. I'm trying to say that if you could keep your hands out of our pockets a little bit. I just keep getting hit and hit and hit. This is the first year that my taxes went over $10,000. They keep going up. And like someone else said, I don't want to have to move away. We came back here. We grew up here. My family's here. My daughter just moved here from living in Alaska. I'm just excited to be here, but it's not... It's not sustainable. I pay huge Airbnb fees, too. It's not like, oh, you get all this money. Yeah, it's nice, but it's 75 to 80 days a year I'm in somebody else's house. God love my friends in Portland. I'm coming back. So I just wanted to share that there is all these different scenarios. Everybody here has a scenario. Some people are trying to pay their rent just to have an apartment, and I get all of that. But that little checklist. I'm sure there's fees on all of that. And I pay extra insurance. I pay all these other fees. And I'm just tired. And I almost didn't come tonight because I get so much anxiety about talking about this because it's scary. And I've been emailing you to maybe see if I can do something with how to do something like add another room that I could rent out. You know, I want my septic looked at. Oh, and one more thing. If you've got people out inspecting stuff, there's plenty of dumpage going in to the lakes and rivers around here that have nothing to do with Airbnb. I just want to say that because all you have to do is walk down Grant Street and you can see it. So I just wanted to say that too. So if inspectors are going and inspecting nice homes that are nice enough to be rented to Airbnb, they probably don't have sewage problems. But I just wanted to say that too. So I don't want all our energy going into it. being after Airbnb people. So, thank you. Mr.

Thank you. Ms. Thank you.

All right, gentlemen in the back.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for hosting this meeting. My name is Tyler Crawford. I'm an Ellsworth resident. I had a chance to speak at one of the comprehensive plan meetings, which wasn't necessarily geared towards short-term rentals, so I figured this is more of an appropriate setting here. So I'm an Ellsworth resident. I was born and raised around here and in the surrounding towns, and I just wanted to speak tonight as both a landlord and a resident to share my perspective. on how short-term and long-term rentals interact and kind of the dynamics and mechanisms of property ownerships in this town. And why I don't believe that new regulations are the solution to our local housing inventory and affordability challenges, if that is what the city hopes to address here with ordinance and regulation. So just a quick backstory, about six years ago, my wife and I decided to invest in local real estate in Ellsworth. and became landlords. Today, our portfolio is split evenly between long-term and short-term rentals, and our decision to incorporate short-term rentals was driven by financial necessity and reality. In the last six years alone, we've seen our property taxes increase 57%, you know, on top of rising commercial interest rates, because when you take out a commercial loan, it's not set for, you know, 20 or 30 years. You're lucky to get six out of that. So having rented for most of my adult life, I know how difficult annual rent hikes are on working families. And as property owners, my wife and I wanted to avoid passing these fees down to our long-term renters. And because short-term rentals generate higher profits, it allowed us to offset those costs. And I'm proud to say in the six years of being a landlord, I haven't increased the rent on an existing tenant. And I'm not standing here as some sort of beacon of altruism or anything like that, but just explaining why that short-term rentals offer that specific mechanism and financial flexibility for us to operate our business in the way that we see fit. And I think the short-term rentals and housing affordability are not mutually exclusive. And I think, you know, some other people brought up, you know, different examples. But you can look at, like, New York City that passed Local Law 18 that heavily restricted short-term rentals. And when that went into effect, you had the listings drop by 70 percent, yet overall rents still increased 3 percent year over year. Residential vacancy rates remain stagnant, and the small businesses lost the tourist spending. The only winners were the large hotel chains. Ellsworth is not New York. It's not Bar Harbor. It's not Portland. We're not land constrained like these other municipalities. We have a lot of undeveloped land, and we have significant space to expand. And I think we have a unique opportunity to support resident-led tourism, while incentivizing builders to construct new long-term housing stock. And I think that's the key to this housing affordability is to increase supply, not restricting existing property rights. To my fellow property owners here, I warn us in accepting initial registrations and expecting inspection fees as a simple compromise. You know, I've been in business a short time compared to a lot of you, but in my experience in business, you only lose power and control when you decide to give it away. What begins as minor requirement, it expands into broader policy limitation, and it's going to be rising costs. What starts as a $300 fee one year will be 500 the next and so on and so forth and I think we all want the same thing we want Ellsworth to be a thriving and vibrant community with available housing and a strong local economy so I think let's address the housing challenges by supporting the new construction and development as opposed to imposing restrictions that are going to harm residents and small business owners and property owners so again thank you so much for hosting this and I appreciate it. Thank you.

My name is Jason Smith. I own two properties here in Ellsworth. Both of them are on vacation rental market and both of them are also on a longer term rental market. And I will say right now that the short term rental is the only way we're able to afford the taxes and all the fees that are already associated with owning properties in the city of Ellsworth. I moved here from Kansas City four years ago, and I will tell you the services that this city offers for the taxation is ridiculously high compared to what we're getting in return on investment for. It's really staggering how much money. I pay twice as much taxes in this city on one house than I pay to my houses in Kansas City by far, and I had streets that were passable without having to worry about my suspension. I had services that were at my disposal at any time I needed to, and I feel like we are already being feed to death, and I agree with the gentleman that just spoke. I'm reluctant to turn over any more fees until we start to see some return on investment of what we already have been putting money into. I also rent my house seasonally, but also in the wintertime. And without our rentals going to traveling nurses and the like, your hospital would not be staffed. And I think there's a lot of people in this room that could say the same thing. The seasonal traveling nursing crowd that comes through Ellsworth, that hospital up the street up there wouldn't have half the staff they need if they didn't have a place to stay. And it's our rentals that provide them that opportunity. But we also cannot charge those fees at a higher rate over the wintertime because they don't get that much money. They get a stipend for living, and that's it. If we had to raise our fees to cover our taxes and pass it on to those traveling nurses, they wouldn't stay here. And much like the lady that spoke in the beginning, the houses that we have, if we have a vacation rental, most of us, if we went to sell it by the time we paid the capital gains and every other tax on that thing, there wouldn't be anything left. So really, the short-term rental is the only way to make it a feasible option for us to live and survive in this community. I think that I agree that the one thing that needs to happen immediately is that Ellsworth needs to look at avenues to open up a housing market so that it's more affordable for others. There's a lot of people out there that are hurting right now for homes, and this city does not provide them a lot of opportunities. And that's really the bigger issue. And once again, I'm going to echo what Pam said also. My septic system on my house in Grant Street was installed brand new. I have it pumped out regularly. I have it inspected when it's pumped out. But I will say that there are houses on Grant Street that are well older than that house that have a septic system that is well beyond repair and have never been taken care of, and nobody has done anything about it. Nobody's stopped, and all you have to do is walk down the street and take a good whiff, and you'll know where I'm talking about. So until those get handled, I think we should start looking at those issues first. There's a lot of dilapidated structures in the city that need to be handled up front that would help with the housing market also. If you made it more enticing for other people to move into some of these houses that are run down, it may make a better situation for everybody. Thank you.

My name is Anna Sullivan, and we converted a garage on our property into a small rental. It's busy. People love coming here. But to that gentleman's point, people are coming here and driving on the bumpy old roads. It's a mess for them driving in and driving out. They love Ellsworth. They love Acadia when they get here. But we're not showing them the best that we can do. We're paying $10,000 a year for our property tax, which seems to be pretty standard. You're getting a lot of money from the residents of Ellsworth. I wish you would start spending some of it on the things that need doing around here. And if you're going to start charging fees and registrations, you're nickel and diming us. We moved here, improved our property, made it a really nice place. We've spent over $100,000 on doing that, mostly at Home Depot, which everybody here will have received sales tax from that money. We also spent another $100,000 converting the garage into a property. So there's another load of money that's come into the city that we've spent. And we're not seeing the services coming back from that. We're just bringing the business in for you. So I think that it's about time you started giving us something back. Just the roads are such a mess. I wish you would fix the roads. You know, the people that are driving in here to come on vacation must think, oh my God, where have we come? So that's what I wanted to say. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

He raised his hand first.

You can go next.

My name is Jonathan Stolling. I live with my wife here in Ellsworth. We are long-term residents, and I'm going to take a different view than everyone else. I think that it's very important to have rules and regulations regarding short-term rentals. The reason is, is because we've had a horrible experience with the renter in our neighborhood. We're a very quiet neighborhood up off of Westwood Drive. It's been a house that was rented made converted from a residential long-term to a short-term which I think Ellsworth is losing too many of those to investment owners for short-term rentals. We have had problems with lighting that overflows and trespasses onto our property. We bought the property because it was nice. It was back. It was quiet. Not anymore. The traffic from it. residents go down our drive speed beyond 25 miles an hour we have a dead end and in fact so bad that one of the owners in our community of 30 houses put up 25 mile an hour signs to try to slow down the traffic from it Ellsworth in our residential neighborhoods We're over tourism, is what it is. You can see that now. You try to go through Ellsworth and you can't get around. You go into the supermarkets and you sit and wait in line. There has to be some controls. There's nothing wrong with tourism, but when we have too many, it's no wonder. The woman before me just mentioned about roads. How many RVs and cars? Our roads weren't made to carry that kind of volume. So, yeah, on the one hand, we should do the roads, but how about doing the roads and how about doing those things for the long-term people, the people that live here, not just the people who tour here? That's important. We pay taxes, too. We would like to have our neighborhoods to be quiet. The Airbnb next to us operates 24-7. They come in late because they're coming from far away. They wake us up. They have their lights on our house. A week ago, they left at Sunday at 6.30 in the morning slamming. The rooftop carrier and so forth woke us up. I mean, there has to be some controls on it, and I think we need to really control it in residential areas. Residential areas are residential. Airbnbs and short-term rentals are businesses. No matter how you look at it, yeah, people live in them for short term. The one next to us, I can tell from just going on Airbnb on it, it's renting at least 100 renters a season. Um, so, uh, I think, uh, plus, uh, just last year, there was a party that I had to call the police on. It was so loud. They were blocking up. People were visiting, blocking our driveway, and, uh, I'll refrain from saying what I think was going on, but let me put it this way. The police wouldn't allow me to have the information on the incident because of privacy due to what was going on there. And the other problem, which actually are on... which you can Google. For example, there's been problems in Cumberland County here in Maine with in-home cameras being used to record guests and especially when they're undressed and putting it on the internet. So I mean, it brings in some elements that can be not in the best interest of long term residents who live here full year round. Another gentleman mentioned traveling nurses. I'm a nurse. I know traveling nurses. You know what? if the only you know if that was the only reason that you think that traveling nurses wouldn't be available at the hospital that's why short-term rentals are important i mean you can create a place just for short-term renters and the hospital can do it jackson lab already does it here and elsewhere I just don't see that that's a really valid reason to have short-term rentals. Listen, I work with traveling nurses. I think it's great to have them here and have a place for them. But it's not, in my opinion, a fabulous reason to back up short-term rentals. I think there needs to be a balance between short-term rentals and not taking up the housing stock for people that live here long-term, and especially rules and regulations to keep it peaceful in our neighborhoods. Because unfortunately, and this is one somewhere where everyone who's a host can be improved is, Some hosts are good, but some hosts aren't. They don't care about the long-term residents in the neighborhood where they have their houses. And so if you have more controls where there's a standard, then it's more likely to be acceptable to long-term residents. But I'm going to tell you, if we continue on this effort of allowing short-term rentals to run amok and elsewhere, you know, we're not going to have long-term residents for our schools. We're not going to have long-term residents for our civic organizations. We're not going to have long-term residents for our churches. We're not going to have long-term residents who live here who are here every day and work here, try to make a living, and try to make it a nice place to live. You have to, again, have controls and balance. If you over-have too many short-term rentals, then you... definitely adversely affect the character of our residential neighborhoods. And we have one Airbnb that's already done that in our neighborhood. So I would appreciate that the leaders in Ellsworth try to come up with a plan that tries to control short-term rentals in our residential neighborhoods. If you want to have a business and do short-term rentals, put it in a business area and have it set off aside from our residential neighborhoods. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Michael Hill. I'm not a public speaker, so I'm a little nervous with everybody, so bear with me here. I'm an Ellsworth homeowner, taxpayer, and property owner, and I operate both long and short-term rentals. I think it's important to put a face to who we're talking about when we discuss short-term rental owners. My properties are held in an LLC for liability protection, but I'm not a large corporate investor. I'm a local property owner with mortgage. I've invested significantly in these properties while dealing with increased construction costs, interest rates, insurance, and property taxes. One of my properties had previously been a long-term rental that became a nuisance in our neighborhood. It went up for auction, and I bought it because it was 20 feet from my house. They were living in their car. I don't want to say they were druggies, but we found a lot of needles in the house. We renovated that house. Now the neighbors love us. They love the house. It's a short-term rental. It's not a nuisance. I use both long and short-term rentals, and short-term rental income helps me pay the mortgages and expenses and continue investing and maintaining these properties. Short-term rental guests also contribute to Ellsworth. We're a gateway community. Visitors can stay here and be in Bar Harbor or Acadia in about 20 minutes, well, depending on traffic. While they're here, they eat at a restaurant, shop in our stores, and buy groceries and gas here. That's money being spent in Alzheimer's. I've spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the city's planning record concerning Action HC2, or H2C, on the comprehensive plan, and I've provided copies for you to review tonight. The city's own housing needs assessment describes a complicated housing problem involving demographics, workforce, commuting, tourism and seasonal demand, limited housing inventory, development constraints, and rising construction costs. Short-term rentals are one factor in that much larger system. But this is what concerns me most. In August 2024, the Housing Task Force recognized the need for additional resources to conduct a full study. on short-term impact on the housing inventory. In September, consultants acknowledged the short-term data was difficult to gauge. Then in October, short-term rentals were described as low-hanging fruit. I don't believe something should become a regulatory target simply because it's easy to identify and regulate. And I'm still unclear about problems we're trying to solve. The comprehensive plan discussed short-term rental regulation largely as a housing issue. Now the city survey asked about registration, safety inspections, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, wastewater supply, fees and neighborhood impacts. And I appreciate all of you because I can never be a public speaker. I understand there's a difference between having safety codes and having registration system that identifies short-term rentals and allows routine inspections. But before creating that additional layer of oversight, what does the evidence show? How many short-term rental related fires, carbon monoxide incidents, unsafe bathrooms, occupancy violations, wastewater problems or other safety violations has Ellsworth actually experienced? How many could not be adequately addressed through existing enforcement? And if housing is a concern, how many elsewhere short-term rentals would basically or realistically become year-round housing because of these regulations? The planning record the city provided does not answer those questions or establish measurable outcomes for what short-term rental ordinances is expected to accomplish. I'm not asking you to protect the short-term rentals from reasonable regulation. I'm asking you to protect the process. Define the problem. Show us the evidence. Determine where existing laws are inadequate Consider the consequences for housing on tourism, local businesses, and property owners. And if there's demonstration gap, then let's discuss that. We shouldn't start designing the solution before we demonstrate the problem. Thank you very much. Hello.

My name is Kristen Schlafer. I'm the owner of Acadia's Edge Property Management, which is based here in Ellsworth. I, unlike Amanda, am new to this game. I just started this company in 2025 and have a much smaller portfolio. However, it's growing. There's a huge need for it. Most of my houses are on MDI, a couple of them in Bar Harbor and I can speak to the way that those regulations are basically a failure. I agree with the gentleman that spoke and said, if you give somebody an inch, they're going to take a mile. And for that reason, I'm 100% against any sort of regulations on short-term rentals. I think in Bar Harbor, it was proven that just because you limit the number of, or you put extra regulations on, or you charge a certain fee, that you're suddenly going to create long-term housing. The reason that people don't rent long-term anymore is because it's not feasible as many people have spoken to here tonight. Um, and it's not just about income. It's also about the fact that renters have a lot of rights, which is good, except some of them take advantage of it. And we all know that. So when you are spending tens of thousands of dollars to evict a tenant that can never pay that back to you. it doesn't become worth it to be a long-term landlord. So I guess the long and the short is that regulating short-term rentals is not going to instantly increase housing. So I think the two are really quite separate. Some people might turn them into long-term housing, but it's not a guarantee. And in Bar Harbor, that definitely hasn't happened, like I said was touched on. A few of my homeowners have Minimum night stays. It's crazy. We have one night gaps all through our schedules when in the next town over in Mount Desert and Otter Creek, our houses are renting last minute every single night. So it's literally just taking money out of homeowners pockets. And truthfully, it's nobody's business why anybody is running a short-term rental. Private property is private property and nobody should have to explain the reason that they're using their home in a specific way. I think that there is a major misconception that a lot of short-term rental owners are LLCs like big corporations like BlackRock coming in and buying things up and it's all over the place. I can speak for my property owners. The vast majority of them own one home in the area, even on the island. It was inherited from their family. It's precious to them. They don't want to get rid of it. They can't live in it. They're not going to rent it long-term. So short-term rental it is. I do have a home here in Ellsworth. I also rented out my own house on Graham Lake for a number of years. I would move into a camper at Timberland. We rented it out. a ton of money and then I decided that I would start doing it for other people because I actually really enjoyed it and was okay at it. So it's just, I'm with Amanda too. My company, like I said, is brand new. I just opened rentals this season. I already, I started with two employees. I have grown to 10 and they're all full time and they're all making at least $25 an hour. So it is a major boost for our local economy. The regulations that I've seen put in place in other places have not solved any problem. If you're a half decent host or property manager, you're already going to be following all of the safety protocols to protect you, your owner, your guests. You're going to care about that to begin with. The channels all require it. As far as cameras inside of homes, it's not allowed. If you get caught doing that, you're going. And the same, like I have seen myself, homes get kicked off of Airbnb because they had so many complaints about So the things that you're trying to cover and regulate are already well covered. And as this gentleman said, one of my main questions was, what problem are we actually trying to solve here? There, to my knowledge, is not any evidence that there's this giant uptick in whatever. And if people are using their properties and having more occupants in it than their septic system can hold on a regular basis, they're already against code. That's all I have. Thank you.

Anyone else from down here would like to say?

Good evening, everybody. I'm Barbara Stolle. I'm Jonathan's other half. And I'm going to comment on another usage for short-term meals. I'm a retired teacher. I retired from a very, very difficult district in Pennsylvania that came up here. I had been here with my family since the time I was about three years old for part of the summers because they had a cabin. One thing I'd like to point out is that short-term rentals can be used for drug usage. We have already observed young teens breathing in white powder in the field next to our property, behind the building. And the temporary usages are harmful to our neighborhood and all properties, again the septic system concerns, that's an important issue as well. All properties on the street were single-family residences designated as that initially. And then people started playing with it, and that caused problems. So we have a lot of things right now. We've got people speeding up that street, doing about 40 miles an hour sometimes because they're coming in late. And we had recently a family came in. They had four children. They got out of the car slamming the door, went on the roof, again, the roof container, making all this noise, and we woke up. And then they were up again at 6 o'clock in the morning. So, I mean, we're having things like that. So that's not a very pleasant thing. And the renter speed down our dead-end street, it's really dangerous to our citizens and our pets because a lot of people are out walking dogs. And you can't see them because we don't have a lot of lights. We don't like it. We don't want a lot of lights. That's why it's that way. But it can be very dangerous for our citizens and our own pets. And we have a dog, so we understand that. I did say the properties were all designated as single-family residences. And with the short-term rentals, people are not invested in what they're doing. That's the other thing. They come in. The problems with the drugs was really difficult. I mean, I was in a very tough school district, and I could see exactly what they were doing. They were going like this, and they were like 8 or 10 years old, and they were snorting white powder. And I thought that was not wonderful. So anyway, any questions?

Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, sir.

Hi, guys. How are you?

My name is Tim. I've... Tim Bland. I've lived here all my life. I love Ellsworth. I just want to reiterate some of the points that people have already said. Actually, I'm not... I don't want to go over all that stuff, but there's a couple things that... Regulations don't necessarily work. I've seen that in Bar Harbor. They still have a housing crisis in Bar Harbor. Another thing, my taxes are really high. We already discussed that. It does seem like this is kind of low-hanging fruit that we're having this discussion, and it feels like momentum's kind of moving that way, and it feels like this might be considered low-hanging fruit, and that kind of worries me a little bit. I'm not big on restrictions. Ellsworth is a number two city for a reason. I think it's because we have less regulations here, and it's a Very desirable place to be, and because of Acadia. So I think it's because there's so few regulations that we are so enticing for Airbnb. And as I started, I do love the city so much. I raised my daughters here. I love the city of Ellsworth, but I need a little bit less city of Ellsworth in my life right now. All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Paul Markosian. I'm a resident of Ellsworth. I think I'm one of the few, maybe only three, who approached the podium tonight who is not an owner of short-term rentals. I will say I'm a big fan of short-term rentals, both as someone who has stayed in them as I've traveled around Maine and New England and Mexico and Europe and South America. They provide a lot of opportunities that hotels can't, especially for families. I have a lot of friends in this area. Some of them are in the room tonight who are short-term rental owners, and I've heard from others who I don't necessarily know, but I think the stories they've told really have revealed a lot of the benefits that short-term rentals have not only for the owners of those properties but for the community at large. I'm also a recently retired restaurant owner downtown, and I can't even count how many Customers I've met over the years who came into the restaurant and said, yeah, I'm staying in Ellsworth. It's really lovely here. I'm staying at this house. And a lot of those people came to the restaurant because, as Amanda said, they're passing on these recommendations to the people who stay with them. So we really need to recognize that short-term rentals are a driving force in our economy. And I'm not here to advocate for anything. I'm here to listen and hear what everyone has said tonight and how this conversation is going to move forward. I do want to just ask that we consider some of the side effects and consequences of having short-term rentals in our city other than the ones that I just mentioned. I moved to Ellsworth to School Street, like two blocks away from here, 20 years ago when my older son was about to turn five and about to start kindergarten. And we wanted to be able to live in a neighborhood with walkability so we could walk to school with him. And a year later, our second son was born. And so the two of them both went to Ellsworth schools from kindergarten through senior year of high school. They had a great experience there. They did walk to school. And then later with us, with their parents and other friends, we had like this whole kind of walking school bus that just came together organically. Some of the families joined us along. They started... along the way and they came to our house and we went to other people's houses. There's my friend Toby there. We walked to school with him and his family and a bunch of, there was like eight families that would walk to school every morning with our dogs and it was wonderful. Now this is a residential neighborhood over here and there's on the other side of Main Street and a lot of the houses that used to house those families with kids are now short-term rentals. And so that's something, I'm not saying that's bad or that shouldn't have happened or that the short-term rental owners should be paying into a fund to support, you know, affordable housing for year-round residents. I'm just saying that I think we should acknowledge that there is a change in the character of certain neighborhoods. And that also, it's really interesting to hear tonight from so many different kinds of short-term rental owners, like a retired school teacher who moved here and, you know, your husband, I'm sorry, sadly passed away a year after he moved here, and you need the income to help support that house. And that house is not... That house you would be living in whether you were short-term rentaling it or not, right? So, and then there's, but there's other situations where a whole house is only given over to short-term. There's a lot of complications here, a lot of different types of short-term rentals. And I think the one thing, And I'm not advocating for regulations or anything like that. I think we should look at it. But I don't have the answers. I don't know. I don't know enough. But I do think we should acknowledge all of the intricacies and all of the conditions. And I think the one thing that we all agree on is that Ellsworth needs to find a way to provide more affordable housing. The house that I bought on School Street was pretty affordable in 2006. It's now gone up in, according to Zillow, it's like worth 80% more than what we paid for it. And most of that increase came after COVID when the short-term rental market exploded in this area. So I think we can't, I don't think it's fair to place all this burden on the backs of short-term rental owners, but I think we need to find a way to... CREATE A BETTER ECONOMY AND A BETTER SITUATION FOR YEAR-ROUND RESIDENTS WHO WANT TO MOVE HERE AND RAISE THEIR CHILDREN HERE LIKE MY WIFE AND I WEREN'T FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO DO. SO THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT. AND DON'T FORGET, WE DO HAVE THOSE THREE WORKSTATIONS SET UP. SO IF YOU WANT TO WRITE ANYTHING DOWN, THEY'RE AVAILABLE, TOO, ANY TIME. ANYONE ELSE?

DO WE HAVE ANY MORE?

I don't mean to point, so I do apologize for pointing.

No, we're not. It works. If it works, kind of a theme tonight. If it works, don't fix it. My name is Chris Wally. I've lived in Elm Street for, well, lived in Ellsworth for 35 years. Came here in 91, and we've been in Elm Street for 33 of those years. And we had, some would call good fortune, some would call a nightmare. But we ended up, for those of you who knew Cappy Holt, anybody out here that might have known him? Wonderful guy, great neighbor. He passed away in his house back when Dwight Tilton was code enforcement. I went to talk to him about options with his property because we were abutting neighbors. It was in horrible condition. I think it was one winter away from the roof collapsing, or within a year of the fire department doing a controlled burn, frankly. It was in that rough shape. 1800's house, had a lot of neat features, but had been, Cappy just couldn't keep up with it. And back then, Dwight Tilton, a code enforcement, told me that, I think he rolled the red carpet out, but he said, council has tasked me with three blight houses to take care of on Pine Street. Cappy's, Jordan House, and the one that was a beautiful little old 19th century house, which is now an incredibly ugly three-story apartment building, which I think is mostly short-term rentals run by a corporation, to be honest, when I've seen the traffic. So Dwight was pretty pleased to see his workload reduced by a third, but it's been a long, hard process. It took years to bring the grand old lady back, but we have. And we did so in part because of guidance given to us at the time by Dwight Tilton, which I think is a hallmark and something that the city government should be proud of and maybe get off life support and put in fully functioning status. That is that the city of Ellsworth at that time was really, really good, and we're talking 2018, was really, really good at listening to a plan. If the plan looked like it would work, get out of the way and let the plan happen. Let success happen. Let people thrive, okay? So that's one point I want to hit on. I feel a little bit like somebody sitting in Pompeii looking at the mountain saying, I think it's OK. We can have a talking session.

It'll go away if we have a talking session.

I don't know. I fear that the horse is out of the barn and galloping down every driveway of a short-term rental in the city of Ellsworth. I'm getting a vibe that the city government really wants to get into regulating short-term rentals. And to echo, I got here at six o'clock, so I'm sorry if I do overlap. I was greeting guests, in fact, making them feel welcome and telling them where to go eat on Main Street and all that. But I totally derailed my thought process. Yeah, I don't want to repeat too much, but let me back up for a second. 1991, I settled in here. I wanted to get active in the community. I joined the chamber and I started attending all the meetings and workshops. And I remember back then we didn't have all these nonprofits helping guide where the city government should go. We had the chamber and we had the council. And everyone just rolled up their sleeves and got the work done with volunteers. And I still remember one meeting way back in the early 90s when the chamber had a planning group session or something. Speaker said, Look out the window. You see those cars rolling through the crossroads of Downeast Maine? And why we surrendered that nickname that only we are entitled to have, I'll never understand. Friendly may be nice, but anyone can be friendly. There's only one city that can be at the crossroads of Downeast Maine. A speaker said, look out the window. See those cars? Every one of those is a $100 bill on wheels. It's your job to extract that $100 into the retail economy, help Ellsworth thrive. Back then, the focus was retail economy. I'm not sure really where the focus is these days. But every short-term rental that's out there, if the host is running it right, footnote, the way most of us do, it's a $200 bill heading into the city of Ellsworth every night. They go down to the airline. They go over to Morton's Moo. They go to every restaurant on Main Street, Lobster Pot. They walk the shops. I interact with my guests. I'm not a hands-off. I'm not a big corporation. This house is our retirement plan, and we invested heavily, heavily into it based on what we were – the guidance we were given by Dwight Tilton at the time. Point is, that's $400 a night right now because I have two suites, two happy families over there right now, and they're already raving about downtown. And they go downtown. My butler's pantry in this beautiful old 19th century is a mini chamber of commerce. I've stolen so many pamphlets from the chamber. I give them a walking tour of downtown Ellsworth from the butler's pantry, tell them where to go, where to shop, what to do. It's a lot more than a $100 bill and four wheels passing through because they stay minimum two nights at my place. Many stay more. So that's a significant impact to the community. I'm sure people have said this before, but between utilities and taxes, I've got to stay fully booked for a month or two each season just to break even. That's not talking insurance, maintenance, and all the countless other stuff that goes into it. So I would respectfully submit that if the city's looking at fees and regulation and registering and getting deep into the roots of the short-term rental business, they're already getting, you know, Cesar's always getting his pieces of gold rendered to Cesar. They're getting it big time. My taxes are breaking $4,500 on that Pine Street property. And that's up from about $2,500 to $3,000 in 2018. That's a lot. That's a lot when it's a retirement plan. And it's six months out of a season. So before you start scaring off short-term, and I need to differentiate. I think there are two or three different kinds of short-term rental hosts out there. You've got the mom and pops. I do 100% of the work. My wife keeps up the gardens. My wife sees two of the kids are happy, the whole nine yards. It's a family welcoming families. Then you have those who live in the area but have a second property to do their best. They interact to the best limited degree. That's fine. That's great. Key code, punch in, beautifully maintained property. Then you have the big ugly corporate monsters like the Pine Street property and those ever so lovely buildings popping up like ragweed all over the Bar Harbor Road. A significant portion of those are, I believe, STRs, short-term rentals. They're either condos purchased or being managed in the short-term rental community. So I think they were all lauded as workforce housing at $2,000 a month. I don't think they're going to be doing that. I'm talking, I'm focusing on the kind of hosts that make this community the crossroads of Downeast Maine, bring people back, bring the dollars back to this community. $400 a night, that's the minimum we're generating and a lot more from what I hear them when they come through the door with their bags. But you have a massive volunteer force out there in the hosts building this community. For guests, people may settle here. Businesses may locate here. Somewhere way back in ancient history, the founder of Jackson Laboratory said, jeez, Bar Harbor's a neat place to be. Let me take my millions and start my business here because I can do it. Ellsworth needs something like that. They're not going to get it if you lose the opportunity for people to stay in a unique setting in Ellsworth. And every Airbnb is unique. So differentiation is important, I think. I think, as I mentioned about Dwight Tilton, if this horse is out of the barn, then God help us, he better be thinking grandfathering because a lot of people built life plans based on what the city represented to them when they went down this road, which is a lot of hard work. It's not a hands-off experience. I think someone said, oh, first of all, I came in right at 6 o'clock, and I was a gentleman still here. But he insisted he wasn't a good public speaker. He's fabulous. That guy was organized. He was great. So hats off to you, sir. He did a great job. Wherever he was, I was upstairs in the cheap seats. But I was envious. As you roll through that checklist, it was a great job, wherever he was. And he hit a lot of my points. I really won't try to go on much longer. But I made this comment out in the hallway, and it was suggested I repeat it here, so I will. I've never heard anyone who has a smooth-running, efficient business that's finally turning a profit look down a road and see a city, state, or federal truck, car, foot soldier coming down and say, oh good, the government is here to help us.

It's just not going to happen.

I get the sense that the city of Ellsworth is upset because they don't know what's going on behind the green curtain of short-term rentals. But let's stop before we start ripping the curtain down. And I know the gentleman mentioned it, but I'll touch on it briefly. I think a first data point we need to learn in terms of the level of control and invasiveness, I'll call it invasiveness, into our businesses. We need to see data, fire department, police department. Are there even any calls to short-term rentals for these kind of crises? Are they out of proportion to the general community? Is it a blip every once in a while, human beings are human beings, or is it a trend? I can't imagine responsibly run short-term rentals have any of these issues. I really cannot. If there's not a lot out there, we need that data. If there's not a lot out there, especially versus the community at large, then there's really no need to regulate. Someone else commented, and I'll echo. Hosts live and die by the stars. And I don't mean in the sky. I mean those five that a guest checks when they move out to the next place. Airbnb, VRBO, all of them regulate the bejesus out of hosts. And they are guest favorable. They want the guests, because the guests are the ones writing the bigger checks. So if a guest isn't happy, Airbnb is not happy, they want you to go to their channels. And guess what? That host is either off the site or reforming how they do business. The regulations, the monitoring, the supervision, the safety checks, that kind of thing is already there. If a guest comes in, sees locked doors, inadequate exits, egress, no fire extinguishers, that's going in the review. And you're going to lose stars. And if you're getting less than five stars out of five, you're not going to bring in the money. Because it is a guest market out there. It's a buyer's market. So SCRs are self-regulating. If there is a problem host out there, I heard a young lady say that people are speeding down a dead-end road. First suggestion is contact the owner of that house. I as a host, if I find out that my guests are noisy in the side yard disturbing a neighbor, I'm over there. And I have the five star power over them. And I can report them to the agency, Airbnb, whoever it is. I can have them removed from the program so they're out. That they're out. So if you have not spoken to the property owner, I urge you to, because there's nobody out there as a host that wants to have unhappy neighbors, just like we don't want to have unhappy guests. I'm sorry. This is my speaking time. That's my view on it. So thank you for butting in. Who are you anyway?

Sorry, if you could continue.

I didn't know we got heckling for free in this job. All right, so again, if it's not broken, don't fix it. All the experience and all the exposure I've had of short-term rentals in Ellsworth is that they're caring, industrious hosts looking to do the best for the guests and for the community. Again, there could be a difference. You could have these mega apartment buildings popping up or corporate holdings, but whatever ends up happening out of this, you need to differentiate with the mom and pops that have built their retirement plan. of serving the community, and we are. We're ambassadors to this community, for this community, to everyone who comes through our door. So let's not forget that. Okay. I think if this is a listening session, I think the biggest lesson you can take out of this is we don't need to pass any kind of a regulation or even think about it until there's real live data about all these issues that everyone has brought up here tonight. This process should be in the infancy. And it's kind of disturbing to think that there's already a city report out there calling FGR. It's a low-hanging fruit. That just smacks of, you know, we can make money on this. Thank you. Appreciate the time. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

How is your meeting? It's one of your planning meetings. I have the page and the date of the meeting in my...

Anyone else downstairs that would like to say something? If we have anyone upstairs that would like to come down and speak, please make your way down here.

I think we're all good up here. Thank you.

Thank you. That was from low-hanging fruit's peers. I'll take your word for it. From a housing task force discussion.

It's in here. It was because I did a Freedom of Information Act and requested all the information. I got the planning meetings. And I listed out who said it, when they said it,

If you want to go to the mic, it's easier for the people at home to hear you.

Okay. He loves public speaking now. I'm public speaking again. I did a Freedom of Information Act to the city and requested all documentation that went into the comprehensive plan, all of the information that was available for meetings in regards to regulating short-term ordinances. And one of the places within the planning meetings, I think it started in August. It might have even been the October one. Oh, October 15th, 2024. It's on page number... Page number three, it's in the little block. Planning record, it tells you who said it and what it's, and you can pull the meetings. The planning board, I think you sent them to the city clerk and they sent them to me and it pulls out where it said. It's in the documents that were provided to me from the city. Okay, I did my due diligence and all I'm gonna say is, Stop nickel and diming us. Stop over-regulating us. Give me evidence. Prove to me there's a problem. Show me the short-term rentals. You've got 100 calls to the police. The house that I renovated on Willow Street was a drug house. Cops were there at least once a month or twice a month. If you ask the neighbors, I fixed it. Robert, you've been to all my houses. I'm more than up to code on everything. You are. I'm rebuilding a house that burned down. Insurance didn't pay for everything. I had to take out a loan. And I'll probably need more, because construction costs are horrible. We're paying my taxes, my taxes. That's another thing that I'm writing to the city about. I'm not opposed to paying taxes. We have to pay for things. It's common sense. But some of the tax rates, I have a 1,200 square foot house that I renovated. My taxes are now $4,800 a year. You want me to provide affordable housing to the city. Well, you take $4,800 and you divide that by 12. That's part of the rent I have to charge someone. Then I have to pay insurance. Then I have to pay the mortgage. And these are second homes, OK? So when I said I did an LLC, I did it so that I can get a business loan. And business loans are five years long. And they're higher interest rate than my mortgage. Okay, so some of them I started out, and with the tax, the interest rates right now, one of my properties with the interest, because the five years was up, just jumped $500 a month in my mortgage because the interest rate went from five, now it's the seven and a quarter. So help us help the city and stop regulating us.

All right, last call for speakers, and then we'll move on to our next steps. One, twice. Hand it back to you.

Great. Well, thank you all for showing up. I know there was a little heckling, but I would say this was our least heckling in about six months.

I would like to commend all of you for how well this all went. This was great. Next steps, my laptop battery died, unfortunately, so I don't have a slide to show us. Next steps will be we're going to take all of the feedback we got tonight and prepare it as a report and give that report to the city council and seek guidance from them on what they'd like us to do.

Yeah, I'd note, I think one of the, you know, a lot of data.

This city council will keep government out of business.

So we had a lot of data tonight, and I think I know I'll be sifting through a lot of it with the stuff Andrew provides, but I think one of the comments I heard a few times was, like, what is the problem we're trying to solve? You know, I think that one really jumped out at me. I know anybody on the staff who knows me in short-term rentals and regulations here, you know, this is... This mechanism to solve the problem of housing affordability is not one that I've found evidence does that piece. I've done a ton of research into this area. In cities and towns like Ellsworth that see this tourism increase, the short-term rental, you actually reach this threshold. I mean, maybe it's 1,000 here, where people, as Paul, you mentioned, the fundamental characters of their neighborhood has sort of changed. There's a lot. There's not the kids going to Halloweens. But the cat is kind of out of the bag on that piece, I mean, to regulate the market. And that... we're talking about a registration here system, when it got proposed, I mentioned during the budget sessions that I wouldn't be for this type of piece, but it would have to at least pay for itself. So is the, I think with council sessions, that's a really important thing to start on is what's the problem we're trying to solve? To get a registration system for data that's not AirDNA and these other things and at least paying for the system itself and for looking into this. Septic came up a lot tonight on those pieces, but do we have enough tools already in our toolkit for the septic piece? Is that something we just need to analyze? separately, because I heard a lot from folks tonight on just the, I kind of think this regulatory environment in some ways can be a lot like rent control, which we've seen a lot of places around this country where, yes, rents are high, we're trying to But it's a supply issue. It might have unintended consequences on the supply of housing in Ellsworth. And I think there's 11 housing permits pulled two weeks ago. A lot of those might go towards short term, at least in the near term. But this is also creating more housing here, too. So I get the comments on mission creep on Ellsworth. you know, hey, they're proposing a small registration fee and this is going to be the end of that, but future councils, future city managers might see that line item. that was meant to cover a smaller piece, because the states get their 9% sales tax, which all these other influxes, but the city gets a lot of unintended consequences as well, in terms of, I know you mentioned jobs coming here, and people being able to afford tax pieces here by getting that separate income. I was talking to somebody in a different area this weekend, actually, where their town really regulated the market And they mention the exact same thing as, well, I was making that money locally. They pass this regulation and now I can't afford to live here. because, man, I'm going to have to sell the house to somebody out of state, and I'm not going to have that other income. So for a lot of folks, this option can mean staying here, and that's really important. So we'll come back to council. We've heard from a lot of folks I know here as well. A rent increase from $2,000 to $2,800, like, it's worth me, and that is just wild for an apartment. But with a regulation, that's not the problem that we're presenting to solve, is housing affordability through this piece. So I think that really has to be taken a look at when we discuss with the council. I think we're going to try to hold a workshop with council to report on this feedback and really start to dial in, do they want us to move forward on this piece? Do they not? There has been, I'd say, and emails have been interesting to me. I get both sides on this one. People saying, this happened in a short-term rental. You've got to regulate. You've got to regulate. And then the flip side is, this is a great growth market for the city. It helps support people here. Tonight's been a little more in one direction than the other, so we'll report that to the council. But either way, we'll have a very transparent process for what the next steps is, whether they want to move forward and with some version of this, whether they don't. And I know, thank you to our team, to Robert and Brittany and Sarah, who's up in the overflow room, and Andrew and Tracy, who provide a lot of the documentation here. And most importantly, to all of you for this information. It's been extremely, extremely helpful.

I just want to say one thing. I am the person who gave that to you. And it is because they have an Airbnb on the other side of my unit. And if I'm out, they will have to. So that's the whole purpose of me giving that to you.

Is that the Airbnbs are causing the rent increase?

Well, I don't know if it's causing the rent increase, but they're making a lot more money than what I'm paying in rent. So if they get rid of me, they can put in another Airbnb where I am. And that is an example of somebody who's going to lose their home because of Airbnb.

Another perspective is that a lot of portfolios are 50-50 because people can't sustain. They have a moral obligation to provide long-term, but they financially, fiscally cannot maintain renting long-term without the supplement of the short-term rental. You've heard more than one person here today say that their portfolios are 50-50, and they're using the short-term rental to sustain the long-term rentals because they don't want to increase long-term rental rates. This is a...

I would bring it back to that what's the problem we're trying to solve piece two because this isn't going to solve that problem. A very stringent regulatory environment for Airbnb's caps. no owner-occupied, etc., which I don't think is really on the table or hasn't really been discussed. Sure, we'll bring it up with the council, and some community members have brought that forward, but I think that's...

I think as a renter, too, you don't appreciate that the landlord's property taxes have gone up like they have in Ellsworth, and their insurance has gone up as well, and the cost of repairing the refrigerator that goes wrong in your rental apartment has gone up. for that person as well. And that's why I'm not saying that they're not going to do it. They probably are.

Again, I say it is not owned by a local. It is a state.

But they still have to pay the public taxes that are set by the city council.

I think the fundamental question really tonight.

I hate to say it, but could you come to the mic just so we can preserve it for them?

I'm not a public speaker either. My name is Keith Smith. I'm a resident of Ellsworth. I do own a short-term rental, owner occupied. I think the fundamental question really we all need to really think about is if you got rid of every single short-term rental in this community and change that to long-term rental, would you really solve the affordability crisis? I think that needs to be answered. And I have evidence and data that will prove that it will not. Therefore, what's the point? Thank you.

I think the boards as well, you can provide some feedback in some of these areas if you'd like to provide further input.

Thank you for this.

We also have the survey. Don't forget the survey. There are paper copies if that's your preference, but it can be found on the city website. Again, the boards, just for a visualization of some data points would be helpful if you're interested. It's fun to play with stickers.

And stay tuned. Like you said, I know you've already dedicated a lot of time to coming out here and providing some great comment. But we'll have a city council meeting. You'll be able to see that, too. It'll be in public. So you can see if our recitation of the feedback tonight is accurate or not. You can always contact the individual city council members as well. And sorry, Mr. Haley. I just. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of this. Well, it doesn't look too beautiful. Thank you all.